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A contact doesn’t always run straight through every step of a sequence. Here’s what changes its course, and why.

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A reply finishes the sequence

If a contact replies — on email or on LinkedIn, on any step — Swan detects it through the connected sending account and immediately marks that contact finished. No further steps run, including on the other channel: a LinkedIn reply finishes email steps too, and vice versa, since a reply on any channel means the person is engaged. Swan doesn’t auto-reply. It notifies the assigned team member and stops so a human can take over the conversation. This applies even to a short or non-committal reply (an emoji reaction, for example, still counts as a reply). Out-of-office and similar automated replies are filtered out and don’t trigger this. A reply can also fire your message received trigger — a personal trigger created automatically when you connect a sending account, which you can edit or turn off — so Swan can react to the reply beyond just stopping the sequence. Without one, replies still stop the sequence as described here; Swan just doesn’t act on them.

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Manual contact stops the sequence

If you or a teammate manually message the contact from the sequence’s inbox outside of Swan — for example, replying directly before Swan’s next scheduled step — Swan detects that outgoing message and marks the contact stopped, with a reason indicating it was already contacted manually. This prevents Swan from sending a duplicate or conflicting message on top of what you just sent yourself.

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Connection requests no longer block the sequence

Sending a LinkedIn connection request doesn’t pause a contact anymore. As soon as the invite is sent, the sequence moves on to whatever comes next — Swan doesn’t wait around to see if it gets accepted. Swan requires an accepted connection before scheduling a LinkedIn message:
  • Already connected — the message is eligible for a scheduler cycle, subject to the sending window and inbox limits.
  • Not yet connected — the contact stays Pending before the message step runs, without occupying a sending slot. Pending can mean waiting for a connection, not just waiting for limits or the sending window.
  • Accepted within that window — the message becomes eligible for the next scheduler cycle (about every 15 minutes), subject to the same window and limits.
  • Rejected, or unanswered after about 2 weeks from sending the invite — the periodic background invitation check closes the LinkedIn message path. LinkedIn-only contacts finish with a connection-rejected or connection-expired reason. Mixed sequences continue through their email steps in order; an earlier email or wait is not bypassed.
An acceptance after the contact has finished does not restart sending.

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Per-channel failures

Email and LinkedIn are tracked separately for each contact. If a channel fails — for example, LinkedIn refuses to let Swan invite someone or the contact has no usable LinkedIn URL — Swan skips the rest of that contact’s steps on that channel. Steps on the other channel keep running. A contact lands in an error state once every channel its sequence actually uses has failed. An unanswered or rejected invitation closes the LinkedIn message path with the finished outcomes described above.

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Recently invited on LinkedIn recovers automatically

If LinkedIn blocks Swan from sending a connection request because the contact was already invited recently, Swan doesn’t just give up. It first checks whether it already has a pending invitation to the same person from another sequence and reuses that, then checks the inbox’s own sent-invitations list on LinkedIn for a matching invite. Only if neither of those turns anything up does Swan mark the LinkedIn channel failed for that contact — and even then, email steps in the same sequence keep going.

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Missing contact info skips incompatible steps

If a contact is missing a work email or a LinkedIn URL, or the inbox assigned for that channel is disconnected, Swan can’t run steps that need it. Rather than erroring out, it skips ahead past incompatible steps to the next one it can actually run — for example, skipping a LinkedIn message step for a contact with no LinkedIn URL and going straight to an email step.

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Disconnecting an inbox pauses single-channel sequences

If an inbox is disconnected, active contacts in sequences that use only that channel are paused (stopped, with a reason noting the inbox was removed). A sequence that mixes email and LinkedIn keeps running on the other connected inbox and skips the disconnected channel’s steps. Reconnecting that same inbox automatically resumes contacts paused for that reason — you don’t need to re-enroll them. Steps already skipped in a mixed-channel sequence are not replayed.

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Errors

Some issues aren’t recoverable automatically and mark the contact as errored instead of pausing or finishing it — this happens once every channel the sequence uses has failed for that contact (for example, an invalid LinkedIn URL on a LinkedIn-only sequence, or both an invalid LinkedIn URL and a bounced email address on a sequence that uses both channels). These need a person to fix the underlying issue before the contact can be manually restarted.

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Common questions

If someone replies to step 2 of a sequence, does step 3 still send? No — a reply on any step, on any channel, finishes the sequence for that contact. No further steps run. Does an out-of-office reply stop a sequence? No, Swan filters out automated out-of-office and similar replies so they don’t count as a real reply. What happens if a contact never accepts the connection request? Steps before the first LinkedIn message keep their existing schedule. At that message, the contact stays Pending until the connection is accepted. After about 2 weeks from sending the invite, the background invitation check closes the LinkedIn message path. LinkedIn-only contacts finish with a connection-expired or connection-rejected reason; mixed sequences continue on email. Why did a contact disappear from a sequence I didn’t touch? Check its status reason in the sequences table on its Campaign’s Enrolled tab (open the Campaign from Outreach → Campaigns) — open the contact’s row to see it — common causes are a reply, the inbox being disconnected, the sequence being deleted, the contact being excluded, or the sequence expiring after nobody approved it (see Approvals). See status meanings in reference/statuses.md. If I disconnect and reconnect my LinkedIn or email account, do my sequences pick back up automatically? Yes — contacts that were paused because the inbox was disconnected resume automatically once you reconnect the same account. What should I do with a contact marked as errored? Fix the underlying issue (for example, correct their LinkedIn URL) and manually restart them — errored contacts don’t retry on their own.