Automated sequences are a true necessity.
The bare minimum we need to run a newsletter business.
Because Substack was lacking this feature, I’ve been using Kit for that purpose.
It helps me nurture, educate, and guide people through my publication. And eventually convert free to paid subscribers.
But today we witness a major change. Finally!
I’m so excited to share with you this new feature:
They are called “drip campaigns” and you can find them in your Dashboard → Settings → Emails.
Here’s the list of campaigns you can build:
I went through the settings and I find them pretty straightforward, easy to use, simple workflows.
The Upsides:
They’re native to Substack, no need to build complex external workflows
We have onboarding for paid members (finally)
We have a winback campaign - a true gem
The Downsides:
No stats - it’s a must
No paywalls - huge miss
I can’t use different triggers
I can’t tag and segment people
I can’t build customer journeys based on “if→then” rules
I can’t easily find whether a person received an email, when, if they opened it and if they clicked.
The way forward
These sequences will replace the welcome emails on Substack. If you open the free→ paid conversion campaign, you’ll see it already has your welcome email there.
So yes, I’m gonna use them.
Right now this feature is in beta and will evolve in the future.
But till then Kit still stays my preferred platform for implementing automated sequences, but I have to admit this is a MAJOR step for Substack.
Hopefully, it will develop to a more advanced workflow in the future.
Till then? I’m gonna keep using Kit. I’ve built automations that already brought me 100+ paid subs while I sleep, so I’m going to keep that for now.
Still, I’m optimistic about Substack and what we can get as new features in the future.
Maybe one day we’ll also be able to lock content for free subscribers as well (another must-have basic feature IMHO), who knows :)
Fingers crossed!
Yana
P.S. In this video I shared my entire automation - templates, sequences, and an AI workflow which you can use to write a high-converting sequence for yourself.
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I didn't know that
Not available for me - how does one become a Beta reader?