Drip | The Ecommerce CRM for Email & SMS Marketing Automation

In the competitive world of online retail, simply having a great product isn’t enough. Success hinges on building lasting relationships with your customers. But as your business grows, managing those relationships across different channels becomes a complex puzzle. You’re juggling email lists, trying to launch SMS campaigns, and struggling to make sense of customer data. This is where a specialized tool becomes not just a luxury, but a necessity. Enter Drip, the platform that positions itself not just as an email service provider, but as a dedicated Ecommerce CRM.

This in-depth review will explore what makes Drip a powerhouse for online stores. We’ll dive deep into its core features, break down its pricing structure, and see how it stacks up against the competition. Whether you’re a burgeoning Shopify store or an established brand looking to unify your marketing efforts, this guide will help you determine if Drip is the right engine for your growth. We’ll cover everything from its powerful Marketing Automation capabilities to its seamless integration of Email Marketing and SMS Marketing, giving you a clear picture of how it can transform your customer engagement strategy.

Core Features: Powering Growth with Marketing Automation

Drip’s true strength lies in its comprehensive feature set, designed specifically to address the pain points of ecommerce businesses. It goes far beyond sending simple newsletters by providing a unified system for understanding and communicating with your customers at every stage of their journey. This is what separates a basic tool from a true Ecommerce CRM.

Advanced Email Marketing & Segmentation

At its heart, Drip offers a sophisticated Email Marketing platform. The visual email builder is intuitive, allowing you to create beautiful, on-brand emails with drag-and-drop ease, without needing to write a single line of code. But where it truly excels is in its segmentation capabilities. Drip automatically pulls in rich customer data from your ecommerce store (like Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce). This allows you to create hyper-targeted segments based on virtually any criteria you can imagine:

• Purchase History: Target customers who bought a specific product, spent over a certain amount, or haven’t purchased in the last 90 days.
• Browsing Behavior: Engage users who viewed a product category but didn’t add to cart.
• Custom Tags & Events: Apply tags based on quiz results, form submissions, or link clicks to build deeply personal customer profiles.

This level of detail means you can stop batch-and-blast emails and start sending messages that feel like one-on-one conversations, dramatically increasing engagement and conversion rates. A/B testing subject lines, content, and sending times is built-in, allowing you to continuously optimize your campaigns with data-backed decisions.

Powerful Marketing Automation Workflows

This is where Drip truly shines and delivers on its Marketing Automation promise. The visual workflow builder is a game-changer, enabling you to map out entire customer journeys with simple logic. Instead of just sending one-off campaigns, you can build automated “if-this-then-that” sequences that run 24/7. These aren’t just simple autoresponders; they are multi-step, multi-channel experiences.

For example, a classic Abandoned Cart workflow could look like this:

1. Trigger: A customer adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the checkout.
2. Action 1 (Wait 1 Hour): Send an email reminder: “Did you forget something?”
3. Split: Did the customer open the email?
4. Action 2 (Wait 24 Hours): If they didn’t open the first email, send a second one with a different subject line. If they did open it but didn’t buy, perhaps send an SMS with a small discount code.
5. Goal: The workflow ends once the customer makes a purchase.

Other popular workflows include welcome series for new subscribers, post-purchase follow-ups to request reviews or suggest related products, and win-back campaigns to re-engage lapsed customers. This level of automation frees up your time to focus on strategy while Drip handles the execution, ensuring no customer falls through the cracks.

Seamless SMS Marketing & Lead Generation

Drip understands that marketing in 2024 is multi-channel. That’s why SMS Marketing is a native component of the platform, not a bolted-on afterthought. You can seamlessly integrate text messages into your automation workflows right alongside emails. This is incredibly powerful for time-sensitive communications like flash sale announcements, shipping notifications, or high-urgency cart reminders. Drip also provides the tools for compliant Lead Generation, helping you build both your email and SMS lists. You can easily create and customize pop-ups, forms, and landing pages to capture visitor information. You can even trigger a pop-up based on user behavior, such as exit intent, to maximize your conversion opportunities. By combining email and SMS within one Ecommerce CRM, you create a cohesive communication strategy that meets customers where they are most active.

