Email is here for the long haul, and there’s no stopping that.
In fact, email marketing continues to be a go-to strategy for businesses looking to build a strong relationship with their target audience.
According to 59% of marketers, email is the most effective platform for revenue generation.
Drip campaigns are a good example of emails that you can use to nurture and convert leads into paying customers. A major hack for executing effective drip campaigns is to work with an email marketing tool with the right combination of features.
We present a detailed analysis of the best drip campaign software products you can explore. We hope you find one that fits your marketing needs.
Let’s go!
What is a drip campaign?
A drip campaign is a marketing strategy that involves sending a series of pre-written, automated messages to a targeted audience over a specific period.
Usually, drip emails are delivered based on triggers like the recipient’s behavior, preferences, and stage in the buyer’s journey.
Some types of drip campaigns include:
- Welcome email drips: Sent to email subscribers to introduce yourself
- Onboarding emails: Guide new users through your product or services.
- Abandoned cart email drips: For customers who didn’t complete check out on your online store.
- Promotional email drips: Promote special events or product offers.
- Re-engagement drip campaigns: Rekindle interest in your brand from unresponsive or inactive subscribers.
Drip campaigns are commonly used in email marketing but you can also implement them through other channels like social media, SMS, or direct mail.
Top considerations when choosing drip email software
Marigold Consumer Trends Index reports that 52% of consumers made a purchase directly from an email in 2023. This shows how drip email campaigns can help drive conversions. You can consider an automated abandoned cart email that prompts the recipient to complete their purchase. A seasonal email drip promoting your special offers can help significantly boost your sales, too.
But you still need the best drip marketing software for optimal results. Ensure the platform has the following features:
- Automated lead segmentation: This allows you to segment leads based on behavioral triggers like email engagement, link clicks, buying patterns, etc. Or, attributes like demographics or interests. Choose a drip campaign tool with flexible segmentation capabilities so it’s easier to send tailored campaigns.
- Email personalization: Personalized emails are 6 times more likely to convert. That’s why you need email sequence software that makes it easy to personalize your email content. Features like custom fields, dynamic content blocks, and personalized product recommendations are a big plus.
- Drip campaign builder: An intuitive visual campaign builder makes your email creation process more seamless. Go for email drip software with pre-built workflow templates, email templates, and drag-and-drop builders.
- Value for money: Choose a platform that offers fair pricing based on your list size, email volume, and available features. Most platforms will offer free trials or freemium plans so you can test their features.
You should also choose drip email software with strong customer support. You may need assistance while setting up or if you’re transitioning to different email campaign software. Look at reviews on top platforms like TrustPilot, Capterra, or G2 to see the feedback others have shared about their customer service experience with your desired tool.
Top 9 best drip email software in 2024
Now that you know what to look for, here’s a round-up of 9 best drip campaign software that can empower your email marketing strategy.
1. GetResponse
Topping our list of best email drip software is GetResponse, our very own. We created GetResponse to help you automate your email marketing efforts and enhance conversion rates.
GetResponse includes a wealth of features tailored for sending appealing drip email campaigns. The drag-and-drop email builder, for instance, gives you a seamless experience when crafting your email campaigns. You’re sure of responsive and well-optimized emails.
Key GetResponse features
- AI assistant: Allows you to send emails faster. Use the OpenAI-empowered email and subject line generator to optimize your emails.
- Autoresponders: Create automated email sequences or autoresponders triggered based on user actions and specific timelines. You can send automated welcome emails to subscribers, follow up on purchases, and promote special offers or events.
- Conversion funnels: Help to create landing pages and sales funnels directly within GetResponse. With this feature of this best drip email software, you can nurture leads through their buying process and maximize conversion opportunities.
- Pre-designed email templates: GetResponse has over 200 professionally designed templates to help create compelling email drips. There are templates for different categories like ecommerce, online marketing, holidays, etc. It’s easy to find one that matches your campaign goals.
- Audience segmentation: Organize your contact list based on subscriber interests and engagement. This way, it’s easier to send more targeted email campaigns. Also, create dynamic segments that update based on subscriber activity.
- A/B tests: Test different subject lines, email layouts, calls-to-action, and email content to discover what resonates better with your email recipients.
Pros
- Free trial that gives you access to all features.
- Access to over 2 million free stock images and GIFs for beautifying your emails.
- Detailed analytics for tracking campaign performance.
- 24/7 live chat support to assist users.
- Seamless integration with CRM tools like Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho, etc.
- Easy-to-use email templates.
- Simple user interface.
Cons
- While basic functions are easy to use, more advanced features may require additional time to master.
