Mixmax Sequences is a powerful tool that helps you save time and boost the efficiency of bulk outreach campaigns with emails and tasks. With Sequence, you can choose when to distribute each next email in a chain by setting conditions on the stages of your sequence.
Creating a Sequence
To create a new Sequence, follow these steps:
Go to the Sequences section in the Mixmax dashboard.
Click the + New sequence button at the top of the page.
Specify the name and folder (optional) for the new Sequence.
Click Create. The Sequence will be created, and you will be redirected to the Sequence setup.
Adding Sequence stages
Once the Sequence is created, the next step is to configure the Sequence stages. Each stage represents the activity you would like to perform for the Sequence recipients.
To add a new stage, click Add stage on the left.
For each stage, the following settings are available:
Stage Action: You need to determine what activity will take place at this stage. If you select automated emails, it means an email will be sent automatically according to the stage settings. Task stages require you to perform certain activities manually.
The Task stages include:
To-do tasks | To-do tasks are general tasks that require some action outside of Mixmax. To-do tasks can be used, e.g., to perform some research before calling a prospect or do something offline, like sending a thank-you card to your customer. |
Call tasks | Call tasks allow you to include call touchpoints in your Mixmax workflows. You have already learned how to use the Mixmax Dialer in one of the previous lessons. |
Manual email tasks | With an Email task, you can draft an email that you can later choose to send manually whenever appropriate. Email tasks include a visual editor so you can conveniently review and then personalize your email before it is sent. |
LinkedIn Connection or InMail requests | You can exclusively create LinkedIn tasks by sequence stages. These tasks allow you to engage with a prospect by adding a connection according to your outreach strategy or sending an InMail message based on a template. |
2. Perform action in: This setting determines the wait time in days, weekdays (excludes weekends), or hours that must pass after the previous stage is sent before the stage you are setting up starts. If you select the 'weekdays' option, stages will automatically skip weekends.
This setting can't be enabled for the first stage of the sequence, as you will be able to decide when the sequence starts for recipients after you add recipients.
3. Condition: You can decide under what conditions the stage will be triggered, for example, 'If previous email is not replied.'
This setting is not applicable for the first stage of the sequence, as all added recipients will get the first stage.
For each type of stage action, there are also certain custom settings you can configure.
Tasks in a Sequence
Sequences give you much more than just email-sending automation. To make your sequences most effective, it is recommended to include a variety of channels (call, email, LinkedIn) and the right balance of human vs. automated touchpoints. To create a multi-touch sequence, you can add Call, To-Do, or manual Email tasks, as well as LinkedIn stages to your sequence.
When your recipient enters the Task stage, Mixmax will create a corresponding Task with a due date according to your sequence stage configuration.
As soon as you complete the Task, the recipient will be moved to the next sequence stage automatically, based on the settings of your sequence. It is also possible to manually skip the recipient to the next sequence stage when you execute the task. You will learn more about how Tasks work in general in one of the next lessons.
When you complete Call tasks created by a sequence, your recipients' phone numbers will be pulled into the Call task automatically.
When you set up the sequence, add some key talking points directly to the task description. These notes will be displayed to you during the call when you are executing the Call task.
When adding a manual Email Task, you will be able to create a draft of the email and include it in the task. As soon as your sequence reaches the manual Email Task stage, the email will be queued up for you to review and send. This makes manual Email tasks great for manually approving the stage content or adding some personal touches to the stage before it's sent.
Templates in a Sequence
Adding templates to a Sequence ensures your email campaigns stay consistent — and creating them is super efficient.
To insert a template into a Sequence stage, hover over the Templates button in the top right corner of the stage editor or simply enter ; (semicolon) and start typing the name of the template. A list will open as displayed below.
You can use variables in Sequences, just like in Templates, to customize your messages to the recipients. Variables will be automatically replaced with the information from Mixmax.
Variables data can be added to Mixmax in the following ways:
CSV - You can upload the list of recipients as a CSV file; each column header in the CSV corresponds to a variable. Check out uploading recipients using CSV files for more details on creating a CSV file compatible with Mixmax.
Salesforce - Salesforce lists of users can be imported to sequences; each Salesforce field associated with a Lead or a Contact will be a variable.
Contact list - Fields in your Contacts can also be used as variables. To create a variable, simply use the label with the same name as the field in your Mixmax contact record.
Manually - You can create new variables manually. While editing your sequence stage content, just start typing in the following format:
{{Variable name}}, and a new column header will be created in the Recipients table. You can then fill this column with data when adding recipients to your sequence.
Once you create a new variable, it will appear at the top of the stage editor. Simply click Insert variable to add it.
For more details on advanced variables, see How to use Liquid Markup for advanced variables.
