Compose cold-sequence steps, add waits and conditions, personalize from lead fields, and understand edit semantics
The Step Editor
Plain-text-first email steps.
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.
Send as plain text only
A sequence-level Send as plain text only toggle takes that idea all the way: the send carries no HTML part at all, just text. Because there is no HTML, open pixels and link tracking do not apply to these sends, so opens and clicks are never recorded for them. See Deliverability for how open tracking works.
Attach your leads before launching
Above the Steps, the builder's Leads section is where you use Attach a list to pick the lead list this sequence emails; the eligible-lead count appears once a list is attached, and a sequence cannot launch without one. See Leads & Import.
Waits and Conditions
Control timing and branching between steps.
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 lead behavior, such as whether the lead has replied or opened. A lead who replies exits the sequence so they never receive a follow-up after answering.
Personalization Variables
Pull values from each lead's fields.
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. Spintax — {hi|hello|hey}— lets you vary phrasing across sends so every message is not byte-identical.
One token is not a lead field. {{scheduler_link}}, listed in the variable menu under Your scheduler as Booking page link, resolves to your own public scheduling page, the same link for every lead, and it carries meeting attribution automatically so a booking traces back to this sequence. Insert it wherever you would otherwise paste a booking link. If you have not set up a scheduling page, it resolves to nothing rather than a broken link, so create one before you rely on it.
As you write, Laureo runs content checks and surfaces what it finds in two tiers:
1
Structural correctness — blocks launch
Unbalanced spintax braces and references to variables that do not exist on your leads are hard errors. A sequence with these cannot launch until you fix them, because they would produce broken sends.
2
Content guidance — advisory only
Deception patterns such as a fake "Re:" or "Fwd:" subject, and spam-trigger wording, are flagged as amber warnings. They are advice, not a block — you decide whether to act on them. They never stop a launch.
Write honest subjects anyway
The content warnings are advisory, but deceptive subjects hurt your reply rate and your domain reputation. A subject that accurately describes the message earns more genuine replies than a fake thread-reply ever will.
Send yourself a test
See a real send before any lead does.
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.
Editing a Live Sequence
What changes apply to whom.
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.
Steps with sent history are protected
Once a step has been sent to at least one lead, Laureo prevents edits that would corrupt the record of what was already sent. Duplicate the sequence if you want to start a materially different version.