Pricing
GetResponse offers several pricing tiers based on the number of subscribers and features included:
- Email marketing: Starts with $15.6/month, paid annually— for up to 1,000 subscribers, including unlimited newsletters, autoresponders, email & landing page templates, and sign-up forms.
- Marketing automation: $48.4/month for up to 1,000 subscribers. Includes additional features like event-based workflow, predictive email delivery, and advanced segmentation.
- Ecommerce marketing: $97.6/month for up to 1,000 subscribers. Has advanced features like abandoned cart recovery, quick transaction emails, promo codes, and product recommendations.
- GetResponse Max: Starts from $1099/per month. Offers custom pricing for larger businesses that require advanced solutions and dedicated account support.
GetResponse’s pricing structure is designed to accommodate various business sizes, making it a flexible choice if you’re looking to implement effective drip email marketing strategies. Whether you’re a digital marketer, course creator, coach, or in any business, GetResponse is readily available for your use.
2. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform with a variety of features. It allows you to manage your email list and engage subscribers with automated drip campaigns.
The drip campaign software is built for creators like bloggers, podcasters, coaches, etc. It has a simple email builder and a nice variety of templates at your disposal.
Key ConvertKit features
- Simple editor: Create emails with various elements— buttons, images, or videos–in a few minutes to engage your recipients.
- Automation: Send automated email campaigns based on various user touchpoints and activities.
- Sign-up form and landing pages: Create landing pages and add sign-up forms to collect email addresses.
- Tags and segments: Organize your email list so you can send emails based on their interests.
- Analytics: Get quality reports to assess the performance of your campaigns.
Pros
- Clean user interface
- Advanced automation for better personalization
- Visual workflow builder that’s easy to use
- Readily available customer support.
Cons
- No drag-and-drop email builder
- Basic analytics
- No support of A/B testing for email sequences
Pricing
ConvertKit’s pricing plans include:
- Free: Allows only one user to manage up to 10,000 subscribers with 1 basic automation and 1 email sequence. Offers unlimited landing pages, opt-in forms, and email broadcasts. Includes audience tagging and segmentation.
- Creator: $100/month, paid annually for up to 10,000 subscribers. Includes unlimited visual automation and email sequences. Has smart recommendations, third-party integrations, API access, landing pages, and polls.
- Creator Pro: $140/month for up to 10,000 subscribers. Has more advanced automation features, subscriber engagement scoring, and deliverability reporting.
3. Brevo
Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, is next on this list of best drip campaign software to explore. The email marketing platform offers various features for creating nice email drips.
Brevo is an attractive choice if you’re a small business and startup looking to communicate with your customer base through personalized emails.
Key Brevo features
- Ready-made automation workflows: Use these to help boost your audience engagement. Set up autoresponders to deliver drips for different scenarios like birthdays, abandoned carts, welcome emails, etc.
- Drag-and-drop builder: Create and customize your email content with this easy-to-use builder.
- AI subject line and email generator: Save time creating email content with this key feature of this tool on our list of the best drip campaign software solutions.
- Advanced segmentation: Create different recipient groups using “filters” or “attributes.”
- Multichannel drips: Reach users across other platforms like SMS and WhatsApp.
- Detailed analytics: Track your campaign performance with comprehensive analytics data
Pros
- Easy to navigate user interface
- Straightforward campaign builder that’s ready to use
- With free plan
Cons
- Limited variety of email templates
- Limited integrations compared to other email sequence tools.
- Customer support may not always be as responsive, according to some users
Pricing
Brevo offers several pricing tiers based on the number of emails sent per month:
- Free: Includes unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails per day. Has customizable email templates, a drag-and-drop editor, transactional emails, etc.
- Starter: $9/month for up to 5,000 emails per month. No daily sending limit. Has basic reporting and analytics.
- Business: $18/month for up to 5,000 emails per month, plus marketing automation, AI predictive sending, Multi-user access, landing pages, A/B testing, and advanced statistics.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger businesses with advanced requirements.
4. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation and sales CRM platform you can use to maintain engagement with your leads.
The email drip campaign software has a nice user interface with advanced automation capabilities.
Key ActiveCampaign features
- Visual marketing automation: Choose from over 135 triggers and actions when building your drip email sequence. There are also pre-built automation recipes to make the process easier.
- Predictive sending: Automate emails for when leads are most likely to engage. The AI support helps you create well-optimized email templates for your drip campaigns.
- CRM platform: Use this to organize client interactions and automate your entire sales process.
- Built-in analytics dashboard: No need to leave ActiveCampaign to track your campaign performance. The data you need is on the platform’s dashboard.
