Sequences

Sequences are a set of messages that are sent to contacts over time, either sending on a schedule or sending when contacts respond to certain messages. Contacts can be removed or added to a sequence at any time and can even be run through the same sequence multiple times.

Head to the Automations page and click Sequences to get started. This is where all your existing Sequences will be listed.

Creating a Sequence

To create a new Sequence click the Create Sequence button and enter the name you would like to use.

Once you create the sequence, you’ll be brought to the edit sequence page. From here, you’ll need to do a few things to finish setting up your sequence.

First, you’ll need to add a “Step” to the sequence. Each step of the campaign is a message that will be sent as a part of the sequence. Click the Add Step button on the right side of the screen.

Creating a step

Step Info: The first part of creating a step is to give it a name. Afterwards, write the message you would like to send to the contacts within the sequence in the Message box. You can use the buttons below the text entry area to add links, scripts, emojis, or template fields.

Once you’ve composed the message, select how you would like the step to be triggered. There are two ways to trigger a message:

1. Delay: This will send the message after the delay specified. For the first step, you can keep this at 0 minutes to send the message as soon as they are added to the sequence. For a step besides the first, a 0 minute delay will send the message immediately after the last step has been sent.
2. Message: This will send the message after you receive a message from the contact. This is useful if you would like to wait on a response from your contact before sending the next step in the sequence.

Automated Tagging: This section allows you to select tags to automatically be added to or removed from your contact before when the step is completed. A step is considered completed when the message is sent.

Removal Rules: Set up optional rules that determine when someone is removed from the sequence. There are two types:

1. Response: Any response to this message will remove them from the sequence and prevent them from getting any further steps.
2. Keyword: Specify a keyword or keywords that will stop the sequence if a contact replies to this step with one of those words

Data Capture: You can use this section to capture the response to this step and save it as data on the contact. For example, if you use this step to ask someone for their Email, select email from the drop down to automatically save their response to the email field of the contact. This also works with any text based custom field.

Reply Keywords: Here you can set up reply keywords and match them with tags. When a contact replies to this message with a reply keyword, TxtSquad will automatically apply the corresponding tag to them.

To use keywords, click the Add New Keyword & Tag button. Then fill in the keyword on the left and select the tag you would like to apply from the dropdown on the left. You can have multiple keywords for one tag, just separate them with commas.

Once you have filled in all of the relevant information, click the Create Step button on the bottom right side of the page to continue creating the sequence.

Starting your Sequence

After your steps are created, the sequence must be started in order to add contacts to it. We recommend setting up every step of the sequence before adding any contacts. Once you’re satisfied with the sequence steps, click the Start Sequence button, then head to the Add Contacts tab on the top part of the page.

Add Contacts

First, choose weather you’d like to manually select contacts by name or to select contacts by what tag or segment they are a part of.

Standard

Select the people you’d like to enter the sequence. Note that you can only select up to 50 people this way, to select more people at once, use the Mass audience selection method.

When you’ve made your selection, click Finish Contact Selection to move on to the next step.

Mass

If you selected Mass, you will see lists of your segments and your tags. From here, select which group or groups of contacts who you would like to enter the sequence. You can select segments or tags, or a combination of the two. Don’t worry if a contact belongs to multiple selected groups, they will only be added to the sequence once.

Confirm Contacts

Once you’ve selected your audience, you will be brought to this page to show you the estimated first message completion time and to confirm the number of people you’re adding to the sequence. Click Finish to add the contacts.

Once your contacts are added to the drip campaign, the drip messages will be queued up to send.

Viewing Sequence Progress

You can check what steps have been sent to what contacts using the Existing Contacts tab.

There are three tabs:

Active: Contacts who are currently enrolled in the sequence. This table will display when the next message in the sequence will be sent to them, if applicable.

Completed: Contacts who have received all steps of the sequence.

Removed: Contacts who have been removed from the sequence before it could be completed.