WhatsApp Drip Campaigns & Automated Follow-ups

A WhatsApp drip campaign is an ordered series of messages that sends automatically over time after a contact enrols, with each step timed as a delay from the step before it — a welcome now, a tip in 2 days, an offer 3 days after that. Where a recurring broadcast sends the same message on a calendar, a drip sends different messages on a timeline that starts separately for every contact.

That per-contact clock is the entire difference. Two people who sign up eleven days apart both receive step 1 on their own day one and step 3 on their own day five. Nobody is ever mid-sequence with the wrong message, and you never have to run a campaign again for the people who joined after the last one.

This guide covers the anatomy of a drip, a fully worked five-step welcome sequence with real timings, the difference between static and dynamic enrolment, how stop-on-reply works and why it protects your number, how drip timing interacts with Meta's 24-hour customer service window and daily messaging limits, and the mistakes that make a well-built sequence underperform.

Anatomy of a drip campaign

A drip campaign is a named container with an audience, a couple of behaviour switches, and an ordered list of steps. Each step has exactly two things:

• An approved template to send, personalised independently of the other steps — see personalising with variables. Steps can use media-header templates too: attach an image (JPG/PNG), a video (MP4) or a PDF to any step.
• A delay before it sends, measured from the previous step, expressed in minutes, hours or days.

Because the delay is relative to the previous step rather than to enrolment, adding a step in the middle pushes everything after it later. A sequence of 0 → 2 days → 3 days puts step 3 on day 5, not day 3. It is worth writing the cumulative days down before you build, because this is the single most common source of "why did that arrive a week late".

ConvoFly checks for due steps every minute, so a step configured for 48 hours fires close to 48 hours, not at the next nightly batch.

Worked example: a five-step welcome sequence

Here is a complete onboarding drip for a store, with the cumulative timeline spelled out. A contact enrolling at 14:20 on a Monday receives it like this:

Five messages across 14 days. Note what the timeline does not do: it does not respect business hours, and step 3 lands on a Saturday afternoon because that is where the arithmetic put it. If a specific weekday matters more than the elapsed interval, a recurring broadcast is the better tool — drips optimise for relevance to the individual, not for calendar tidiness.

Note also that the discount is at step 4, on day 9 — not step 1. A drip earns the right to sell by being useful first; putting the offer in the welcome message wastes the one step everybody actually reads.

Who gets enrolled: static vs dynamic

You pick the audience with the same picker as a broadcast — by tag, by a saved or newly built segment (including the date filters), from a CSV list, or by re-targeting a past broadcast's outcome. Then you choose how enrolment behaves over time:

Dynamic enrolment is checked on a rolling basis — ConvoFly scans for newly matching contacts every 5 minutes, so somebody who tags in at 10:02 is typically enrolled and sent step 1 well before 10:10. That responsiveness is what makes "every new lead gets this welcome flow" feel immediate rather than batched.

Stop-on-reply, and why it matters more than it sounds

If a contact replies at any point, the drip campaign stops for them. It is on by default and you should almost always leave it on.

The obvious reason is that it is rude to keep sending scripted nudges to someone who has started a real conversation with your team. The less obvious reason is commercial: blocks and "report" taps feed your number's quality rating, and a poor rating can freeze or drop your messaging tier. Nothing generates a block faster than an automated message that arrives while the customer is mid-conversation about a problem.

There is a third benefit worth designing around. When a customer messages you first, a 24-hour customer service window opens, and under Meta's pricing rules "all non-template messages are free" inside it, while "utility templates delivered within an open customer service window are free" too (Meta, WhatsApp pricing). So a reply does not merely stop the sequence — it hands you a day of free, unrestricted conversation with the most engaged person in your audience. Handing that person to a human, or to an automated reply, is a better use of the moment than step 3.

Turn stop-on-reply off only when the sequence is genuinely informational and must complete regardless — a multi-part delivery or course schedule, for instance. Never turn it off on a promotional sequence.