Pros
- Responsive user interface
- Convenient mobile app
- Rich email template library
- Straightforward contact management and list creation
Cons
- Buggy email editor at times, according to some user reviews
- Difficult to navigate reports
Pricing
ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial. Pricing plans include:
- Starter: Starts at $15/month for up to 10,000 contacts, 1 user, multi-step marketing automation, emails, and A/B testing for emails.
- Plus: $49/month for everything in Starter. Also offers unlimited automation triggers, web forms, and landing pages.
- Professional: $79/month for up to 12,000 contacts. Includes advanced automation, generative AI, conditional content, and predictive sending.
- Enterprise: $145 per month. Includes Marketing CRM, 900 automation recipes, and custom objects.
5. Mailchimp
This is another drip email marketing software solution with extensive features you can use to connect with your target audience with timely emails.
Mailchimp is the best drip campaign software if you wish to create automated emails based on various customer interactions.
Key Mailchimp features
- Customer journey builder: The feature lets you design automated workflows and guide customers through their buying process.
- AI content optimizer: This feature analyzes email content and provides suggestions based on email marketing best practices.
- Feature for transactional emails: Send triggered emails based on buyer activity like order confirmation, welcome emails, shipping updates, etc.
- Built-in analytics: Track email metrics like open rates, click-throughs, conversions, etc.
- Multivariate A/B testing: Optimize email campaigns by testing different email versions
Pros
- Easy to set up and navigate
- With mobile application.
- Extensive variety of native and third-party integrations.
- In-depth reporting which also includes geo-tracking and Google Analytics
Cons
- Free plan has restrictions. For instance, there’s a cap on the number of emails you can send per month.
- Pricey advanced features
- Charges for unsubscribed and inactive contacts on your list
Pricing
Mailchimp offers several pricing tiers based on the number of subscribers:
- Free Plan: $0/month, allowing up to 1,000 subscribers. Has personalized support for 30 days, limited reporting features, email templates, subject line helper, and other basic features.
- Essentials: $13/month for 10,000 contacts and a maximum of 3 users. Offers up to 4 journey points, forms, landing pages, and A/B testing.
- Standard: $20/month for up to 12,000 subscribers. Allows up to 6,000 emails monthly. Comes with advanced segmentation & reporting, personalized onboarding, custom-coded email templates, and more.
- Premium: $350/month for up to 15,000 subscribers. Offers unlimited seats & audiences, up to 200 journey points, dedicated onboarding, dynamic content, and advanced segmentation.
6. Customer.io
Customer.io is primarily a customer engagement platform that also allows businesses to create personalized email drips.
Customer.io is an ideal drip email campaign software solution for technically inclined teams looking to improve communication with prospects and customers.
Key Customer.io features
- Visual workflow builder: Use it to automate complex drip campaigns and customer journeys.
- Text-based and drag-and-drop editors: You can create drip email campaigns in minutes with these tools.
- Omni-channel messaging: Reach subscribers via email, SMS, and in-app, too.
- Data activation: Allows you to share your marketing campaign data with other customer management platforms through direct integrations, webhooks, or RESTful APIs.
- Campaign performance assessment: Gain access to valuable insights and experimentation tools to assess your campaign performance.
Pros
- Impressive segmentation capability
- Good customer support and helpful documentation.
- Integration with eCommerce tools like WordPress, WooCommerce, and Prestashop.
Cons
- No free version.
- Considered one of the more expensive options among other drip email tools.
- Tailored to more tech-savvy users, so there’s a steep learning curve.
- Relatively high price for premium version if you’re dealing with a large contact size.
Pricing
Customer.io offers a tiered pricing structure based on the number of contacts and emails sent:
- Essentials Plan: Starts at $100 per month. Supports up to 5,000 contacts and includes 1 million emails per month. Provides access to core features like automation, segmentation, and analytics.
- Premium Plan: $1,000 per month. Offers custom pricing based on the number of contacts and emails, along with advanced features such as dedicated support and enhanced analytics.
- Enterprise plan. Plan for bigger companies. Customer.io offers a 14-day free trial as well.
7. HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing hub that allows you to create high-engaging email drips. The email marketing platform is built on Hubspot’s CRM, making it easier to create a more detailed customer database. This comes in handy when you need to organize your email lists.
You can use HubSpot’s automation tools to streamline your customer journey. Set up automated drips based on customer’s browsing behavior, demography, and other attributes.
Key Hubspot features
- Personalization with smart content: Personalize emails by using custom field data (like recipient or company name).
- Drag-and-drop email builder: Create appealing and responsive emails without any coding knowledge. There are also nice and accessible email templates available.
