How To Create an Email Drip Campaign

Email Drip allows you to create email campaigns that trigger emails to contacts automatically based on triggers such as the last call date, the last result code, callback/appointment date, or dates in a custom field. An Email Drip Campaign can contain several rules for triggering emails. Email drip can only be used if you have defined your own email server information.

Note: Drip email should not be used to send unsolicited email or for sending emails to third-party, rented, or harvested lists. The following link gives you more information on anti-spam guidelines. VanillaSoft reserves the right to cut off drip email access if it is abused.

Limits for sending email

To help prevent spam and keep accounts safe, some email providers (e.g. Gmail) limit the number of emails you can send or get per day, and the number of people you can add as recipients. If you have configured VanillaSoft to send an email with your email provider, check out the articles below if you are having issues sending mail.

Note: Each email provider may change their limits over time and your IT administrator may also put limits on how many emails can be sent in a day/week/month.

For more information on the limits for your email provider, please view Why Aren't my Emails going out?

Creating an Email Drip Campaign

1. Login as an Admin
2. Select Project
3. Go to Emails&Docs
4. Add a new Email Drip Campaign by naming the campaign and clicking Add
5. You can now create each of the individual rules in the campaign that will trigger an email. You can choose to have the email sent X days, weeks, or months before or after the criteria you select. If you select the criteria "Last Result Code of" then you will be presented with an additional dropdown where you can select the codes that the rule will apply to. After the timeframe and field criteria have been selected you must choose the email template that will be sent. The dropdown list will display all email templates that you have created in the Email Templates section. You then choose the contacts that the rule will apply to. By default, the rule applies to all contacts. You can choose to limit the rule to just Web leads, to specific lead sources based on the VanillaSoft Lead Source field or to contacts in specific teams. Each rule within a campaign will operate independently of the other rules.

For example, you can set up the following rule, where NO is a result code for not currently interested that sends the contact an email template 1 month later and again 2 months after the result of NO was entred.

Based on this rule any contacts with valid email addresses that were previously resulted in NO will automatically be sent the first email template after 1 month, the second email template after 2 months.

Note: The same email template will only be sent to each contact once within a 6-week period. This ensures that contacts will not continuously receive the exact same email over and over. If you based your trigger on Last Result Code or Last Call Date these will obviously change with each call made to the contact. If you are trying to use a custom field it must be a date field and the data must be in a date format recognized by VanillaSoft.

From/Reply Email Address Setup

Emails sent through email drip must go out through your defined email server. Individuals can be set up from the Edit Contact page. You must always choose a default From/Reply address from the dropdown which displays all email accounts that have been validated. You can use the checkboxes to establish priorities in terms of which addresses to use. You can choose to use the Contact Owner's email address when available, and if not available to then default to the Last Call User's email address if available, and then the default address would be used if neither of the above addresses is available. You can also define a maximum number of emails per day that will be sent out over each email address, as many email plans limit the number of daily emails that can be sent.

Email Footer & Unsubscribe Link

To ensure compatibility with anti-spam guidelines all emails sent through email drip must include an unsubscribe link. You can modify the message that will be included at the end of the email using the HTML editor box, but an unsubscribe link must always be present. When a contact unsubscribes the email address will become inactive. Management is able to reactivate the email address from the Edit Contact page on the admin side.