Glossary
Drip campaign
Also called automation sequence, autoresponder.
Last reviewed 18 September 2026
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a stored sequence of emails sent to a person on a timer after some trigger, run towards a goal the sender chose, which is the same machinery an email course runs on and a different promise to the reader.
The distinction is not technical. Both are a stored message, a rule about when it goes out, a queue and a suppression list; a course tells the reader what arrives on each of a fixed number of days, and a drip campaign is a marketing sequence with an objective the reader was never told about.
A course assembled inside a builder designed for drips inherits defaults nobody chose: a clock counted from the last send rather than from a morning, a trigger built to fire more than once, a goal that pulls people out early, and an unsubscribe that belongs to a workflow rather than to a person.
See also
- Email course
An email course is a finite sequence of lessons delivered one email at a time, in order, on a clock that starts when each reader joins, and it ends on a day both of you knew about in advance.
- Welcome sequence
A welcome sequence is the short run of emails a new subscriber receives after joining a list, sent to introduce who you are and what will arrive, and it is the mail people are most likely to read because it is the only mail they are expecting.
- Evergreen and cohort courses
An evergreen course starts on the morning after each person confirms and is therefore running continuously, while a cohort course starts on one fixed date for everybody, so nobody in an evergreen course is ever late and nobody in a cohort is ever alone.
Read next
This term is covered properly in Email course or drip campaign: same mechanism, different promise, which is a longer piece on the subject.
Every other term is on the glossary index , the longer writing is in the guides, and what this site itself does is on the home page.
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