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Broadcasts are Drip's one-time email campaigns (vs Workflows which are automated). Most DTC stores send 4-8 Broadcasts/month and get 15-25% of email revenue from them. A well-segmented Broadcast at the right send time hits 30%+ open rate. A bad one tanks deliverability for everything else.
Who this is forDrip operators ready to send their first promotional campaign, product launch, or newsletter Broadcast. Or operators whose Broadcasts are underperforming — open rates below 22%, click rates below 1.5%, or unsubscribe spikes after each send.
What you'll need
Step 1
Before opening Drip: write down (1) the campaign objective, (2) the offer or content angle, (3) the target audience (which Lookup), and (4) the expected primary KPI. Skipping this step is why most Broadcasts underperform.
Open a doc. Write: "Objective: [drive holiday sale revenue / launch new product / re-engage lapsed customers / newsletter education]". One sentence.
Write the offer: "20% off sitewide, code HOLIDAY20, ends Sunday." Or content angle: "Founder note on Q4 sustainability goals." Specific.
Write the target audience as a Lookup name or boolean combination: 'Send to: engaged-90d AND NOT recent-purchaser-3d AND NOT do-not-send.' This is what you'll plug into Drip's audience selector.
Write the expected KPI: "Goal: 25% open rate, 2.5% click rate, 0.8% conversion rate, $X attributed revenue." This is what you'll measure against post-send.
Without this planning, every Broadcast is a one-off with no benchmark. You can't improve what you don't measure intentionally.
Step 2
Drip → Broadcasts → New Broadcast → choose 'Email' → set the from-name, subject, preheader, then build the email body.
Drip → Broadcasts → New Broadcast → choose Email type.
From Name: pick a recognizable human + brand pattern ("Sarah at Glow"). Inherits from account defaults but can be overridden per Broadcast.
Subject line: aim for 35-50 characters. Use power words sparingly; specificity beats clickbait. 'Holiday sale: 20% off, ends Sunday' outperforms 'Don\'t miss this!!!' by 15-25% on open rate.
Preheader: 80-120 characters. This is the preview text in Gmail/Outlook. Use it to expand on the subject — don't leave it blank or it pulls the first line of body text (usually "View in browser").
Email body: use Drip's drag-drop editor. Keep it focused — one hero image, one offer, one CTA. Multi-CTA emails dilute conversion by 20-40%.
Add a footer with unsubscribe link (Drip auto-appends) and your physical mailing address (CAN-SPAM required).
Step 3
Choose the right Lookup. Stack suppression filters. NEVER send to the entire list without engagement filtering.
In the Broadcast composer → Recipients → select the audience Lookup.
For promotional campaigns: `engaged-90d` (people who opened/clicked in last 90 days).
For re-engagement campaigns: `unengaged-180d` (people who haven't opened in 180 days). Send sparingly — these emails hurt sender reputation if they go to too many in one batch.
For VIP-only: `vip-high-ltv` AND `engaged-30d`.
Stack suppression filters: NOT `suppression-do-not-send` AND NOT `suppression-recent-purchaser` AND NOT `suppression-low-engagement-cold` (if relevant).
Drip's composer shows the estimated send count after filters are applied. Sanity-check this number — if it's way higher or lower than expected, your Lookup or filter logic is wrong.
Step 4
Send tests to Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and a corporate Microsoft 365 inbox. Check rendering, dynamic content, links, and inbox placement.
Drip → Broadcast composer → 'Send Test Email' → enter 5-8 internal addresses across major inbox providers.
In each inbox: check (1) inbox placement (Primary vs Promotions vs Junk), (2) mobile rendering (open on phone, not just desktop), (3) all links resolve correctly, (4) merge tags rendered correctly (first name not blank).
Click "Show original" or "View headers" in Gmail. Confirm `dkim=pass`, `spf=pass`, `dmarc=pass`. If any fail, fix domain auth BEFORE sending the real campaign.
Test the unsubscribe link. Click it in a test inbox. It should load Drip's unsubscribe page and process correctly. A broken unsubscribe = spam complaints = sender reputation damage.
Run the HTML through mail-tester.com if you want a spam-score check. Target 9.5/10 or better. Anything under 8 needs investigation before send.
Step 5
Send time matters more than people think. Best windows for DTC: Tuesday 10am / Thursday 1pm / Saturday 9am, in the SUBSCRIBER's timezone, not yours.
Drip Broadcast → Schedule → choose 'Send at specific time' (better than 'Send now' for any campaign worth optimizing).
Best send times for DTC promotional Broadcasts (based on industry data, varies by audience): Tuesday/Thursday 10am-1pm local time, or Saturday 9am-11am local time for weekend shopping intent.
Enable Drip's 'Send in subscriber's local timezone' if your audience spans multiple US/global timezones. Without this, a 10am EST send hits 7am PST and 3pm GMT — drops open rate 10-15% on misaligned subscribers.
Avoid Monday mornings (inbox flooded with weekend emails) and Friday afternoons (everyone's checking out). These are the lowest-engagement windows for DTC.
Don't send on major holidays unless you have a holiday-specific campaign. Christmas Day, Thanksgiving morning, and July 4 evenings have abnormally low open rates.
Step 6
Hit Send. Monitor the first 6 hours for spam-complaint spikes. After 48 hours, check open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, and attributed revenue.
Hit Send (or let the scheduled send fire).
Within the first 6 hours: Drip → Broadcasts → [your campaign] → Analytics. Watch the spam-complaint rate. If it exceeds 0.3%, pause the send (if still in progress) — this is the Gmail penalty threshold.
