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A sequence is a multi-step email flow that fires automatically based on a trigger. Welcome series, post-purchase follow-ups, lead nurture, course drips — anything that should send to a contact across days or weeks without you launching a new campaign each time. Find sequences at /dashboard/marketing/email/sequences.

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Sequences vs campaigns vs Outbound

  • Campaign — one email, one moment, sent to many people at once.
  • Sequence (this page) — many emails, one per contact, spread across time. Each contact moves through on their own schedule from the moment they enroll.
  • Outbound — multi-step cold outreach for sales prospecting. See Outbound. Sequences here are for opted-in audiences.

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Triggers

A trigger decides who gets enrolled and when. Pick one when you create the sequence:
  • Manual — you enroll contacts explicitly, one at a time or in bulk.
  • Tag added — fires when a tag like newsletter-subscriber is added to a contact.
  • Form submit — fires when a contact submits a Hiveku form (or any connected form via webhook).
  • Workflow — wired into a Workflow so any node can enroll.
A contact who already has an active enrollment in the same sequence isn’t re-enrolled by default — see “Don’t enroll twice” below.

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Sequence steps

Each step is a delay + an email:
  • Delay — measured in days from the previous step (or from enrollment for step 1).
  • Email — pick a template or write inline. Personalization variables work the same way as campaigns.
  • Send window — optional. Constrain to business hours and/or specific weekdays.
Example welcome series:
StepDelaySubject
10 daysWelcome to Acme
22 daysThree things to try first
35 daysThe product short tour
49 daysWhat our customers say
514 daysA small offer to get you started

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Enrolling contacts

Three patterns:
From a contact’s CRM record, click Enroll in sequence and pick the sequence.
Active enrollments live in marketing_sequence_enrollment. Each row tracks the current step, the next-due timestamp, and whether the contact has stopped (unsubscribed, replied, etc.).

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Stopping enrollment

A contact can drop out of a sequence in several ways:
  • Unsubscribe — instant. The unsubscribe is honored across every sequence and campaign.
  • Reply — optional. Toggle “stop on reply” if the sequence is conversational and you don’t want a robotic follow-up after a real reply.
  • Tag added/removed — set a stop condition like “stop if tag customer is added” so a converted lead doesn’t keep getting nurture mail.
  • Manual — you can pull a contact out of a sequence from their CRM record at any time.
Stopped enrollments stay in the database (with a status of stopped and a reason) so the sequence report stays honest.

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Per-sequence metrics

The sequence report rolls up across every enrollment:
  • Active — currently enrolled, awaiting a future step.
  • Completed — finished every step.
  • Stopped — dropped out before completion.
  • Per-step delivery, open, click rates — see whether step 3 is where engagement falls off.
  • Median time-to-conversion — if the sequence has a defined goal tag (e.g. customer), how long it takes from enrollment to that tag.
Drill into any cohort to see the contacts behind the number.

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Best practices

A few guardrails the coach (and the rules) enforce:
  • Don’t enroll the same contact twice. Re-enrollment is opt-in per sequence — leave it off unless you’re explicitly running a re-engagement loop.
  • Respect unsubscribes. Hiveku does this for you; the email-respect-unsubscribes rule blocks any attempt to bypass.
  • End with a clear next step. A good sequence drives to a conversion, a meeting, or a content deep-dive — not a vague “let us know if you have questions”.
  • Keep the cadence light. More than two emails per week to the same contact is usually too much. The coach warns when overlapping sequences would deliver three or more emails in a 7-day window.
  • Verify your domain before launching. The email-verified-domain-required rule blocks the first send if DKIM, SPF, or DMARC aren’t passing.

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Pausing and editing

You can pause a sequence at any time. Active enrollments stop advancing until you resume; new triggers don’t enroll anyone while paused. Editing rules:
  • Adding a new step or changing a future step’s content is fine — enrollments not yet at that step pick up the change.
  • Editing a step in the past doesn’t retroactively send. Anyone who already received an old version of step 2 keeps that version in their report.
  • Renaming the sequence preserves history.

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Troubleshooting

Check the trigger’s event log under the sequence’s Activity tab. Common causes:
  • Contact already had an active enrollment (re-enrollment off).
  • Contact is on the suppression list.
  • Contact’s email address failed format validation.
Delay is in days from the previous step’s send. If you set step 1 delay to 0 and step 2 delay to 0, both go out the same day. Bump step 2 to 1+ days.
Hiveku auto-pauses a sequence if your account hits a deliverability threshold (high bounce or complaint rate). Resolve the underlying issue on the Deliverability dashboard, then resume.
Yes — enrollments are per-sequence, not global. Just keep an eye on cumulative cadence so you don’t overwhelm anyone.

Set up a drip sequence

Welcome series walkthrough end to end.

Templates

Reusable email designs for sequence steps.