Understanding sequences
Overview
Front allows you to send automated sequences to a list of email addresses. Here’s what you should know before creating sequences. When you're ready, see how to create a new sequence.
How it works
Create individual and shared sequences
- Individual sequences can be sent from any individual inbox containing an email channel.
- Shared sequences can be sent from any shared inbox as long as it’s an email channel. We don’t support SMS, chat, etc.
Sequences can range from 1-10 stages
- Each stage will be a reply to the previous stage
- Subject line is the same for each stage (except with a “Re:” after the first stage)
- You cannot edit the subject line after sending Stage 1
- Once you’ve started a sequence, you can add a new recipient and click Save to send them Stage 1 immediately
- Each stage has a sending delay that will trigger if the recipient has not replied within a certain number of days. This sending delay will apply to the time of the most recent stage sent. For example, if you wanted to send a follow-up once a week for three weeks, you would select "Follow up in 7 days if no reply" for Stages 2, 3, and 4.
Upload a CSV file of contacts to send a campaign to
- You will be limited to 200 addresses. You can upload a single CSV of up to 200 addresses. If it’s more than 200, you will get an error message. You can also upload multiple CSV files. If the total number of recipients exceeds 200, we will ask you to delete the additional recipients at the time you start the sequence
- The first column in your CSV file must be email
- You can have other columns of data (up to 20 custom variables/columns are supported)
- Delete any blank rows and columns in your CSV. After you upload your CSV file for the sequence, you should see no blank columns.
- You cannot manually create a column. Additional columns can only be created by uploading a CSV.
- You can delete a recipient row by ticking the checkbox and clicking Delete.
- You can manually edit any field (Name, Company, etc.) but the change will only apply to this sequence. It will not sync to your Contact Manager.
- If an email address is missing from a row on your CSV, the row will be deleted, and you will not receive a warning. If other fields are missing, we will highlight it in yellow, but you will still be allowed to continue.
- If there are duplicate email addresses, we will use the data from the latest row.
Utilize your Contact Manager to send a campaign
- You can send a sequence to contacts or contact lists that are saved in your Contact Manager. When you start typing a recipient in the Email field, Front will auto-complete with matching contacts or contact lists. If you pick a contact list, then all the individuals in that list will be added to the sequence.
Use variables in your sequences
- To automatically insert names and other information from the fields in your CSV file (like a mail merge), type {{ to trigger a variable dropdown.
- If a variable does not exist in every row of your CSV, you can define a fallback. When defining a fallback, make sure you surround it with single quotes {{variable |‘fallback’}}
- Typing {{ in the subject line won't trigger the dropdown options, but if you type out the variable (i.e. {{name}}) it will autofill with the variable.
- Standard and custom fields are supported as variables (type {{ and all possible fields will appear in a list).
- To pull from CSV-uploaded contacts, use the variables starting with {{sequence...}} and not {{recipient...}}.
Signatures are not yet supported in sequences
- You can manually type your signature in the body of the email.
How to stop a sequence
- If you want to stop a sequence, you can delete that sequence from the menu of sequences.
- To pause a sequence for one recipient, delete the recipient.
- If recipient replies, sequences will automatically stop for that recipient (auto replies like "Out of office" messages will not result in the sequence being stopped).
When two people edit a sequence at the same time
- If two people are editing a sequence at once, the latest change will be used.
- Recipient list changes are cumulative - if A and B both add 2 recipients each, you’ll see 4 recipients.
- Drafts are shared. The latest change will be used.
Message sending speed
Front will add a short delay between each outbound message to ensure no rate limits are exceeded with your email provider. This delay is currently:
- 7.5 seconds between emails for Gmail and Office 365 channel types
- 1 second for other email channel types
A sequence containing 200 recipients can take up to ~25 minutes to send completely.
Instructions
See this article for step-by-step instructions on creating a sequence.
Pricing
This feature is available on the Growth plan or above. Some legacy plans with different names may also have this feature.
32 replies
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Great feature!
I think the following minor additions would make it more awesome:
- add a "reply" column in the statistics, so you can see the replied date (maybe tick + {date} as cell value)
- add a date in the open-column (maybe tick + {date} as cell value)
- enable adding an e-mail address to a sequence from an e-mail
- add success rates for each stage for sent>opened>replied>not replied
- enable editing sequence name and from address after the sequence is created
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ddofborg Thanks for sending these! This is definitely on the roadmap for future versions.
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Hey Team,
Any way to stop a sequence for a given contact/recipient via API?
Or automatically if you see a cal invite go through for that person?
Or automatically if they respond to an email?
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Sean Matthews Not at this time. The only way is if the recipient replies to the sequence itself.
