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A sequence is a set of steps that Swan runs against a list of contacts. Each step is one of four kinds:
  • Email — sends an email message.
  • LinkedIn connection request — sends a connection invite.
  • LinkedIn message — sends a direct message (requires an existing connection).
  • Wait — pauses for a fixed amount of time before continuing.
Every sequence belongs to one Campaign, the business initiative it serves. The Campaign doesn’t change how the sequence runs. Each contact enrollment is a separate sequence contact (one row inside its Campaign at Outreach → Campaigns). The same person can have more than one sequence contact across different sequences or inboxes. The Campaign page shows each enrollment, while analytics counts distinct people for people metrics. Steps run in the order you laid them out, one after another. Swan skips a step it can’t run for a given contact — for example, a LinkedIn step for a contact with no LinkedIn URL, or a channel that’s already failed for that contact (see below) — and moves straight to the next one it can run. If a step gets skipped, a wait step that immediately follows it is skipped too, so you don’t end up with a contact stuck waiting on a step that never happened.

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Contacts move through independently

When you add contacts to a sequence, each one gets its own progress through the sequence — one contact being three steps in doesn’t affect another contact who just started. Each contact has:
  • A status: pending, running, waiting on limits, finished, stopped, or error.
  • A reason, when relevant, explaining why it’s in that status (for example, a reply was received, the inbox was disconnected, or a connection request was rejected).
  • Its own current step, inboxes (an email inbox and/or a LinkedIn inbox), and message history.
Common reasons you’ll see include the contact replying (finishes the sequence), a sequence being paused because the recipient was reached manually, a connection request expiring or being rejected, or the contact already being in progress elsewhere. See Replies and stop conditions for the full list of what moves a contact out of “running.” A contact can’t be enrolled in a second sequence that shares an inbox with one already active for them — if the existing sequence emails from your inbox, Swan refuses to build another one that uses that same email inbox and asks for a different inbox or an edit to the existing sequence instead. “Active” includes sequences still waiting for your approval, until they are approved, rejected, or Swan rejects them as expired. Expiry is checked hourly, so the inbox can stay blocked for a little while after the deadline passes (see Approvals). A sequence whose inboxes all differ from the existing one’s can run for the same contact at the same time: your LinkedIn inbox and your email inbox are two different inboxes, so a LinkedIn-only sequence from you doesn’t block an email-only sequence from you to the same person.

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Email and LinkedIn fail independently

If a sequence combines email and LinkedIn steps, the two channels are tracked separately for each contact. If LinkedIn stops working for a contact — the connection request was rejected, expired, or LinkedIn wouldn’t allow it — Swan skips the rest of that contact’s LinkedIn steps but keeps running its email steps normally, and vice versa. A contact only ends up in an error state once every channel its sequence actually uses has failed; a single failed channel just narrows what’s left to run, it doesn’t stop the sequence.

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Sequence-level status

The sequence itself also has a status, separate from any individual contact’s status. See these, and each contact’s own status and reason, inside the sequence’s Campaign at Outreach → Campaigns — open a sequence to see its contacts and their individual progress, or use the Progress filter to narrow the list:
  • Awaiting approval — the sequence hasn’t been turned on yet. If nobody reviews it within your org’s approval expiry, Swan rejects it automatically, unless your org has turned expiry off.
  • Enabled — running normally; contacts move through it on schedule.
  • Stopped — turned off; no further steps run for its contacts.

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Email threading

The first email Swan sends to a contact in a sequence needs a subject line, since it starts a new thread. Any follow-up email step configured to send “as a reply” reuses that same thread and subject automatically — it doesn’t need (or use) its own subject.

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Common questions

Why do some contacts skip a step that others go through? If a contact is missing an email address or LinkedIn URL, or the inbox assigned for that channel is disconnected, or that channel already failed earlier for this contact, Swan skips steps it can’t run and moves on to the next one it can. See Replies and stop conditions. Why are all my sequence contacts showing as Finished? A contact finishes when it completes every step it can run, replies, or hits one of the stop conditions described in Replies and stop conditions. Check the status reason on individual contacts for the specific cause. Do I approve each step, or the whole sequence? The whole sequence. Approval happens once at the sequence level — approving unlocks every step for that contact, and there’s no per-step approval. By default a sequence waits for your approval before the first message sends; you can tell Swan to send a specific sequence automatically. See Approvals. Can the same contact be in two sequences at once? Not while both would send from the same inbox on any channel — Swan refuses to build the second one rather than queuing it. Yes when every inbox differs, including your own email inbox versus your own LinkedIn inbox. Which inbox does a sequence send from? One inbox per channel: an email inbox for email steps and a LinkedIn inbox for connection requests and messages. They can belong to different teammates. Tell Swan which to use when you ask for the sequence, or it picks from the inboxes marked available for sequences. See Inboxes and Sending limits.