Copy · Intermediate · 7 min read
Designing a sequence that changes rooms
Touch count, intervals, channel switching, and the stop conditions most sequences are missing.
Sequence design arguments are usually about touch count. That is the least interesting variable. What matters more: whether the touches are different from each other, and what makes them stop.
A four-touch sequence that changes channel beats a nine-touch email-only sequence, and it costs you fewer domains.
Touches: four to six, spread over three weeks
Beyond about six, incremental replies fall off sharply and complaints do not. Under about three you are leaving replies on the table, because a meaningful share of them come from touch two and three.
Interval: two to four working days early, longer later. Relevance decays more slowly than patience.
Change rooms rather than repeating
Email, then a second channel, then back. A message on LinkedIn is a genuinely new impression; a fourth email is the same impression with a worse subject line.
On LinkedIn specifically the order matters: engage with something they published, then send the request with a note, then wait a day after they accept before writing. Connecting and immediately pitching is the single most disliked pattern on the platform.
- Touch 1: email, from the trigger.
- Touch 2: LinkedIn. Like the latest post, send the request with a note.
- Touch 3: on accept, a message written from their profile, a day later.
- Touch 4: email, a different angle, not a bump.
The stop conditions most sequences are missing
Any reply on any channel should skip every pending step, not just the step on that channel. An out-of-office should pause rather than stop. A bounce should suppress. A connection request that has not been accepted cannot be followed up on a timer, because you cannot message somebody who has not accepted.
And there should be an end. A sequence that finishes and leaves the contact looking active makes your pipeline a lie.
One template per motion, not one per rep
Two places to author the same graph is how six code paths end up re-deriving the same chain and disagreeing about it. The same is true socially: two people maintaining variants of one sequence produces two mediocre sequences.
The takeaway
Fewer touches, more channels, real stop conditions, and one owner of the graph.
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