- Comprehensive analytics: Gain access to detailed analytics and reporting that allow you to track your email performance.
Pros
- All-in-one marketing solution.
- Helpful resources to aid you in navigating the platform.
- Extensive integration of apps and APIs.
Cons
- Challenging to customize email templates.
- A/B testing not allowed in basic and pro packages
- Paid technical support.
Pricing
HubSpot offers a variety of pricing tiers based on the features and number of contacts:
- Marketing hub starter: $15 monthly. Includes 1,000 marketing contacts, email marketing, forms, live chat, and simple marketing automation.
- Starter customer platform: $15 monthly. Allows up to 1,000 subscribers and includes more advanced, sales, service, content, and operations software.
- Marketing hub professional: $800 monthly for up to 2,000 subscribers and 3 seats. Includes custom reporting, dynamic personalization, and omni-channel marketing automation.
- Marketing hub enterprise: Up to $3,600 monthly. Includes 5 seats, 10, 000 email contacts, customer journey analytics, organized teams, and custom objects.
8. SendX
SendX offers a seamless platform for creating tailored email drip campaigns. It has an intuitive workflow builder and advanced automation capabilities.
The platform caters to businesses looking to simplify email marketing efforts.
Key SendX features
- Drag-and-drop drip sequence builder: Create quality drip sequences in seconds with SendX intuitive tool.
- Auto-trigger: Design automated sequences based on events or user actions.
- Tags and segmentation: Group contacts based on similar criteria to personalize your campaigns.
- A/B tests: Compare email versions to deliver more relatable campaigns to your audience.
- Heatmaps: See which parts of your emails received the highest clicks so you can optimize your emails accordingly.
- Pop-up forms and landing pages: No need to look elsewhere for your lead generation. Create your forms and landing pages from within the SendX platform.
Pros
- SendX has pre-built email templates and supports bulk contact importation.
- Strong segmentation and tagging features.
- You can resend emails to non-openers with one click.
Cons
- While SendX offers integrations with popular platforms like Zapier, the selection may be more limited compared to some competitors.
Pricing
SendX offers several pricing tiers based on the number of subscribers. The lowest plan starts from $7.49 for 1-1,000 subscribers. There are other packages like
- $14.99 for 1,001 – 2,500 subscribers.
- $29.99 for 2,501-5,000 subscribers.
- $39.99 for 5,001 – 10,000 subscribers.
There are also a couple of higher plans for more subscribers and a custom plan for more than 100,000 subscribers.
9. Sender
Sender is an SMS and email drip marketing software solution you can use to engage with your audience and simplify your customer journeys.
Sender is good for setting up automated sequences for a variety of purposes— onboarding, promotions, transactions, etc. The platform is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses or eCommerce stores.
Key Sender features
- Sequence automation: Create sequences based on predetermined triggers like clicks, dates, product purchases, cart abandonment, etc.
- WYSIWYG email editor: Design complex HTML emails without coding expertise.
- Template library: Use professionally designed email templates for your campaigns.
- Dynamic content: Create emails that change based on specific recipient attributes or engagement behavior.
- Audience segmentation: Divide contacts into targeted groups for more relevant messaging.
- Analytics: Access in-depth reports about your campaign performance.
Pro
- Advanced automation features that allow for highly personalized email sequences.
- Unlimited emails you can send in all paid plans
- Dynamic content testing available before launching your campaign.
Cons
- No landing page builder.
- Some templates not mobile-responsive
- Tasking setup and verification process, according to some users.
Pricing
Sender offers a variety of pricing tiers to accommodate different business needs:
- Free Plan: Allows up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month, access to email automation, signup forms, and popups.
- Standard: $15.83 per month for up to 2,500 subscribers, 30,000 emails monthly, SMS, multi-user access, and everything in the free plan
- Professional: $29.17 per month for up to 5,000 subscribers, 60,000 emails, free SMS, animated countdown timers, advanced automation, priority support, and more.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger organizations. Comes with more advanced features and dedicated support.
Conclusion
Successful email drips rely on the right software. So, look out for key features like automated lead segmentation, email personalization, and an easy-to-use campaign builder when choosing software for your email drip campaigns. Also, go for a platform with good customer support and fair pricing.
That said, each of the drip campaign tools we highlighted offers a unique blend of features and is suitable for a variety of use cases. With GetResponse, you have a rich combination of features like landing pages, email automation, personalization, A/B testing, and conversion funnels. We thought of your immediate and long-term needs when creating GetResponse for email marketing. These features were put together to ensure you can create high-converting drip emails.
Haven’t decided yet which platform to use for your email drip campaigns? Give GetResponse a go now!