Building a sequence
Steps, delays, and branches in an automated flow.
A sequence is an automated flow: a trigger, then one or more steps that run on a schedule. Welcome series, onboarding drips, win-backs, and renewal nudges are all sequences.
Walkthrough: Build a welcome sequence takes this from an empty flow to an active one, step by step.
Steps
- Email steps send a template.
- Wait steps hold the contact for a set delay (minutes, hours, days, weeks) before the next step.
- Condition steps branch on contact data or behavior: matched contacts take one path, everyone else takes the default.
- Goal steps mark a conversion. See goals and conversion tracking.
Build the flow on the canvas, or describe the outcome and start from a draft. Either way, review every step before the sequence goes active.
Drafts and activation
A new sequence is a draft and enrolls nobody. It only starts working when it is set active. Pause it any time; enrolled contacts hold their place and resume when you unpause.
You can do that on the canvas, or a connected agent
can, with set_sequence_status. Creation and activation are deliberately two
separate acts, so that building a sequence never starts sending as a side
effect. That is the only reason they are split: an agent is not barred from
activating, and it will validate the graph first and refuse if the sequence
would not run.
Simulation
Before going live, run the sequence in simulation mode to see exactly which contacts would enroll and what each would receive, without sending anything.
Triggers
What starts a sequence is its trigger: manual enrollment, a tag being added, entering a segment, a date field, or a custom event.