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Sounds good... on the roadmap at all? I think we'd love to use the feature but only if we can also stop the sequence from an external source via API
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Sean Matthews Not on the roadmap, but I will add it to our backlog and share it with our Product team.
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Cori Morris Echoing questions originally asked here when I say:
Sequences sound great but I don't use them. Why are they designed for bulk emailing? Why are we required to import a CSV file?
I'd love to be able to select an existing thread in Front and apply a sequence to follow up until that person replies.Until this is possible, I don't see how sequences add any value that wouldn't be better delivered in an email marketing app designed for bulk email.
Front's benefits are all about 1-to-1 email done at scale. Feel like this feature is completely missing the mark. Am I missing something? -
Max Hardy Hi there,
You don't have to import a .csv to send a Sequence. You can add contacts manually as well.
We do hope to allow you to add a recipient to a Sequence from your composer in the future. I'll let you know when we build this capability.
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Cori Morris I hope you add this soon. In my view this feature is useless for follow-ups until Stage 1 of a sequence can follow on as a reply to an existing thread. Once this is possible, it will be great.
I don't see what kind of application it really has other than this - if you want to bulk email a list, then apps like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign etc are built specifically for this with more flexibility than Front has.
Also, are sequences only available on an Enterprise plan? -
Hey Max Hardy ,
Yes, sequences are on both Premium and Enterprise plans. I'll share your feedback with the team - thank you!
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Having an option to reply with a sequence would be great. Have been missing this one for a while.
The pickle is that if you use insertions/variants in the sequences, you might need to add those first before applying the sequence. We use name of the person in the reply, but most "from" is not the name of the person, but the name of the company for example.
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Thanks for the feedback ddofborg . That's a great suggestion, and I will absolutely pass it along to our product team for consideration.
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I agree with the points Max Hardy makes. Would be great to be able to create email funnels for single conversations. Funnels which can be paused / continued or canceled if certain events happen (e.g customer replies to cancel the funnel though an api call on an external event). These type of features will really empower businesses in their email automation.
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Hi there, using sequences, there is a bug...
When you send a sequence and that sequence is saved, you can edit the sequence but not 'ADD' a new step in the sequence!! But you can create a sequence with 4 steps, 3 of them will be empty and then fill the sequence if you want to use one the additional sequence. You can also delete steps...
But why can't you add one to an existing sequence project???
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Hi Jerome, this isn't a bug as this is working as intended, however, we appreciate your suggestion. I have submitted a feature request to our product team. We appreciate you taking the time to let us know what you’re looking for — most of the improvements we make come from ideas and suggestions like yours, so thank you for reaching out!
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OK Kenji... You act like Microsoft : "it is not a bug, it's a feature!" But hey, what is the logic behind the fact not to be able to add a sequence to a project but being able to delete one? I'd like to know more about the mad brain who thought this a normal specification! :-D
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Hey Front! I see that SMS is not supported in Sequences - is that on the roadmap or should we not expect that in the future?
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Brad Nihls I want to make sure we are transparent with you on this feature request. We don't have plans to support this in Front outside of current way of managing replies. Thanks!
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Hi Team, any chance I can add an additional plus for Brad Nihls request for SMS sequences feature? Or is there any change in possibility this feature request is on the map now?
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Geoff Kung Hey Geoff, we've added a +1 to the existing feature request for SMS using sequences. There aren't any new updates on this feature request from our product team, but we'll keep you posted when that's changed!
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Would be great if you could instruct Zapier to start a sequence in Front. Would that be something for your roadmap?
That would be really helpful for our sendouts to potential customers. -
We just started using Front sequences to send out a monthly email update -- we know that this is not the intended use, but it works great to just use a sequence with a single stage. We have two main benefits: each person on the list gets an individual email and we can track open rates.
Is there an easy way to "duplicate" a sequence? This will allow us to easily resend an update each month to the same list, without having to import a CSV each time! We don't want to use stages for this since each monthly update is completely independent. -
Sanjay Guruprasad Hi! Currently, there's no way to duplicate a Sequence. I'm sorry!
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Cori Morris thanks for the quick response! Any chance this could be added to the roadmap? It would be extremely useful!
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Hi Cori Morris
Although sequences are really useful, I ran into two issues last time we used it.Cori Morris said:
If there are duplicate email addresses, we will use the data from the latest rowWe used a sequence to email customer specific information. Some customers have multiple accounts and use the same email address. Because of this rule they only received one email from us. Might be better to just check for "fully" duplicate rows (not just email) of warn the user when duplicated email addresses are found.
Cori Morris said:
Typing {{ in the subject line won't trigger the dropdown options, but if you type out the variable (i.e. {{name}}) it will autofill with the variableUsing variables is great! However we were not able to use a variable in the "Link" dialog. Therefor we had to have to complete url shown in the email text instead of custom label. (e.g. "Click here to signup!").