How a series works

A series sends dated emails to a whole audience at once. A product launch is the shape of it: a teaser on 15 March at 9:00, the announcement on 18 March, a last reminder on 22 March. You build the three steps once, and everyone receives each one together on its date. A series is a sequence — same editor, same steps — set to start on a date instead of on a contact's action. You create one in Sequences, on the Fixed date (Series) tab.
Every sending step carries the date and time it will go out
The trigger at the top names the audience — here a series to the Clients list — and every sending step below carries the date and time it will go out. That is the visible difference from a sequence, whose steps carry delays instead of dates.

What makes it different from a sequence

A sequence follows each person: someone who subscribes on Monday gets step 2 three days after their Monday, and someone who subscribes on Thursday gets it three days after their Thursday. Your contacts are scattered all over the journey. A series follows the calendar. Nobody enrols, nobody has a personal clock, and everyone is always on the same step — because a step belongs to a date, not to a person.
SequenceSeries
It starts onA contact joining a list, or getting a tagA date you choose
The clockRuns per contact, from their entryOne calendar, shared by everyone
Who is enrolledEveryone who enteredNobody — there is nothing to enrol
A sending step producesOne email to one contactOne campaign to the whole audience

Building the calendar

Three things decide when a step goes out.
  1. The start date lives on the series itself, in its trigger. It is the moment step 1 is measured from — and moving it moves the entire series, without touching a single step.
  2. Wait blocks give the duration between two steps, in hours or days, exactly as in a sequence. They are ordinary blocks you drop between two sends.
  3. A send time on a step gives the moment in the day. It is optional: without one, the step goes out as soon as the wait has elapsed.
So a step's moment is: the previous step's moment, plus the waits in between, then the first occurrence of the send time from there. Start Monday 9:00, then a two-day wait, then a send:
The step's send timeIt goes out
NoneWednesday 9:00 — as soon as the wait elapses
10:00Wednesday 10:00
8:00Thursday 8:00 — 8:00 on Wednesday had already passed
Step 1 on 29 September, a one-day wait, step 3 on 30 September at the same hour
Read the canvas above with that rule in hand: step 1 leaves on 29 September at 09:00, a one-day wait follows, and step 3 lands on 30 September at 09:00 — the wait gave the day, the send time gave the hour. That last line is the one surprise worth knowing: a send time never moves a step earlier. If the time you set has already gone by when the wait ends, the step goes out the next day, and the editor says so on the step. Two sends with no wait between them go out one after the other. Publishing is refused if two steps would land on the exact same moment — the second would never go out — and the refusal names both.

What happens on the day

At a step's moment, AgentsMail creates a real campaign named <series name> · step N and sends it. From then on it is an ordinary campaign: same statuses, same statistics, same audience rules, same balance. Before that moment, the campaign does not exist. Nothing sits in draft — deliberately: a draft in your list could be sent by hand, out of the series' order, and its audience would be resolved from stale information. You can see what is coming in two places:
  • the Series tab of the campaign list, with the date each step is due;
  • the calendar, alongside your scheduled campaigns.
Both show a forecast, not a row you can act on. Clicking one takes you back to the series, which is where dates are changed.

Sending a step to those who reacted to an earlier one

By default every step goes to the whole series audience. A step can instead target the people who reacted to an earlier sending step — those it reached, those who opened it, or those who clicked in it. The screen names the step it refers to, so you read "those who opened step 2", never "those who opened". Opens are indicative: an inbox that preloads images counts an open nobody made, and a reader who blocks images opens without being counted. Clicks are not indicative. If a step refers to one that has not gone out yet, the series pauses and tells you rather than sending to nobody.

When a step cannot go out

If a step is refused — not enough balance, a domain that is no longer verified — the series pauses at that step and notifies you, naming the step and the reason. Nothing half-sent is left behind, and no campaign is left in your list. Fix what is named, then reactivate: the series picks up where it stopped. A step whose audience is empty is not a refusal. It is recorded as sent with no recipient, and the series carries on.

Editing a published series

Editing works as it does for any sequence: open a draft version, change it, publish it. Steps keep their identity across a republication, so a step targeting "those who opened step 2" still points at the right one.
Series are built in the app, not through the API. A series is a sequence whose version carries triggerType: "fixed_date", and the API refuses to create one — the start date and each step's send time are chosen on screen. Reading a series, renaming it, activating, pausing and deleting it all work normally. See the Sequences API.