Email Sequences
Email sequences, also known as DRIP campaigns, allow you to send a series of automated emails to your subscribers. This guide covers creating and managing email sequences in Broadcast.
How Email Sequences Work
Email sequences are made up of a series of steps.
The first step of all sequences is the Entry Point step. This step cannot be deleted, and all steps follow this Entry Point step.
Following the Entry Point, you can add as many steps as you would like. It is, however, recommended that you keep the email sequence simple.
Instead, to design more complex email automations, you should use multiple sequences and design sequences to transfer subscribers from one sequence to another (see below for more information).
Creating an Email Sequences
To create an email sequence, navigate to the Sequences page in the sidebar and click on New Sequence.
A new sequence will be created with the default name of Untitled Sequence.
You will see a subdashboard showing you a list of subscribers to the current sequence.
On the upper right hand corner of the screen, you will see a Settings button. Clicking here will open a sidebar where you can change the name of the sequence. It is recommended that you give your sequence a recognizable name (eg. New User Onboarding).
A dropdown menu is also available by clicking on the down arrow beside the Settings button. From there you can:
- Edit the steps of the sequence
- Delete the sequence
Let’s talk about how to manage the steps of an email sequence in the next sections.
Managing the Steps of an Email Sequence
When managing the steps of an email sequence, the first step of all sequences is the Entry Point step. This step cannot be deleted, and all steps follow this Entry Point step.
You can add subsequent steps to this by clicking on the + button underneath the step you want to add a new step.
Currently, these are the types of steps you can add:
- Send Email
- Add Delay
- Add Condition (Coming Soon)
- Move Subscribers to Sequence
- Add Tags to Subscriber
- Remove Tags from Subscriber
- Make Subscriber Inactive
The names of these steps should hopefully be self explanatory.
Adding Subscribers to an Email Sequence
Subscribers can be added to an email sequence in three ways.
- Manually add subscribers to the sequence
- Add subscribers to the sequence when a tag is added to the subscriber itself
- Add a subscriber to a sequence with the API
1. Manually add subscribers to the sequence
To add a subscriber to the sequence, navigate to the Sequences page in the sidebar and click on the sequence you want to add a subscriber to.
There, you will see a table of current subscribers within this sequence.
Click Add Subscriber and filter the subscriber list with the name of the subscriber you want to add.
If a subscriber is already part of the sequence, Broadcast will filter these out to minimize the list of available subscribers.
2. Add subscribers to the sequence when a tag is added to the subscriber itself
You can also specify whether a subscriber will be added to a particular sequence through a tag.
To specify which tag the system should detect in order to add a subscriber to a sequence, navigate to the Sequence Steps editor and click on the Entry Point step.
Within one of the form fields, you will see an input field for Tags. Input the single tag you would like to use to add a subscriber to the sequence. Note that the system does not support detecting multiple tags.
3. Add a subscriber to a sequence with the API
Please refer to the API documentation for details on how to manage subscribers with sequences.
Removing Subscribers from an Email Sequence
There are several ways to “remove” a subscriber from an email sequence.
- Inactive or unsubscribed subscribers will not be included in the sequence. As a result, you can unsubscribe a subscriber and they will be removed from all seequences.
- Subscribers can be removed from the sequence manually, such as in the dashboard.
- Subscribers can be removed from the sequence when a tag is removed from the subscriber itself. This can be done programmatically using the API or manually in the dashboard.
- Subscribers can be set as “removed” in the sequence. This is done manually in the dashboard.
Depending on how you intend to manage your email list, pick the one that most makes sense for your situation.
