Set up a drip campaign using Contacts and Automations in Typeform

In this guide, we’ll explain what a drip campaign is and walk through how to set one up using Automations in Typeform. Our example will focus on a 4-email welcome series for our made-up SaaS product, ZoTask. The automated email sequence starts when a respondent submits our signup typeform.

Learn more about Typeform’s Contacts and automation add-on here. Automations are available as an add-on feature on the Plus, Business, Growth Essentials, Growth Pro, Talent, Growth Custom, and Enterprise plans.

What is a drip campaign?

A drip campaign, also sometimes called an email drip campaign or automated email sequence, is a set of emails that are sent automatically over time after someone takes a specific action, such as signing up, subscribing, or completing a form.

Instead of sending one long email with everything at once, a drip campaign breaks information into smaller messages that arrive at scheduled times. This makes it easier for people to absorb information, take action, and stay engaged. You can personalize these emails using details such as the contact’s name or the action that triggered the message.

Once a drip campaign is set up in Typeform, emails are sent automatically based on timing rules you define. This means you can follow up with your audience consistently, without needing to send messages manually.

Teams commonly use drip campaigns for:

• Welcome email series: Introduce new subscribers to your brand and set expectations for what comes next.
• Lead nurturing: Share useful content over time to build trust and understanding.
• Product onboarding: Guide new users through setup and key features so they can see value quickly.
• Educational email series: Deliver short lessons, tips, or best practices over several days.

Example drip campaign: SaaS product welcome series

In this example, we’ll build a simple automated welcome sequence that starts as soon as someone signs up to try our product.

The sequence looks like this:

• Email 1: Immediate welcome - A short explanation of what the product does and a link to a getting started guide.
• Email 2: Sent 2 days later - A short overview of key features to help users explore the product.
• Email 3: Sent 4 days after signup - Best practices and examples of how customers use the product.
• Email 4: Sent 8 days after signup - A clear next step that helps users get more value from the product.

Once your campaign is live, you can experiment with different delays to see what works best for your audience.

Create your signup typeform

We’ll start by creating a simple signup typeform for our (made-up) product, ZoTask, and use it as the entry point for the drip campaign.

We’ll keep the form short and easy to complete. We want to focus on collecting the information we need to follow up, without adding unnecessary friction.

Instead of creating your form manually, save time by asking Typeform AI to do it for you.

A simple structure might include:

• A welcome screen to set expectations

• A question asking for the respondent’s name

• An email address question

• A Yes/No question so people can choose whether they want to receive product tips and updates

• We’ll also add a multiple choice question to ask respondents about their language preference, so we know which language to send emails in.

Map answers to contact properties

Next, we’ll map the form answers to contact properties in our Typeform account. This ensures each signup is saved as a contact and can receive our emails.

At a minimum, you’ll want to map:

• Email address: Used to create or update the contact and send emails.
• Email opt-in: Mapped to subscription status to decide whether someone should receive marketing emails. Contacts who opt out will not be sent our drip campaign emails.

We’ll also map respondent names and language preferences. Language preference is a custom property that we’ve created ourselves and won’t be in your account by default.

You can manage your mappings from the Connect tab.

For step-by-step guides on creating contact properties and mapping responses to contact properties, check out these guides:

• Create and manage your Contact properties
• Map form responses to contact properties

Create a contact list

In our example, signups are added to different contact lists based on their language preference. The language answer is mapped to a custom contact property, which is then used to create a separate list for each language. This allows us to send drip campaigns in different languages, depending on the list a contact belongs to.

For example, respondents who choose English as their language preference will be added to a list called Onboarding flow: English. We’ll then use this list as the trigger for our English drip campaign.

Lists also make it easier to manage contacts and reuse the same audience for future campaigns.

For a step-by-step guide on how to create a contact list, check out this article.

Create your drip campaign Automation

Now it’s time to create our drip campaign

This sequence includes four emails, sent at scheduled intervals after someone signs up. Because the form includes a Yes/No opt-in question mapped to a contact’s subscription status, emails are only sent to contacts who chose to receive product updates and tips during signup.

