Email Drip Campaigns

Last updated: April 7, 2026

Email Drip Campaigns automatically send recruiting emails in controlled daily batches, stopping once your study's target is met. This prevents over-engaging your participant pool by only reaching out to as many participants as necessary to hit your recruitment goal. Once set up, the campaign runs on its own with no manual follow-up required.

Setting up an email drip campaign

  1. Navigate to your study and select the participants you want to recruit for the study and include in the drip campaign.

  2. Compose your email as you normally would.

  3. In the send options, select Autosend by frequency or Autosend by date range.

    • Autosend by frequency — sends batches at a set interval. Set how many messages to send and how often (for example, 50 messages every 24 hours).

    • Autosend by date range — sends messages evenly between a start and end date. Set your preferred start and end dates. An estimated daily batch size will display based on your inputs.

    • For either option, toggle on Skip weekends to limit sending to weekdays only.

  1. Select Autosend to [#] participants to launch the campaign.

Target counts are checked before each batch goes out. Once your study's target is reached, any remaining queued emails will be cancelled automatically.

Understanding participant statuses

Once a drip campaign is active, each participant will show one of the following statuses in your Messages tab:

Status

What it means

Sent

The email has been delivered to this participant

Scheduled

The email is queued and will be sent in an upcoming batch

Pending

The participant is in the campaign but not yet scheduled. They'll be queued as future batches go out

The campaign itself will display an Auto Sending status while it's actively running.

Governance rules run when a drip campaign is launched, meaning all participants included in the drip campaign will have their contact status updated according to your contact frequency rules.

Once the study target is met, any remaining pending participants are released and become available again.

Example use cases

  • A researcher needs to book 10 interviews per week. Instead of manually sending batches daily, they set up a drip campaign to send 20 invites per day and let Rally handle the pacing automatically.

  • A team needs 5 participants from a pool of 500. They set up a drip campaign with a small daily batch so that once 5 people book, sending stops automatically, preserving the rest of the pool for future studies.

Managing an active drip campaign

You can take the following actions on a campaign that is in Auto Sending status:

  • Pause — Temporarily stops all upcoming sends. You can resume at any time.

  • Resume — Restarts a paused campaign from where it left off.

  • Cancel — Permanently cancels the campaign.

FAQs

What happens when the study target is reached?

Rally automatically stops sending to remaining participants. No action is needed on your part.

Will pausing a campaign affect emails already scheduled in the current batch?

Yes, pausing a campaign stops all upcoming sends immediately, including any emails scheduled in the upcoming batch. Sends will resume once the campaign is unpaused.

What counts toward the study target?

The study target is the participant goal set on your study. What counts toward reaching it depends on your study type:

  • Interview studies — a booked session (upcoming or completed)

  • Survey studies — a completed survey submission

  • Unmoderated test studies — a completed test submission