What is marketing automation? Drip emails, tools and email deliverability

What is drip email marketing?

A drip campaign is a series of emails sent automatically on a schedule or in response to actions, for example a welcome series of five emails over two weeks, or a sequence that follows a free trial. Each email "drips" information at the right time instead of sending everything at once.

What is email automation?

Email automation is the part of marketing automation that handles email: triggered emails such as welcomes, confirmations and reminders, drip sequences, and segmented newsletters, all based on data about each subscriber.

What is sales automation?

Sales automation handles repetitive sales tasks: assigning new leads to reps, creating follow-up tasks, sending sequences of personal-looking emails, logging calls and updating deal stages in a CRM. Marketing automation warms leads up; sales automation helps the team close them.

What is a marketing automation platform?

A platform that combines a contact database, segmentation, a journey or workflow builder, message templates for each channel, and reporting. Common examples:

• HubSpot. Marketing, sales and service tools in one, popular with small and mid-sized B2B companies.
• Marketo Engage. Adobe's enterprise B2B automation platform.
• Account Engagement (formerly Pardot). Salesforce's B2B automation tool, tightly connected to Salesforce CRM.
• Oracle Eloqua. Enterprise B2B automation from Oracle.
• ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and Brevo. Email-led automation for small businesses and ecommerce.
• WebEngage, MoEngage and CleverTap. Customer engagement platforms used widely by consumer apps and ecommerce brands, with strong push, in-app and WhatsApp journeys.

What is the best marketing automation software?

It depends on your business. B2B companies with a sales team usually choose HubSpot, Account Engagement or Marketo. Consumer apps and ecommerce brands with large user bases often choose WebEngage, MoEngage or CleverTap. Small businesses running mainly email do well with ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or Brevo. Choose by your main channel, your CRM and your volume, not by feature lists.

What is SPF, DKIM and DMARC?

These are three DNS records that prove your emails are really from you:

• SPF lists the servers allowed to send email for your domain.
• DKIM adds a digital signature to each email that receiving servers can verify.
• DMARC tells receiving servers what to do if SPF or DKIM fails, and sends you reports.

Since 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders to have all three, offer one-click unsubscribe and keep spam complaint rates low.

How to improve email deliverability

1. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your sending domain.
2. Send marketing email from a subdomain to protect your main domain.
3. Warm up new domains by increasing volume gradually.
4. Only email people who opted in; never buy lists.
5. Remove addresses that bounce or never open.
6. Make unsubscribing easy.
7. Write like a person: avoid spammy subject lines and image-only emails.
8. Watch complaint rates and domain reputation in Google Postmaster Tools.

Do you need marketing automation?

If you have more leads or customers than your team can follow up personally, yes. Start with three journeys: welcome, lead nurture and re-engagement. We set up and manage these on your platform; see marketing automation services and email marketing and ESP setup.