Setting up email sequences in Nimble is essential for maintaining consistent communication with your contacts. By automating tailored emails, you can nurture leads, onboard clients, and engage your audience efficiently. Nimble's user-friendly platform allows easy customization and scheduling, ensuring timely and relevant messages.

In this article, we'll walk you through setting up email sequences and using them effectively to better reach your contacts.

What Triggers an Email Sequence?

Triggers are the catalysts for email sequences and determine the timing of each email that gets sent. They can be:

Time-Based Triggers: These send emails at predetermined times, such as immediately after a subscription or a few days later.

Activity-Based Triggers: More dynamic, these triggers respond to recipient actions, like not opening an email or clicking a link.

Setting up an email sequence means establishing these triggers and preparing the emails to be sent. Once activated, the sequence takes care of itself, ensuring that messages are delivered at the optimal time based on schedule or user behavior.

How it works

To utilize Email Sequences, you should start by connecting your email accounts to Nimble. This can be done from within Settings >> Networks & Imports. Full steps can be found here: Getting Started: Connecting Your Email Account To Nimble

On your connected Nimble account, you'll be able to set your daily sending limit. To see what your group message daily sending limit is for your email provider, take a look at this article: Group Message Sending Limits

Getting Started

To get started, visit your Sequences tab and choose "New Sequence". You can then name your sequence and choose a color to represent this sequence. You can also choose whether the sequence should be shared with the team.

Once this is done, you can then start setting up your sequence.

Next to "A contact is enrolled into the sequence" choose "Add" then select either Delay, Condition, or Message.

Message Actions

Message Actions are messages that are automatically sent to contacts enrolled in the sequence. When creating a sequence, you'll define these message actions by using a pre-created template or writing the content of what should be sent to each enrolled contact.

Make sure to name this step in your sequence.

After a message sequence, you'll want to add either a Delay or Wait for Condition. This allows your message some time to reach contacts before triggering the next condition.

For example, if you set up a message followed by a condition to exit the contact as unsuccessful if the message is not opened, your contacts might be marked as unsuccessful immediately. Adding a Delay or Wait for Condition will prevent this, ensuring your contacts have ample time to engage with the message.

Delays

Delays will pause a sequence based on the rules that are set by the user. It will pause before moving from one event to the next. Delays can be added between messages, a contact entering the sequence and receiving the first message, or between the last message and the end of the sequence.

You should apply a delay after a message and before a condition to prevent the condition from triggering prematurely.

Conditions

Conditions are like checkpoints that come after a message is sent, and they're checked before moving on to the next step in the sequence.

These conditions can be about either the message that was sent or the contact itself.

For example, a condition that can be set for a message is if all previous messages have been Opened then exit the contact as Successful. This condition will appear as:

There are many other exit triggers that can be set up such as contact has or has not replied, contact has or has not clicked on a link, message has or has not bounced.

A condition that can be set for a contact is exit Unsuccessful if a contact is tagged with Unsubscribed.

When a condition is met, you have the option to either successfully or unsuccessfully exit the contact from the sequence; or move the contact to the next stage of your sequence. You can also include actions like adding the contact to a workflow or to a sequence.

Make sure to enable the 'wait for' option for conditions when needed, to prevent them from triggering prematurely.

If-Then or If-Else rules

You can set up If-Then or If-Else rules by selecting "Condition." Simply name your condition and choose the corresponding If-Then or If-Else actions. These actions could include adding contacts to a workflow or an email sequence.

For example, you could create a condition where contacts who open an email are moved to the first stage of a workflow. If they don’t, they can be marked as unsuccessful and exited from the sequence.

Add to/Move in Workflow

Add to/Move in Workflow allows you to move contacts to a specified stage in a workflow. If the contact is not currently in the workflow then they will be added.

Choose your Workflow first then the stage the contacts should be in.

For full details, please check out the following article: Using Email Sequences With Workflows

Adding More Delays, Conditions and Messages

You can add as many conditions, delays, and messages as you need to flesh out your sequence. To do this, just click "Add" anywhere in the sequence.

For example, if you've set up your first message and know you'll need to include a second and maybe even a third, you can add more delays, conditions, and messages to ensure you get the results you need.

End of the Sequence

At the end of the sequence, if contacts have gone through the full sequence successfully, then you can mark those contacts as Successful or Unsuccessful at the end.

Set up additional Conditions if you want to exit contacts for other reasons such as the recipient clicking on a link in the message, the recipient replied, the message bounced, etc.

Once you are ready, click "Publish" at the top to ensure all your hard work has been saved. You also have the option to "Discard Changes" if you want to start over.

Setting Global Conditions

Global conditions in a sequence are overarching rules that influence the behavior of the entire sequence. They are checked every hour while contact(s) are in the sequence, and before sending any message.

By default, Nimble will set Unsubscribed and Bounce global conditions which cannot be removed.

But you can add global conditions of your own in Edit mode. Just click "Add Global Conditions" and then set up rules for exiting contacts from the sequence.

Please note: BOUNCED emails may not appear immediately as Nimble will sync new messages based on your active session. To expedite the process, visit your Message tab and click the REFRESH icon at the top.

Modify Your Sequence

To make any changes to your email sequence, click "Edit" in the top-right-hand corner.

Any changes will be applied to future contacts. Therefore, it is best to perfect your sequence until you are satisfied and then once you're ready, add contacts to it.

If any changes are made to the delay steps while contacts are in the sequence, the delay will not change for the contact currently in the sequence.

Make Sequence Private or Public

Email Sequences can be made private or public to your team at any time. Just click "Actions" then choose "Private" or "Public" depending on its current setting.

You may choose to make a sequence private or public depending on their communication goals and audience preferences.

Making a sequence private restricts access to authorized team members, ensuring confidentiality or exclusivity for certain campaigns or sensitive communications.

Conversely, making a sequence public allows for broader visibility and collaboration, enabling team members to view, contribute, or replicate successful campaigns across the organization.

Please note: In reports, team members can only view statistics based on contacts for which they have viewing permissions. If a team member lacks permission to view a particular contact, they will not see statistics for that contact.

Pause and Archive Sequence

Under "Actions", you'll get the option to pause a sequence. Once this is done, you won't be able to add contacts to the sequence and a pause label will be added to the sequence.

You may consider pausing a sequence for timing adjustments, message tweaks, feedback gathering, strategy reevaluation, or honoring opt-out requests. Pausing provides flexibility and control, allowing for better-suited messages, improved effectiveness, and respectful communication tailored to recipients' preferences.

When you're ready click "Resume" under "Modify.

You may also Archive your sequence by choosing the "Archive Sequence" option under "Actions". Once this is done, your sequence will be moved to Archived and you won't be able to add contacts to the sequence.

You may choose to do this once you have achieved your goals, encounter inactivity, or if you need to declutter your workspace. Archiving maintains organization by removing completed or inactive sequences from the active view while preserving them for future reference or reactivation, streamlining workflow, and prioritizing ongoing communication efforts.

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