Sequences

A campaign is a single send. An autopilot (Chapter 23) repeats whole campaigns on a cadence. A sequence is the third shape: a designed journey of several touches over time, where each person’s path can branch on how they reacted to the previous touch.

You build a sequence visually — drag Send email, Wait, Behavior branch and Assign training steps onto a canvas — pick who receives it, then launch. Under the hood each Send step runs as its own campaign, so all the usual delivery, tracking, reporting and PDF exports work exactly as they do for a normal campaign. Sequence-generated campaigns are marked with a chain-link badge in the Campaigns list.

33.1 What a sequence is — and isn’t

A sequence is not one long campaign. It’s a graph of steps that PhishSpot walks per recipient:

• A Send email step delivers a phishing touch (its own email, landing page, post-click action and sender).
• A Wait step pauses N hours or days before the next step.
• A Behavior branch splits the path based on the prior touch’s outcome — opened, clicked, submitted, reported, or no response after a deadline.
• An Assign training step enrols people into an e-learning course (delivered as an invitation email whose link opens the course).

Use a sequence when you want a story: phish → wait → if they clicked, train them; if they ignored it, send a different pretext. Use a one-off campaign (Chapter 4) for a single send, or an autopilot for a steady drip of independent campaigns.

33.2 Creating a sequence

Open Sequences in the left sidebar and click New sequence (or pick a starter from the empty state). Starters seed the canvas with a common shape you then fill in:

• Blank canvas — start from scratch.
• Click → Train — send a phish; anyone who clicks is assigned training.
• Two-touch nudge — send, wait, then re-send to anyone who ignored the first email.
• Report & reward — reinforce people who report it; remediate people who click.

On the New sequence form you set the name, an optional description, and sending defaults (default domain, from-name, from-email) that each Send step inherits unless you override it. Safety limits cap runaway sends: max emails per person and max total emails.

Creating a sequence drops you into the first step of a guided flow: Recipients → Flow → Review & Launch, shown as a stepper at the top of every sequence screen.

33.3 Recipients

The Recipients step is a two-panel picker. On the left, browse and search your groups and contacts; on the right is the selected audience with a live headcount. Click Add on a group to include all its members, Add on a contact to include just that person, or Add all to include every contact. Group membership is resolved at launch, so a group that grows before launch grows the audience.

Recipients are stored on the sequence independently of the flow — editing the audience never disturbs the canvas, and vice-versa.

33.4 The flow builder

The Flow step is the visual canvas (powered by a drag-and-drop workflow designer). Drag steps from the toolbox; connect them by dropping them onto the flow. Selecting a step opens its settings panel on the right.

• Send email and Assign training show a summary plus an Edit email & landing page button (see §33.5) and a use a template as-is shortcut.
• Wait sets the delay amount and unit (hours or days).
• Behavior branch sets which earlier touch it checks, the “no response” deadline, and which outcomes to wire (see §33.6).

Changes autosave as you work; the status indicator in the top bar shows when everything is saved. A running sequence is read-only — pause it to make changes.

33.5 Editing a touch’s content

Click Edit email & landing page on a Send (or Assign training) step to open the full content editor — the same experience as the campaign editor. You can author everything by hand:

• Email — subject and body, with a code editor (HTML) and live preview, plus the merge-variable helper ({{first_name}}, {{landing_url}}, …).
• Landing page — toggle a landing page on, pick the sending domain, and edit the HTML and CSS with live preview.
• Post-click action — what happens after a click: nothing, redirect to a course, a custom message page, or a redirect URL.
• Sender — override the from-name and from-email for this touch.

Prefer a shortcut? Use Prefill from template at the top to copy a phishing template’s content into the editor, then tweak it. The template is only a starting point — once you’ve authored content, it’s yours to edit freely. (The side-panel use a template as-is option skips manual editing entirely and sends the chosen template unchanged.)

33.6 Behavior branches

A Behavior branch routes each recipient based on the outcome of an earlier Send step. Wire any of these outcomes:

• Opened the email, Clicked the link, Submitted credentials — drawn from the same tracking that powers campaign reports.
• Reported it — best-effort: matched by the reporter’s email address to a recent touch (so it’s an approximation, not a per-message token).
• No response — everyone who matched none of the wired outcomes by the deadline you set.

When several outcomes apply (a click implies an open), the most at-risk one wins. A recipient who reaches a positive outcome is routed immediately; everyone else waits until the deadline, then takes the No response path. Each branch can lead to more steps — another touch, a wait, training, or the end.

33.7 Review & launch

The Review & Launch step shows a pre-launch checklist (every issue it finds — empty audience, a Send with no content, a branch with no deadline — must be resolved before the Launch button enables), a recipient summary, and the list of touches. Launching enrols the audience and starts the journey.

Launching is a real send action. Until you launch, nothing is delivered.

33.8 Lifecycle

A sequence moves through Draft → Running → Completed (or Paused / Cancelled):

• Pause holds in-flight and scheduled sends and freezes the journey; Resume continues it. A paused sequence is editable.
• Cancel stops everything permanently — pending sends are cancelled and remaining recipients exit.
• A sequence completes on its own once every recipient has reached the end of their path.

Paused and draft sequences surface in the account dashboard’s action center, and a count of active sequences appears as a KPI card.

33.9 Analytics

Open Analytics on a sequence for a journey funnel (sent → opened → clicked → submitted, with rates) plus group and department breakdowns — reusing the same charts as campaign reports. Training touches are reported separately so they don’t dilute the phishing click/submit rates. For per-touch detail, open any child campaign from the sequence page (or the Campaigns list, where sequence touches carry a chain-link badge) to reach its full dashboard and PDF export.