Follow-up emails that stop when someone replies

What a follow-up is

A follow-up is another email, sent a few days later, to the people who didn't reply to the first one. You can add up to nine, which turns a campaign into a sequence. Each has its own wait (days or working days), template, optional subject, and optionally a second version for half the people.

Setting it up

On the Schedule step of a new campaign, under Follow-ups, press Add a follow-up, choose how many days to wait and which template to send. You can also add or change follow-ups later on the campaign's Editor tab: Edit opens one email, Add an email adds one at the end, and each is saved on its own.

The timing

• The wait counts from the moment that person's previous email was sent, not from when the campaign started. A big send that takes three days to go out still gives everyone the same gap.
• The wait for follow-up 2 counts from follow-up 1, not from the first email.
• A follow-up more than a week overdue is skipped, not sent late. This keeps an old campaign from suddenly firing after a long gap, for example if your mailbox was down.

Who is left out

• Anyone who replied to any email in the chain. An out-of-office auto-reply doesn't count: their next email waits 3 days instead (how).
• Anyone who unsubscribed, whose address bounced, or who is on your do-not-email list.
• Anyone who already got that follow-up.
• Anyone whose earlier email never went out.

This is checked twice: when the follow-up is queued, and again at the moment it is sent. If someone replies while their follow-up is waiting for a daily limit, it is cancelled with a note.

Why it needs reply tracking

Replies land in your mailbox, not in Vecta. The only way to know someone answered is to read your inbox over IMAP. Without that, Vecta couldn't tell who replied and would email people who had already answered, so follow-ups can't be switched on for a mailbox without IMAP.

If something looks wrong

• "Follow-ups need reply tracking" when I save: add the IMAP host and login to the mailbox, then try again.
• Nobody got my follow-up: check that the wait has passed, the first emails were actually sent, and the mailbox's inbox check is healthy. Look at the follow-up run on the campaign page.
• Someone replied but still got a follow-up: their reply may have arrived in a different mailbox, or not yet been read. Replies are matched to the message they answer, so a brand-new email from them (not a reply) isn't recognised.
• I deleted the follow-up but it still sent: emails already queued are not recalled. Use Stop on the run to cancel them.
• A stopped run's follow-ups: stopping the first run cancels its follow-ups too.