Respondents can opt out of receiving marketing emails at any time by submitting the form again and choosing No when asked if they want to receive product updates and tips, or by clicking Unsubscribe at the bottom of any Automation email.

This setup uses a separate drip campaign for each language preference. In this example, we’ll show how to set up the first campaign.

In this example, we’re targeting contacts who:

• Opted in to receiving product tips and updates
• Selected English as their language preference

This is what our drip campaign will look like:

Email 1: Welcome email

• Timing: Immediately after signup
• Confirms the signup, sets expectations, and encourages a small first step.

Email 2: Getting started

• Timing: 2 days after signup
• Shares helpful guidance or a walkthrough to support early use.

Email 3: Best practices

• Timing: 4 days after signup
• Highlights tips, use cases, or examples to build confidence.

Email 4: Next step

• Timing: 8 days after signup
• Encourages an action that helps people continue using the product.

Here’s how we’ll set this up:

1. Click on the Automations tab from your Workspace.

This will open your Automations manager where you can see all the different types of Automations created.

2. Under Contact updates, click + Create automation.

3. Select when this automation gets triggered:

• Contact is created
• Contact property is updated
• Contact is added to a list
• Contact is removed from a list
• Form submission - This trigger will redirect you to set up Messages.
• Specific date and time (coming soon)
• Recurring event (coming soon)

We’ll select Contact is added to a list.

4. Give your automation a name by clicking the default name in the top left corner.

5. Select the list(s) you want to use to trigger the automation. We’ll choose Onboarding flow: English.

If you want to add any filters click + Add contact property filter and choose which contact property you want to filter by. Learn more about adding contact property filters to your automations in this article.

6. Next, we’ll add an Action. Click the + icon.

7. Select Send email.

8. In the right side menu, you can select who you want to send your email to, Contact or Myself/team. We’ll select Contact.

9. Next, enter the email address you want to send the emails from. You’ll need to configure a DNS record to set up a custom email domain to send emails through Typeform.

Optionally, you can add a Sender name:

10. Enter a Reply to email address, or toggle on the Same as 'send from' email address option if this is an active email account that can receive replies.

11. Edit your subject line for the email and click Create email.

12. Use the email builder to customize your message.

You can:

• Edit placeholder text and Recall information from your contact properties to make it more personal. Type the @ key and select the information you want to recall from the list.
• Add up to 10 content blocks, such as titles, text, or buttons

13. To add a content block, click Add Content. Then select the content you want to add, we’ll select Button.

14. Edit the text of your button and add a button link in the button settings on the right.

You can rearrange the order of the content blocks by dragging and dropping them in the left side bar.

You can format the text in your message by highlighting the text, then a pop up will appear. Select if you want to bold, italicize, or add a hyperlink to it.

15. Click the three dots on the content to Duplicate or Delete the content block.

To customize the colors and font of your email, click the Design button to apply a theme to your email. You can find more information on how to add a theme to your email here.

16. Once you're happy with your first email, click Save and exit.

17. Next, we’ll add a time delay to send another email 2 days later. Click the + icon and select Time delay.

18. In the right side menu, select the time delay for when you want the Automation to continue. In the dropdown you can select to delay by Minutes, Hours, or Days. We’ll select Days and enter the number 2.

19. Then click on the next + icon and select Send email.

20. Repeat the steps of creating and sending another email until you’ve added all the emails to your drip campaign. When you’re done, click Activate.

Once activated, contacts who opted in and selected English will be added to the Onboarding flow: English list and receive the drip campaign emails.

We’ll repeat this process for each language so contacts receive emails in their preferred language.

Back in the Automations manager, you can:

• Toggle the trigger on or off
• Stop, rename, or delete an automation using the three-dot menu

Test your flow and start your campaign

Before going live, take a moment to test the full flow from start to finish.

Check that:

• Submitting the form creates a contact and the contact is added to the correct contact list
• The first email sends correctly
• Time delays work as expected

Once your Automation is live, start sharing and embedding your signup form. Contacts who opt in to receive marketing emails and meet your trigger conditions will enter the drip campaign and receive emails based on the schedule you’ve set.

As you continue using drip campaigns, you can refine your content, adjust timing, or update who enters each Automation to better support your audience over time.