How to build one

1. From Broadcasts, open Drip campaigns and click New drip campaign. Give it a name you will still recognise in six months — "New lead welcome, 5 steps, 14 days" beats "Drip 2".
2. Choose who to enrol: a tag or a segment. The picker shows the current match count, which is your first sanity check.
3. Add step 1: pick an approved template and set when it sends — usually straight away, delay 0.
4. Add each further step with its own template and its own wait, measured from the step before, in minutes, hours or days.
5. Leave stop when the customer replies switched on so nobody is chased after they respond.
6. Switch on keep enrolling new matches (dynamic enrolment) if you want future contacts to flow in automatically.
7. Test-send each step's template to yourself before activating. A typo in step 4 of an always-on drip will be sent for months.
8. Activate. Enrolled contacts start on step 1 and each following step sends after its wait.

Drips and your daily messaging limit

Every drip step is a business-initiated template message, so it counts against your number's messaging limit exactly like a broadcast does. Meta defines the limit as "the maximum number of unique WhatsApp user phone numbers your business can deliver messages to, outside of a customer service window, within a moving 24-hour period", with tiers of 250 → 2,000 → 10,000 → 100,000 → unlimited and every new portfolio starting at 250 (Meta, WhatsApp messaging limits).

The thing people miss is that a drip's daily load is the sum of all steps due today, not the size of one step. An always-on five-step drip enrolling 200 new contacts a day eventually reaches a steady state where roughly 200 contacts are due on each of the five steps — about 1,000 sends a day once the pipeline fills, which is half of the 2,000 tier before you have sent a single broadcast.

ConvoFly is cap-aware: if a step would push you past the number's daily limit, it defers to the next day rather than failing outright or risking your standing. That is safe, but it silently stretches your timeline — a step advertised as "2 days" can land on day 3 if you are chronically at the cap. If your delays keep slipping, the fix is a higher tier or a smaller enrolment rate, not a shorter delay.

Running at scale, safely

• Daily cap deferral — as above, an over-cap step waits rather than failing, and no contact is dropped from the sequence.
• Retries with backoff — transient send errors are retried on the same step, so a momentary network hiccup does not silently eject someone from your welcome flow.
• Paced sending — for a large audience (500 or more enrolled), the campaign page tells you upfront that each step drains gradually at WhatsApp's paced sending speed of roughly 120 messages a minute. A step for 2,000 contacts therefore takes around 17 minutes to finish going out; still sending an hour into a 5,000-person step is expected, not stuck.
• Opt-outs are respected mid-sequence — a contact who opts out between steps is not sent the remainder. See managing opt-outs and frequency.

Drip vs recurring vs one-off: choosing correctly

You can and often should run both. A weekly recurring newsletter to your whole list, plus an always-on welcome drip for new signups, do not conflict — though they do share the same daily cap, which is exactly why a per-contact frequency limit is worth setting.

When to reach for a drip

• Welcome and onboarding — greet new subscribers, set expectations, introduce your best products over 1–2 weeks rather than in one overwhelming message.
• Lead nurture — warm up enquiries that did not convert immediately, with stop-on-reply handing anyone who re-engages straight to a human.
• Post-purchase — care tips at day 2, a review request at day 10, a replenishment reminder at day 45 for a consumable.
• Win-back — a short 2–3 step sequence for customers who have gone quiet. See winning back lapsed customers.
• Follow-up on non-responders — step 1 is the campaign, step 2 is the nudge, and stop-on-reply guarantees step 2 reaches only the silent contacts. Full playbook: following up with people who did not reply.

Common drip mistakes

1. Miscounting cumulative delays. Delays are from the previous step, not from enrolment. Four steps of "3 days" is a 9-day sequence, not a 3-day one.
2. Too many steps. Five is generous for most stores. A ten-step drip to a list that never asked for it is a block-generating machine.
3. Selling in step 1. The first message has the highest attention and the lowest permission. Spend it on value.
4. Turning stop-on-reply off "so they get the whole story". This is the fastest way to damage your quality rating and your tier.
5. Activating dynamic enrolment without watching volume. An always-on drip grows with your list; check the daily send count monthly against your tier.
6. Never reviewing the templates. A drip that references a discontinued product or an expired discount code keeps sending happily. Set a quarterly review.