Multi-step sequences with exit on reply

A sequence is an automated chain of emails sent on a delay. Use it when you want to keep in touch over time without sending each email by hand — onboarding, nurture, re-engagement, post-trial.

Open Engage → Sequences → New sequence to start.

Build the steps

A sequence is an ordered list of steps, each containing:

• Delay — how long to wait before sending this step. Measured in hours from the previous step (or from enrolment, for step 1).
• Subject — the email subject for this step.
• Body — the email content. Same block builder as campaigns.

A typical nurture sequence might be:

1. Step 1 — Welcome — delay 0 hours (immediate on enrolment)
2. Step 2 — How most teams get started — delay 48 hours
3. Step 3 — Case study: how Acme cut DMARC failures by 80% — delay 96 hours
4. Step 4 — Want to book time? — delay 168 hours (one week after step 3)

Set the exit rule

By default, exit on reply is on. If a contact replies to any email in the sequence, they're auto-removed and won't receive further steps. This is what stops you embarrassingly emailing someone who's already in a conversation with you.

You can turn it off if you really want — for a fully one-way nurture chain — but it's almost always the right default.

Enrolling contacts

Three ways to enrol:

• From the sequence detail page — pick an audience and click Enrol. The audience members all start at step 1.
• From a campaign — see Sending your first campaign → step 7. You can wire "anyone who opens / clicks this campaign automatically enrols in sequence X". This is how you build automatic nurture pipelines.
• By contact ID — for one-off manual enrolment from your CRM or a script (advanced).

Re-enrolment isn't allowed by default — a contact who's already been through a sequence won't be enrolled again. You can force re-enrolment by archiving their previous enrolment first.

Running the sequence

We process due enrolments hourly. So if step 2 is "after 48 hours" and step 1 sent at 09:14, step 2 will send at the next hourly tick after 09:14 + 48h.

You can also trigger a manual run from the sequence detail page if you want to flush pending steps right now.

Reading the stats

On the sequence detail page you'll see:

• Active — contacts still progressing through steps.
• Completed — finished the last step.
• Exited — left early. The reason (replied, unsubscribed, manually removed) is shown.

Per-step you'll see opens / clicks / replies, so you can spot the dropoff point in a long sequence and tighten the copy there.

A few sequence-design rules

• Keep it short — 3–5 steps is usually enough. 10-step sequences feel like spam.
• Each step needs a reason to exist — a step without a clear job is filler.
• The first email's open rate is the ceiling for the whole sequence — open rates always decay as the sequence progresses.
• Always have a clear opt-in for nurture — re-enrolling a churned contact in a 5-step welcome sequence will get you complaints.

Sequences or journeys?

A sequence sends the same steps to everyone, in order, on a timer. If you want the path to branch — "if they clicked, send the offer; if not, send a reminder" — use a Journey instead (Engage → Journeys). Journeys do everything a sequence does, plus conditions, A/B splits, and goals. Reach for a sequence when the flow is genuinely linear; reach for a journey when it forks. See Journeys vs sequences in this Help Centre.