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:

  1. Send Email
  2. Add Delay
  3. Add Delay Until Specific Time (Next Day, Next Week, etc.)
  4. Add Condition
  5. Move Subscribers to Sequence
  6. Add Tags to Subscriber
  7. Remove Tags from Subscriber
  8. Make Subscriber Inactive

The names of these steps should hopefully be self explanatory, but we will go over each of them in more detail below.

1. Send Email

The Send Email step allows you to send an email to a subscriber.

Here, you can modify the following parts of an email:

  • Subject line
  • Preheader text
  • Email body

Note that at the Sequence level, you can choose which email server to use for sending all emails from this sequence. As well, you can also choose whether to track opens or clicks for sent emails from this sequence. Be aware that if you are using any conditional steps that requires knowing whether an email is opened or clicked, Broadcast will automatically enable open/click tracking at the sequence level for you.

2. Add Delay

The Add Delay step allows you to add a delay between the current step and the next step.

This is useful for introducing a minimum delay between two steps that affects users, such as sending emails or making a subscriber inactive due to a lack of engagement.

Note that delays are guaranteed to be early, meaning that the delay set is the minimum delay that will be applied. There may be a 30-60 second lag behind the delay set, depending on the load of your server.

The other thing to know about delays is that if the next step is a Conditional Step (see below), the delay introduced will be in addition to the delay set in the conditional step. If you do not want to track the delay in both a delay step and an immediately following conditional step, do not add the delay step and just add a conditional step.

3. Add Delay Until Specific Time (Next Day, Next Week, etc.)

The Add Delay Until Specific Time step allows you to add a delay until a specific time.

This is useful for scheduling emails to be sent at a specific time in the future.

Note that this feature can be a bit confusing, so here is some examples of how this type of delay works:

  • If you set the delay to “8:00 AM”, the email will be sent at 8:00 AM on the next day after the previous step.
  • If the step is the first step in the sequence, and the subscriber was added at 7:50 AM, the email will be sent at 8:00 AM on the same day.

Internally, this delay is calculated as the next available time that you have specified. The calculation happens at the time of the previous step.

You must specify a timezone for this delay during this step so the system knows what timezone we are operating in.

4. Add Condition

The Add Condition step allows you to add a condition to the sequence.

The condition will be evaluated as either being true or false, allowing you to create branches within your sequence. This provides a flexibility in allowing you to design complicated sequences.

Currently, there are four types of conditions you can use:

  1. Any email opened (ie. any email sent from this sequence was opened)
  2. Previous email opened (ie. if the immediately previous email was opened)
  3. Any email clicked (ie. any email sent from this sequence was clicked)
  4. Previous email clicked (ie. if the immediately previous email was clicked)

With each condition, you can specify the delay before the condition is evaluated.

Your use-case will likely vary, but here are some examples:

  • Add a condition with a 24 hour delay. If the previous email was clicked, add a tag to the subscriber indicating high engagement.
  • In the “false” branch of the above condition, add an additional condition with a delay of 1 week. If the subscriber clicks on the email, move the subscriber to medium engagement.
  • Etc.

5. Move Subscribers to Sequence

The Move Subscribers to Sequence step allows you to move subscribers to another sequence.

This feature is useful for keeping your sequences simple and manageable. Designing complicated sequence flows can be done by creating multiple, simpler sequences and then moving subscribers from one sequence to another. Using this feature with conditional steps allows you to create complicated flows.

6. Add Tags to Subscriber

The Add Tags to Subscriber step allows you to add tags to a subscriber.

You can add multiple tags to a subscriber in a single sequence step.

7. Remove Tags from Subscriber

The Remove Tags from Subscriber step allows you to remove tags from a subscriber.

Note that you can remove multiple tags from a subscriber in a single sequence step. The system will attempt to remove all the specified tags from the subscriber. The subscriber does not need to have all the tags. This still will just ensure that none of the specified tags are present on the subscriber after this step.

8. Make Subscriber Inactive

The Make Subscriber Inactive step allows you to make a subscriber inactive.

The subscriber will be set as inactive not just in this sequence, but in the current channel. This will affect all sequences, broadcasts, and transactional emails sent from Broadcast in the current channel.

Use this sequence step as sort of a “last resort” to remove a subscriber altogether.

Adding Subscribers to an Email Sequence

Subscribers can be added to an email sequence in three ways.

  1. Manually add subscribers to the sequence
  2. Add subscribers to the sequence when a tag is added to the subscriber itself
  3. 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.

  1. 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.
  2. Subscribers can be removed from the sequence manually, such as in the dashboard.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.