Add follow-up steps and delays to an email sequence

A sequence with follow-ups gets several times more replies than a single email. This article shows how to add steps to an existing email campaign and set the wait time between them.

Steps

1. Open the email campaign you want to extend from the Campaigns list.

1. If the sequence is empty, click Start with email to create the first step. Otherwise the first step is already shown.

1. Click Add Step to insert the next step in the sequence.

1. Set the delay: enter the number of days and hours to wait after the previous step before this email is sent.

1. Write the subject and body of the follow-up, then click Save.
2. Repeat Add Step (Add Sequence) for as many follow-ups as you need.

1. In any step, click New Variant to add an A/B variant and personalise the content for that step.

What you see afterwards: the sequence panel lists each step with its delay. Contacts move to the next step after the delay unless they reply, bounce or unsubscribe.

Tips

• A good default is 3–4 steps: day 0, day 3, day 7, day 14. Beyond four steps reply rates drop and complaint rates rise.
• Set delays in whole days plus 0 hours so follow-ups land inside your sending schedule, not at odd hours.
• Each follow-up should add something new (a case study, a different angle, a short question), not just "bumping this".
• Keep the last step short and give the prospect an easy out ("if now isn't the time, just say so").
• Contacts who reply are removed from the sequence automatically, so you never follow up on a conversation that has already started.

Troubleshooting

• Follow-up sent too early — the delay counts from when the previous step was actually sent, and the daily limit can shift sends; check the campaign sending schedule.
• Cannot add a step to a live campaign — click Edit Campaign first, make the change, then Resume Campaign.

Related articles

• Follow-ups in the same thread vs a new thread
• A/B test with multiple email variants
• Subsequences: branch on reply intent
• Create sending schedules
• Set campaign