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Going off of the entry for persistent damage in the handbook (pg. 323), I would say that's not the case:
Persistent damage can have the bleed type, meaning it affects only living creatures that need blood to survive. Bleeding automatically ends if you’re healed to your maximum Hit Points.
Wow, that is well hidden. And annoying as heck, as now I have to come up for loads of critters with the answer to the Question "Do they bleed?"
Like, Demons. Fae. Flesh Golems. Abberations. All manner of Aliens. Why should Vampires not take bleed damage?
Please put immune to bleed into the Groups description and not hidden in the bleed trait, this is counterintuitive. If all other immunities and resistances are listed there, I don't want to search for some outliers.
Yeah, man, that's hard to find.
But it's easy to adjucate, I think: is it living? If yes, does it need blood? If yes again, persistent bleed damage it gets.
Demons, Fae, Abberations, most Aliens (if not undead) all take bleed damage.
Golems don't count as living: "Golems are magically created, mindless automatons that..."
Vampires are a) undead, b) feed on blood, but (I suppose) don't have a functioning cardiovascular system (which I guess the "need blood to survive" is supposed to intend).
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I would definitely imagine Vampires bleed. If anything, I imagine vampires weak to bleeding, as blood is so important to them! Easy table variance to imagine happening.
This sort of thing should be clarified, with non-bleeding enemies having 'Immune bleed, x, y, z, etc' in their stat blocks, and GMs able to modify that as appropriate, rather than have it be fiat for every enemy.
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No variance per RAW: "Persistent damage can have the bleed type, meaning it affects only living creatures that need blood to survive."
Vampires are undead. They aren't living creatures.
Plant people would not need blood, but count as living. They also would not be subject to persistent bleed damage. Same for oozes.
Aliens with green blood need that green blood -> they bleed.
Yes the rule is easy to miss, but it is not ambiguous.
In an exception based game, there are a few too many exceptions for the exceptions....
My rule of thumb is that if you cut something's body and something comes out of the hole at a reasonable pace due to internal pressure - be it blood, xylem, insects, fiendish ichor, alchemical battery solution, or whatever - then the thing is subject to bleed damage.
So, most plant creatures would be subject to bleed, but ones specifically made of wood like an animated tree probably shouldn't be since their sap moves so much slower than the liquids in other plants. A skeleton obviously can't bleed, but a vampire, sure. An alchemical golem should bleed even if a stone golem does not. Etc
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Honestly I hate presistent damage. Just makes the combat more muddled than it already is. It took us the longest time just to figure out what a flat check is, and the fact you can only reduce to DC 15. Oh and you have to take special action to do it, and bleeding requires a medicine check to do it. Potions don't remove any presistent damage, neither do any healing spells I've seen. Just gut it out of the system.
Gutting it's kind of an extreme solution and not necessary. It just needs a bit of cleanup. I'd just ask for a Medicine check for all of them, which can be made untrained, once per medic per target per round. On a critical success, that check immediately ends the condition; on a regular success, it reduces the DC to end the condition by 5, and this can keep being reduced past 15 to eventually reach 0, whereupon the condition immediately ends.