Sequence settings
After you set up the stages in your sequence, the next step is to configure the settings to make sure your sequence behaves as you need. To configure the settings, go to the sequence Settings tab.
You can configure the following settings:
Tracking for email stages
To configure the tracking settings for your sequence email stages, select Tracking on the left, then check the boxes next to the types of tracking you'd like to enable for your sequence emails.
You can enable the following settings for both auto and manual email stages of each sequence:
Track opens: this setting allows you to track when recipients open your sequence emails.
Track clicks: use this setting to track when recipients click the links in your emails.
Sync to Mixmax: enable this to sync your email activity to Mixmax Live Feed and reports. When this setting is enabled, the members of your Workspace groups will see your email activity, but they will not be able to read the email itself unless you enable the option to share the Email body as well. You must enable this option if you want to track your sequence email activity and analyze it using Mixmax reports. To learn more, check out syncing emails with your Group.
We recommend enabling all these settings on sequences you send to customers.
You can also configure default tracking settings for all emails at once in your personal settings.
Removing certain recipients automatically
Click the Recipients tab on the left to enable the settings that prevent sequencing the same recipients more than once.
The Recipients settings include the following:
Automatically remove recipients who have already received this sequence: a certain sequence can't be sent to the same recipient more than once.
Automatically remove recipients who are active in another sequence from sender: a certain user can't be a recipient in several sequences you created at the same time.
Automatically remove recipients who are active in a sequence from the following groups: if your team members have already added a certain user to another sequence, this user can't be added as a recipient to one more sequence.
Exiting recipients from your sequence
Click Exit Criteria on the left to determine when recipients should automatically exit your sequence based on their activity.
The Exit Criteria settings override the settings you configure on the stage level.
Automatically exit recipients when they email the sender, regardless if it's a reply to this sequence: if a recipient responds to you, the next sequence stages won't be sent to them, whether the reply was sent via the sequence thread or not. To learn more about what counts as a reply, see how users are exited from sequences.
Automatically exit recipient when they book a meeting via Mixmax with the sender: if a recipient books a meeting with you, the next sequence stages won't be sent to them.
This setting is applicable only to meetings booked using the Mixmax calendar links.
It will still work even if you use a Mixmax calendar link that does not belong to the sender of the sequence (e.g., in a round-robin or when you use a calendar link that belongs to your colleague). Make sure you enable this setting if you'd like to automate exiting the recipients when they RSVP to meetings.
Also, exit all recipients in the same domain: this setting allows you to remove other recipients if they are from the same account as the recipient who already booked this meeting. If you sequence multiple recipients in the same domain regularly, it is recommended to enable this setting.
Automatically exit recipients that share the same domain with another recipient who replied to this sequence: remove all recipients from the same account as the recipient who replied to the sequence.
Pause sequence stages on US holidays
You can skip scheduling sequence stages on public holidays in the US automatically. To enable this, go to the Schedule tab and check the box next to Skip US holidays - automatically reschedule all stage actions in a sequence to next available day after holiday under Holiday.
When this is enabled, Mixmax will automatically reschedule sending email stages and creating tasks to the next day after the US holidays. You won't need to pause recipients manually during each US holiday!
For more details on the US holidays in 2023/2024 that will be skipped if this option is enabled, see this article.
Syncing events to your CRM
In the CRMs tab, you can make your sequence activities sync to the CRM you use, such as Salesforce.
Log events: enable this to sync all sequence activities to Salesforce.
Add new records for emails that don't exist: this setting allows automatically creating new Salesforce Contacts or Leads for the sequence recipients you add that don't have Salesforce records yet.
For Salesforce records to be created successfully, you must provide the First name and Last Name of the recipients. To learn more, see creating Salesforce records automatically.
The unsubscribe link in your sequence
To comply with regulations and offer your recipients an option to unsubscribe from your sequence, you can include an unsubscribe link in the sequence emails. To enable this setting, just check the box in the Unsubscribe tab.
Sequence notifications
Mixmax can keep you informed about sequence recipients' activity, such as email opens, clicks, etc., with automatic desktop or Slack notifications.
Click Notifications on the left to enable notifications and select when you would like to be notified.
Adding CCs and BCCs to your Sequence
All your sequence emails can have the same CC and BCC. To add them, go to the CC & BCC section and start typing an email or name in the CC or BCC field. When the list of autosuggestions opens, select the required contact, and this user will be added to CC or BCC on all sequence emails automatically.
You can also add different CCs or BCCs for specific recipients using variables when you add recipients to the sequence. To learn more, see how to add unique CC/BCCs for recipients.
Here is an example of how to create a renewal sequence:
That's all! Your sequence is almost ready to go out now. Let's go to the next lesson to learn how to add recipients and personalize the stages!