Drip Pricing: A Plan for Every Stage of Growth

Drip’s pricing is designed to scale with your business. The core model is based on the number of active contacts in your account, which is a common and fair approach for marketing platforms. The key benefit is that even the base plan includes access to the platform’s most powerful features.

Unlike some competitors that gatekeep advanced automation or segmentation behind expensive enterprise tiers, Drip provides these core functionalities to everyone. The main plan includes:

• Unlimited email sends
• Full access to the visual workflow builder
• Advanced segmentation and reporting
• Integrations with major ecommerce platforms

Here is a simplified breakdown of how the pricing scales. Note that SMS is a separate, usage-based cost, allowing you to control your spending.

The value proposition here is clear: you are paying for a complete Ecommerce CRM and Marketing Automation suite, not just an email sender. When you factor in the potential revenue generated from automated campaigns like cart abandonment and win-back series, the investment often pays for itself many times over.

Drip vs. The Competition: How Does It Stack Up?

When choosing a marketing platform, it’s essential to understand the landscape. Drip’s main competitors are often seen as Mailchimp and Klaviyo. While all three are excellent tools, they serve slightly different purposes.

Mailchimp is a fantastic starting point for many businesses, but its core strength is in general-purpose Email Marketing. As an ecommerce store’s needs become more complex, they often outgrow its automation and segmentation capabilities.

Klaviyo is a very direct competitor and also a powerful ecommerce marketing platform. The choice between Drip and Klaviyo often comes down to user preference. Many users find Drip’s visual workflow builder more intuitive and easier to manage. Drip’s positioning as an Ecommerce CRM also emphasizes its role as a central hub for all customer data and interactions, which resonates with brands looking for a single source of truth.

Getting Started with Drip: A Quick User Guide

One of Drip’s advantages is how quickly you can get up and running to see a return on your investment. Here’s a simple three-step guide.

1. Integrate Your Store: The first and most crucial step is connecting Drip to your ecommerce platform (e.g., Shopify, BigCommerce). This is a simple, one-click process that immediately allows Drip to start syncing customer and order data. This is the foundation of all your future segmentation and automation.

2. Build Your First Automation: Don’t try to build everything at once. Start with a high-impact workflow, like a Welcome Series. Here is what the logic looks like in a simplified format:

// Drip Workflow Logic: New Subscriber Welcome Series

// 1. Define the Trigger
// This workflow starts when a person submits the "Footer Signup Form"
Trigger: Submits a Form (form_id: 12345)

// 2. First Action: Send the Welcome Email
// Send an immediate email with a discount to incentivize a first purchase
Action: Send Email
  - Subject: "Welcome! Here's 10% Off Your First Order"
  - Content: Include unique discount code

// 3. Add a Delay
// Wait a few days before following up
Action: Wait for 3 days

// 4. Add a Decision (Split)
// Check if the customer has made a purchase since subscribing
Split: Has this person placed an order since starting this workflow?
  - Path YES: They bought something! Send them down a post-purchase path or end the workflow.
  - Path NO: They haven't bought yet. Send a gentle reminder.

// 5. Follow-up Action for Non-Purchasers
Action: Send Email
  - Subject: "Don't Forget Your Welcome Gift!"

3. Analyze and Optimize: Launch your workflow and let it run. Use Drip’s dashboards to track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and—most importantly—the revenue generated by each email and workflow. Use this data to make informed decisions and optimize your strategy over time.

Conclusion: Is Drip the Right Ecommerce CRM for You?

If you’re an ecommerce brand that has moved beyond the basics and is looking for a powerful, unified platform to drive growth, Drip is an exceptional choice. It successfully bridges the gap between Email Marketing, SMS Marketing, and customer data management, earning its title as a true Ecommerce CRM.

Its strengths lie in its intuitive visual workflow builder, deep ecommerce integrations, and powerful segmentation capabilities. It empowers you to automate sophisticated marketing campaigns that generate revenue while you sleep. While beginners might start with a simpler tool, businesses ready to invest in building long-term customer relationships will find Drip to be a robust and scalable partner.

Ready to see how Drip can transform your marketing? Visit www.drip.com to explore its features and start a free trial. Experience firsthand the power of a marketing platform built from the ground up for ecommerce.