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DocsBuilding Sequences
Compose cold-sequence steps, add waits and conditions, personalize from lead fields, and understand edit semantics
A brand-new sequence opens on a short set of starting points rather than an empty box: Start from one of these, or write your own. Each template is a draft you edit, and nothing sends until you launch. Choosing one fills the steps in for you; nothing is created or sent, and you edit everything afterwards. Each row names the starter, what it does, and how many steps it has.
- Short intro (3 steps). Three short emails that introduce you, make one clear offer, and close politely if there is no answer.
- Peer result (4 steps). Four emails built around one customer story. Turns on open tracking so the third email can target the people who never saw the thread.
- Right person (3 steps). Three emails for when you are not sure who owns the problem. Asks for a name instead of a meeting.
- Book a time (3 steps). Three emails that end with your booking link, so a reply is never needed. Requires a published booking page.
Beside the list, Write it for me opens the assistant with the ask already typed out: tell it who you are reaching and what you are offering, and it drafts the emails for you to edit. It waits for you to fill those two blanks and press send, so nothing is written until you ask. Start from scratch simply dismisses the list and leaves you the blank step that was already there.
A cold sequence is an ordered list of steps. Most steps are email steps; between them you place waits. The step editor is plain-text-first by design: cold email that looks like a personal message from one person to another lands better than heavily designed, image-laden marketing email. Write a clear subject and a short, direct body.
Once a step is running an A/Z test, the step card stops showing its own subject and body. Variant A is that original copy, and every edit happens on the variants below the card. Remove the test and the step goes back to one body with nothing lost.
A new sequence is named for you. Attach a list and it becomes “Outreach to” plus the list name; with no list it becomes “Cold outreach” plus today's date. The title is editable in the header, and on a brand new sequence it opens ready for you to type over.
- Waits: set how long to pause before the next step (for example, wait 3 days before the first follow-up). Waits are durable and respect each lead's send window.
- Conditions: branch on whether the lead replied. Branching on opens needs open tracking turned on for that sequence, so the option stays unavailable until it is. A lead who replies exits the sequence, so they never receive a follow-up after answering. See Deliverability.
Insert variables like {{first_name}} and {{company}} to personalize each send from the lead's imported fields. Always set a fallback for every variable so a lead with a missing field never receives an awkward blank or a literal {{first_name}} in the body. Word variations, written as {hi|hello|hey}, let one phrase send several ways, so no two emails are identical.
The Variables button inserts a lead detail like first name or company, and always asks for a fallback so a missing field never sends a blank. The Word variations button next to it writes the braces for you and offers three starter samples.
Opened from a step body, that menu is headed with the field you are inserting into. It has up to three groups. Lead fields are the built-in columns. List columns holds the personalization fields your own leads carry, each row captioned with the name you gave the column and showing the tag it inserts, so “Company size” sits beside {{company_size}}. Picking either kind opens a small fallback field first, and the footer says why: each field is replaced with the lead's value when sent, so add a fallback and an empty value never ships a blank.
The third group, Your scheduler, is not a lead field. Its first row, Default booking page, inserts {{scheduler_link}} and resolves to your own most recent booking page, the same link for every lead. Below it, one row per booking page you own inserts a token that names that page instead, so a step can link to your demo page while another links to your intro call. Booking rows insert straight away, with no fallback to set, and they carry meeting attribution automatically so a booking traces back to this sequence. If you have not set up a booking page, the token resolves to nothing rather than a broken link, so create one before you rely on it. See Meeting Attribution.
As you write, Laureo runs content checks and surfaces what it finds in two tiers:
Structural correctness: blocks launch
Content guidance: advisory only
The advisory checks are these, and each one names the step it found:
- A subject that fakes a reply. A first-step subject starting “Re:” or “Fwd:” on a brand-new thread can look misleading, so the check suggests a subject that does not imply a prior conversation.
- Phrases that can hurt deliverability. The step is named along with the wording found in it.
- Heavy formatting. Links, bold and lists are fine; styled layouts, tables and background colors are what this one is about.
- More than two links in one step. On a first email the advice is one clear link, with the rest saved for a follow-up; later steps are told two or fewer is safer.
- A body that leans on images. One small image under real copy is usually fine. Several images, or an image with very little text, get filtered more often. On a first email it suggests moving the image to a follow-up.
- A formatted step in a plain-text-only campaign. The formatting is dropped and the body is sent as plain text taken from your copy, so links arrive as full web addresses. A step with no words outside its images would send with an empty body.
Every saved step has a Send test control. It composes that step against a sample lead and sends it from a mailbox you pick to up to five addresses, so you read the exact message a lead would receive, personalization filled in, unsubscribe footer and postal line included, before you launch. The subject is prefixed [Test] so a test is never mistaken for the real thing.
- It is a real send. A test goes out through the same rendering path a live send uses, from the pooled mailbox you choose. It is never recorded as a lead send, so it does not appear in your stats or move a lead forward.
- It counts toward that mailbox's daily budget. A test consumes real provider quota, so each test email counts against the sending mailbox's own rolling 24-hour pace. It does not draw down the campaign's per-day send limit.
- There is a daily test allowance. Your workspace can send up to 20 test emails per day across all sequences. Past that, tests wait until the earliest ones age out of the last 24 hours.
The last section of the builder lists the stop conditions as facts rather than settings: a lead stops receiving the sequence when they reply, when they unsubscribe, or when their email bounces. There is nothing to switch on and nothing to remove. The one exception is spelled out in place: if this sequence is set to delay on an out-of-office reply, the reply row says that an out-of-office reply pauses the sequence instead of stopping it. See Reply Handling.
Under Delivery & compliance, Business postal address rests on your organization default and can be set to On or Off for this campaign alone. When it is on and your organization has no address on file, the field says the campaign cannot launch until one is added or this is set to Off, and an Add address link opens the address form in place: street address, an optional suite or unit, city, state or region, postal code, and country, with street address the only required line. The address is shared by Campaigns and Cold Outreach, and it is added to the footer of every send.
Only an administrator can set the organization address. A seat that cannot is told exactly that, and pointed at the two real options: ask an admin to add it, or turn the address line off for this campaign.
- Content edits to a step (subject or body) apply to unsentsteps. Leads who have not yet received that step get the new content; leads who already received it are unaffected.
- Adding or removing steps applies to new enrollments only. Leads already enrolled keep the step structure they started with, so their experience stays consistent.
Review and launch sits in the header and again at the end of the form, after Stop conditions. Both open the same checklist.