How a sequence works | AgentsMail.io Documentation

A sequence is an automated journey. A contact enters on a trigger, then walks a graph of steps — send, wait, tag, stop — at their own pace. Two contacts who entered a week apart are at two different places in the same sequence.

A sequence on the canvas: entering a list triggers it, then a send, a two-day wait, another send — The count on each step is how many contacts are on it right now

The count on each step is how many contacts are on that step right now. They differ because each contact entered on their own day and moves at their own pace.

Sequence or series? One example of each

A series has its own page: how a series works — the start date, how each step gets its moment, and what happens on the day.

Both are built here, in the same editor, with the same steps. What differs is whose clock runs. A sequence follows each person. A welcome journey: someone subscribes on Monday and gets the welcome email that day, a tips email three days later, an offer a week in. Someone else subscribes on Thursday and gets exactly the same three emails — on their Thursday, their Sunday, their following Thursday. The delays are counted from each contact's own entry, so at any moment your contacts are scattered all over the journey. One person, one flow, staggered. A series follows the calendar. A product launch: a teaser on 15 March at 9:00, the announcement on 18 March, a last reminder on 22 March. Nobody enrols and nobody has a personal clock — the whole audience receives step 1 together on 15 March, then step 2 together on 18 March. Everyone is always on the same step, because the step belongs to a date, not to a person.

	Sequence	Series
Trigger	The contact joins a list or gets a tag	A start date you choose
The clock	Runs per contact, from their entry	One calendar for everyone
Where contacts are	Scattered across the steps	All on the same step
A step sends	One email, to one contact	One campaign, to the whole audience
Who is enrolled	Every contact who entered	Nobody — there is nothing to enrol

And a campaign? A campaign is a single email you write and send yourself. It is also what each sending step of a series becomes: on the day the step is due, AgentsMail creates a real campaign named <series name> · step N and sends it. A sequence's emails are not campaigns — they go out one contact at a time, as that contact reaches the step.

Trigger and enrollment

One trigger per sequence, of two kinds: a contact joins a list, or a contact is given a tag. Once enrolled, a contact is in_progress until they reach the end (completed) or leave the road (stopped). Those two are not the same thing, and the screen counts them separately:

completed — the journey went all the way, or reached an explicit end step;
stopped — the contact unsubscribed or was suppressed, observed at the moment a step tried to send.

Declining the sequence's topic also takes the contact out: the remaining steps never go out.

The steps

Step	What it does
Send an email	Carries its own subject and content — it does not point at a template
Wait	Holds the contact for a delay before the next step
Add a tag / Remove a tag	Acts on the contact instead of writing to them
End the sequence	A planned ending, counted as completed
Webhook	Calls a URL of yours as the contact passes — see webhook steps

A series on a fixed date

A date-driven series is the other shape a sequence can take: nobody is enrolled, nothing walks a journey. Instead the whole audience receives dated operations — step 1 on day 1, step 2 three days later — and each sending step goes out as its own campaign, under its own name.

Sending a step to those who reacted to an earlier one

On a series, every step chooses who it goes to. By default that is the whole series audience, which is what every step does until you say otherwise. A step can instead target the people who reacted to an earlier sending step:

Target	Who it means
The whole series audience	Everyone the series targets, the default
Those step N was sent to	The people that step actually reached
Those who opened step N	The people an open was recorded for
Those who clicked in step N	The people who clicked a link in it

Pick it in the panel on the right, on the step itself. The wording always names the step — those who opened step 2 — because the target only makes sense with the step it points at. This does not split the journey. A step keeps a single way out: it chooses its audience, not a direction, and there is no other path for the people it leaves aside. They simply do not get that step, and the series continues to its next one.

Opens are indicative. Image blocking and privacy protections hide part of them, so those who opened step 2 is always an understatement. A click has no such problem — when the difference matters, target the clicks.

Three things are refused, and they are refused when you publish, not when the step runs:

targeting a step that comes after this one, or the step itself — at its deadline, that step has not gone out, so nobody has received, opened or clicked it;
targeting a step that sends nothing — a tag or a webhook step has no recipients, no opens and no clicks to read;
targeting a step the journey no longer contains, typically one deleted after the fact.

The refusal names both steps. If a targeted step was never sent at all — it was refused for another reason, for instance — the series pauses at the next step and tells you, naming the step it was waiting on, rather than reading an engagement that does not exist yet. Nobody reacting is not a problem. If no one opened or clicked the step you target, the step goes out to nobody: it is recorded as sent, with no recipient, and the series carries on to its next step at its own date. Editing a series and publishing it again keeps these targets intact: a step's identity survives publication, so those who opened step 2 still means step 2 afterwards.

Draft and published version

A sequence is versioned. You edit a draft; publishing freezes it, and a published version never changes again. That is what makes an automation trustworthy: a contact who entered last month is walking the graph as it was when they entered. Only one version runs at a time. Publishing a new one applies it to contacts who enter afterwards. A sequence is active or paused. Pausing stops new entries and holds the journeys in place.

Pausing does not free a slot. The plan ceiling counts every sequence you own, paused ones included — there is no archive to put one on. Delete one to make room.

What refuses

Publishing is refused when the graph does not hold together, and the message names the steps at fault. Two cases are worth knowing in advance:

a step containing {{topicOptOutUrl}} while the sequence carries no topic — the link would render empty and reach the recipient dead;
removing the topic from a sequence whose published version still contains that shortcode. Open a draft, remove it, publish — or keep a topic.

Deleting a tag that a sequence triggers on, or that one of its steps sets, is refused too.

What it implies elsewhere

A sequence sends under the same rules as a campaign, against the same balance and the same refusal rules. Its emails need an unsubscribe link exactly as a campaign's do. The whole journey can be built without a screen — create, add steps, wire them, publish, activate — through the Sequences API. What a webhook step posts to your URL — the two payload shapes, what is never in them, and why a failed call is never retried — is documented on its own page.