Start a Drip for New or Old Contacts
Connect a drip group to lists and a sending server, then choose who enters the sequence.
Schedule fields
- Name
- Internal reference for this running drip schedule.
- Drip group
- The series of active drip steps to execute.
- Lists
- The contacts eligible to enter the series.
- Sending server
- The delivery service used by the drip.
- Send to existing: Yes
- Existing contacts in the lists can enter the drip.
- Send to existing: No
- Only contacts added after the schedule is created enter the drip.
Understanding drip scheduling choices
The choice between “Send to existing: Yes” and “Send to existing: No” is one of the most consequential settings on this screen. Choosing Yes enrolls every current contact in the selected lists immediately, which is correct for a first-time nurture sequence but can feel repetitive if those contacts already received similar content in the past.
Choosing No limits the drip to contacts added after the schedule is created, which suits an always-on welcome series far better, since new signups enter the sequence naturally while existing contacts are left alone. Getting this setting wrong is one of the most common drip campaign mistakes, so confirm it matches your intent before saving.
Planning your drip rollout
Connect the right sending server and lists before activating a drip, since a misconfigured sending server can silently stall every message in the sequence. If your goal is closer to responding to a specific event, such as a signup date or list join, consider building a trigger instead of, or alongside, a manually scheduled drip.
Review drip performance through the same statistics views used for standalone campaigns, watching opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces at each step rather than only the sequence as a whole. A high drop-off at a specific step usually points to that individual message rather than the drip structure itself.
Frequently asked questions
- What if I choose the wrong send-to-existing setting?
- You can edit the schedule and adjust the setting, though contacts already processed will not be re-evaluated retroactively.
- Can a drip use more than one list?
- Yes, multiple lists can be selected as the eligible audience for a single drip schedule.
- How is a drip different from a trigger?
- A drip schedule is created manually with defined lists, while a trigger can start a drip automatically based on list, segment, or date events.
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