This is the mechanical walkthrough — every click from an empty sequence editor to a live, sending campaign. (For the copywriting side — what to actually say — read Writing sequences that get replies after this.)
Three words get used a lot here, so get them straight first:
- Campaign — the container: a target audience, a goal, and the contacts you're working. Everything attaches to a campaign.
- Sequence — the actual messages a campaign sends: an initial message plus follow-ups (1–12, default 4). Each campaign has its own; save one as a reusable template to reuse it elsewhere (see Save & reuse sequences across campaigns).
- Launch — selecting contacts and hitting send. The first message goes out; the follow-ups schedule themselves.
Step 1 — Open the page for your channel
Open the Email page for an email sequence, or the Texting page for SMS — the sequence editor sits at the top of both. This lesson walks through Email; SMS is identical (just body-only messages, no subject), and Direct Mail works differently — its designs are managed on the Direct Mail page (see Direct mail 101).
Everything for a campaign lives on that one tab — its basics up top, the message editor in the middle, the timing/sender settings below, and a single Save at the bottom.
Step 2 — Create the campaign
In the editor, click + New next to the campaign dropdown. In the dialog, the only things you must set are:
- Name — something you'll recognize ("Austin Wholesalers Q2").
- Channel — pre-filled from the tab you're on.
You can optionally start from a saved template (it gets copied in), or leave it blank. Hit Create — and the campaign opens with a blank sequence already attached, ready to fill in right below its settings. There's no separate "make a template" step.
Step 3 — Write the sequence (right on the same tab)
Scroll to the Your sequence section — it's just below the campaign basics. Two ways to fill it:
- Generate with AI (fastest) — click it and the AI writes the whole cadence in your voice from your profile + Reply Goal. Paid feature — Starter and up.
- Write it yourself — type a Subject Line and Body for each message. Always available, free.
Then refine:
- Each message is a numbered tab (Email 1, Email 2…). Click between them to edit each one.
- Change the length in the Sequence schedule section below — + Add email adds a message, the × on a row removes it (anywhere from 1 to 12 messages).
- Drop in personalization with the chips —
[First Name],[Last Name],[Full Name],[Company],[Market]. They're filled in per contact at send time (and [First Name] falls back to "there" for trusts/LLCs so nothing reads "Hi Smith Family Trust,"). Names stored in ALL CAPS — common with county-record imports — are automatically fixed at send time, so "JESSE PREINER" goes out as "Jesse".
Edits to this sequence belong to this campaign only — reword it here and no other campaign changes.
Step 4 — Set the role, cadence, senders & reply mode
Right below the sequence (same page), set how it actually runs:
- Your role — Buying, Selling, Partnership, or Other. Tells the AI whose shoes it's in.
- Reply Goal — plain English: what you want the AI to learn from replies. Presets are built in.
- Follow-up cadence — the day offsets between the initial messages (default Day 4, 9, 16); a live timeline shows when each fires. This is only the initial-outreach pacing, not how fast the AI replies — and if a prospect replies mid-sequence, the remaining follow-ups stop and the AI conversation takes over.
- Mailboxes / SMS numbers — uncheck any sender you don't want this campaign rotating through.
- When a prospect replies — Send automatically or Draft + notify me (see When AI replies vs when you should take over).
Then click the one Save button at the bottom — it stores the campaign settings and the sequence together, in one click.
Step 5 — Add contacts, then launch
First put contacts into the campaign: go to the CRM, select the people you want with the row checkboxes, and use Add to campaign → pick this campaign. They have to be in the campaign before they'll show up to send.
Then scroll down to Enroll contacts in a campaign on the same page (the Enroll & Send → button jumps straight there):
- The contacts you just added appear — the list follows the campaign selected in the editor.
- Select who to send to — checkboxes, or Select all.
- Click Send to Selected, choose send right away or schedule for later, and confirm.
That's the launch. The initial message starts going out within about a minute (paced with short delays + sender rotation), and each follow-up auto-schedules for its cadence day — unless the contact replies first, which pulls them out of the follow-up queue and hands the thread to the AI (or your Drafts inbox, depending on the reply mode you set).
The whole thing in five lines
- Open the Email or Texting page — the editor is at the top
- + New → name it → Create (opens with a blank sequence attached)
- Your sequence → Generate with AI (or write) → edit the messages
- Same tab → set role + cadence + senders + reply mode
- One Save → add contacts to the campaign (from the CRM) → Enroll & Send → → pick campaign → Send to Selected
Multi-channel campaigns (one audience, several channels)
When you want to hit the same audience across more than one channel — say email and cold calls for one Nashville list — create a multi-channel campaign instead of separate ones. From All Campaigns, pick the multi-channel option: name it, set the market + whether you're buying or selling, and choose the channels. It appears as a single grouped card (a box icon) holding one sub-campaign per channel — each with its own sequence you edit exactly as above.
- Add a channel later: open the group's box and attach an existing campaign, or add a new channel sequence straight into the group.
- Stop on a sibling reply: the sequence setting "stop the sequence when the contact engages on a sibling sequence" means if a prospect replies on, say, the text thread, their queued emails cancel automatically — so you're not double-tapping someone who already engaged. Most operators leave this on.
Sending one email, without a campaign
Not everything is a sequence. Sometimes you just need to email one person — a title company, an agent, a seller who called in.
On the Email page, click ✉️ One-off email in the header. One box does two jobs:
- Type a name — it searches your CRM and suggests matches.
- Type an email address — if it matches a contact, their thread opens; if it doesn't, Direct REI offers to save them as a new contact so the conversation has somewhere to live (and so their reply threads back to them).
Their email thread opens right there with a subject line and a message box. Send, and it goes out from your connected mailbox and lands on their timeline like any other email.
It does not enroll them in anything. No campaign, no follow-up cadence, no AI auto-reply armed. It is exactly one email. (Replies show up within about 15 minutes, which is how often we check your mailbox.)
The Texting page has the same thing for one-off texts.
Replying in their thread, or starting a new one
When a contact already has an email you can answer, every manual composer — the contact card, the Inbox, and the one-off card — shows a small dropdown above the message box:
- ↩ Reply in thread (the default) sends your message as a reply to their email, so on their end it lands inside the same conversation instead of starting a fresh one. A line under the dropdown names the exact email you are answering, and the subject is pre-filled with
Re: …. - ✉️ New email starts a separate conversation with its own subject line. Use it when the new message has nothing to do with the last one.
A contact can have more than one thread with you, and the dropdown always picks the most recent. To answer an older one, click ↩ Reply on that specific message in the conversation — the composer switches to it.
The subject box is always visible on email, and what you type wins. Clear it in reply mode and the Re: … subject comes back; clear it on a new email and it sends as "Quick question" — never a fake Re: on a first email.
Choosing which mailbox it sends from
Every manual email composer — the one-off card, the contact card, and the Inbox — has a Send from dropdown when you have more than one mailbox connected.
- The mailbox this conversation is already on is pre-selected for you, labelled last used with them — so a reply goes back from the address they already know without you touching anything. Switch to a different one and a warning appears under the dropdown with a one-click Use … link back.
- Automatic is the fallback, and what you get on someone you have never emailed: it reuses whichever mailbox already has a thread with this person, otherwise it rotates.
- Pick a specific mailbox to force it — useful when a lead knows you at a particular address, or when you want a deal conversation coming from your business domain instead of a warmup inbox.
Each option shows that mailbox's usage for the day ("12/50 today") and flags any that are capped out or having connection trouble, so you're choosing with the facts in front of you.
What's next
Now make those messages actually earn replies: Writing sequences that get replies.