How to build and launch a sequence, step by step

This is the click-by-click builder walkthrough. For the mechanics of enrollment limits, sending caps, and how contacts exit a sequence, see "The sequence engine: enrollment, caps, and exits." For how sequences and campaigns fit together at a high level, see "AI sequences and campaigns."

On Sales → Sequences there's one button: New sequence. Click it and the wizard asks how you want to start — Build with AI, Build manually, or, once your workspace has saved any, Start from a template. Pick one; nothing is saved until you finish.

1. 1
   Build manually

   Choose "Build manually," give it a Name and an optional Description, then click "Create & add steps." A brand-new manual sequence is active by default — but nothing runs until you enroll a contact, so there's no rush to get every step perfect before saving.
2. 2
   Build with AI

   Choose "Build with AI" instead. Describe what the sequence should achieve (there are example prompts like "Revive quiet partners into an SBR" or "Welcome new Microsoft 365 partners" to get you started), pick a tone — Professional, Friendly, or Direct — and optionally describe who it's for. Click "Generate draft."
3. 3
   Review the AI draft

   The draft opens in the builder for you to edit before anything is saved. Whatever you do, an AI-drafted sequence always saves as paused — you have to switch it on yourself once you're happy with it, it never goes live automatically.
4. 4
   Start from a template

   Pick a saved template and name the new sequence. Every step is copied across in order, the template itself is left untouched, and the new sequence is created paused so nothing sends until you turn it on.

A sequence is built from four step types:

• ＋Email — the message itself, sent from your own Microsoft 365 mailbox so replies land straight in your inbox, not a shared address
• ＋Delay — a wait, set in hours, before the next step runs
• ＋Task — creates a to-do on My Day for you, linked to the contact's company
• ＋Condition — checks whether the contact has replied within a set number of days, then either exits the sequence or continues to the next step

For an email step, write the Subject and Body as plain text, using the same merge tags as campaigns: {{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{company}}, {{account_manager}}, and {{booking_link}}. Click a tag chip to drop it into the body.

"Skip weekends & holidays" is on by default. With it on, an email or task step that would land on a Saturday, Sunday, or a company holiday waits and goes out the next business morning instead — nobody gets a cold outreach email at 6am on a Sunday. Delay and condition steps aren't affected by this setting; they're pure timers and reply checks, so rolling them would throw off how long you're actually waiting for a reply.

Open the Enroll dialog from the sequence. There are four ways in:

Enrolling never fires everything at once — sending is paced automatically per mailbox, and anyone already enrolled in that sequence is skipped so people don't get double-enrolled.

Instead of enrolling people by hand, you can set up an automatic rule so new contacts join the moment something happens. Three trigger types are available:

• ＋A lead is routed — optionally scoped to one specific web form
• ＋A deal enters a stage — scoped to a chosen pipeline stage
• ＋A tag is applied — scoped to a chosen tag

Each rule has its own on/off switch. Turning one off only stops new contacts from joining that way going forward — anyone already enrolled through it keeps going. Removing a rule entirely works the same way.

There's no separate "Launch" button — a sequence's status is the Active/Paused switch on the Sequences list. A manually-created sequence starts Active; an AI-drafted one starts Paused until you flip it on. Either way, being Active by itself sends nothing — enrollment is what actually starts the clock for a given contact.

Each sequence has its own report with enrolled, active, paused, completed, and exited counts, plus a reply rate — replies are the headline metric for sequences, not opens or clicks, because a sequence's job is to start a conversation. You'll also see emails sent, tasks created, and how many sends were deferred by the daily cap. Exits are broken down by reason: replied, unsubscribed, deal won, deal lost, manually removed, completed without a reply, and other. "Completed" means a contact walked every step of a built sequence — if a sequence has no steps yet, its enrollees show as "Waiting for steps" instead, never as completed. The report also carries a "Sending & safety" panel that restates the 250-a-day mailbox cap and flags anything that needs attention (sends waiting on the cap, or enrollments paused because a mailbox needs reconnecting).

A per-step funnel shows how many contacts are currently sitting at each step, how many have already moved past it, and how many replies and booked meetings that step produced. A recipient explorer lists every enrolled contact with their current step, status, exit reason, and last-send date, and links straight through to the company record.

Flip the Active switch to Paused to stop the sequence from moving anyone to their next step. Pausing checks in roughly once an hour, so treat it as "stops progressing soon," not an instant kill switch for something already queued to go out in the next few minutes.

Deleting a sequence with active enrollments cancels those in-progress enrollments — no further emails from that sequence will send — but it never touches the contacts or companies themselves. If nobody's currently enrolled, deleting just removes the sequence and its steps.