After 48 hours: open rate (target 22-30% for promotional, 30-40% for transactional/launch), click rate (target 1.5-3% for promotional), unsubscribe rate (target under 0.3%), attributed revenue.
If unsubscribe rate is over 0.5%, the audience filter was too broad OR the content didn't match the subject line. Tighten the next campaign's targeting.
If open rate is below 18%, the issue is usually deliverability (check sender reputation) or subject line. Run a test variation on the next send.
Document the results in your campaign log. Patterns emerge over 6-12 campaigns — which subject formats work, which send times, which segments.
Common mistakes
Sending to the entire list with no engagement filter
What goes wrong: Open rate drops to 12-18%. Spam-complaint rate spikes. Within 60-90 days, Gmail and Outlook route your domain to Promotions or Junk by default. Your engaged subscribers (the ones actually making you money) stop seeing your emails. Revenue per send drops 30-50%.
How to avoid: Always send to `engaged-90d` as the floor. For promotional sends, layer in suppression filters. Run a re-engagement campaign quarterly to win back unengaged subscribers or suppress them.
Subject line in ALL CAPS or with multiple exclamation points
What goes wrong: Spam filters at Gmail/Outlook downrank the email immediately. Inbox placement drops 15-30% on that campaign. Sender reputation hit lingers for 30+ days, affecting all subsequent sends.
How to avoid: Title Case or sentence case. One exclamation point max. If you feel the urge for two, the subject isn't compelling enough on its own — rewrite it.
Sending without testing across inbox providers
What goes wrong: Outlook/iCloud users get a broken-looking email (different CSS rendering). On a 20% Outlook share, 4,000 of every 20,000 subscribers see a broken email. Conversion on that segment drops to near-zero AND they're more likely to unsubscribe.
How to avoid: Send tests to Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, AND a corporate Microsoft 365 mailbox before every Broadcast. Check rendering on mobile (where 60-70% of opens happen).
No physical mailing address in the email footer
What goes wrong: CAN-SPAM violation. Maximum statutory damages $50,684 per email (2024). Even if no FTC action, ISPs flag missing-footer emails as spam, killing inbox placement.
How to avoid: Drip auto-appends mailing address from Settings → Compliance. Verify in the test send that the address shows. If missing, fill in Settings → Compliance → Mailing Address.
Sending too frequently — daily promotional Broadcasts
What goes wrong: Unsubscribe rate climbs to 1-3% per send. List size shrinks faster than you can replace it. Lifetime value per subscriber drops 40-60% as the highest-quality subscribers churn first (they get the most email fatigue).
How to avoid: Max 2-3 promotional Broadcasts per week for most DTC brands. Newsletter Broadcasts (educational, not promo) can be additional. Track unsubscribe rate per Broadcast — if it climbs above 0.5%, pull back frequency immediately.
No subject-line testing or send-time iteration
What goes wrong: Performance plateaus. The same subject patterns get used for years and open rate slowly declines as audience fatigues. Stores that don't iterate see 30-40% lower open rate after 12 months vs stores that A/B test subjects monthly.
How to avoid: Use Drip's A/B test feature on at least 1 Broadcast per month. Test subject line, send time, or hero image. Roll the winners into your default template.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to structure Drip Segments, Tags, and Lookups so Workflows scale
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Running a Broadcast cadence well takes 4-8 hours/week of focused work — campaign planning, copy, design, QA, send, analyze. A specialist running 8-12 Broadcasts/month for a DTC brand is typically $800-1,800/mo at $14-16/hr. ROI is straightforward: if Broadcasts are 20% of email revenue and email is 25% of total revenue, a 30% lift from professional cadence is 1.5% of total revenue back — that pays specialist fees 5-10x over.
See specialist rates
2-3 promotional Broadcasts per week max for most DTC brands. Plus 1-2 newsletter/educational Broadcasts if you have content. Daily promotional sends will tank your sender reputation within 60 days. Monitor unsubscribe rate per send — if it's climbing above 0.5%, you're sending too often.
Industry benchmarks (post-Apple Mail Privacy, which inflates opens ~10-15%): promotional Broadcasts 22-30%, launch/product Broadcasts 28-38%, re-engagement Broadcasts 8-15% (low by nature — these are inactive subscribers). Below 18% on promotional sends signals a deliverability or subject-line problem.
Broadcasts for one-time editorial sends (this week's newsletter, this month's product drop). Workflows for evergreen content series (5-email skincare education series triggered when someone subscribes to that interest tag). Most stores send weekly newsletter via Broadcast and use Workflows for onboarding/nurture sequences.
Yes. Drip → Broadcast → enable A/B test. You can test subject line, send time, from-name, or content variations. Test on a 20-30% sample of the audience for 4-6 hours, then send the winning variant to the remaining 70-80%. Drip auto-picks the winner based on open or click rate (you choose).
Best windows for DTC: Tuesday/Thursday 10am-1pm local time, Saturday 9am-11am for weekend shopping intent. Enable 'send in subscriber's local timezone' in Drip. Worst windows: Monday mornings (inbox flooded), Friday afternoons (everyone checking out). Test for YOUR audience — these are averages.
A Broadcast is a one-time send to a selected audience at a scheduled time. A Workflow email is automated, triggered by a subscriber action (signup, purchase, etc.), and sends at a calculated delay after the trigger. Broadcasts for time-sensitive campaigns and editorial; Workflows for evergreen automation. Most stores use both heavily.
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