New connection - outbound

Sequences are HubSpot's automation tool for sales outreach. They send emails on your behalf, create tasks to remind you to follow up, and stop automatically when a contact replies or books a meeting.

This chapter covers the building blocks you need to understand before creating your first sequence.

A sequence is made up of three elements: automated emails, tasks, and delays.

Automated emails are sent from your connected inbox. They look like regular emails, not marketing emails. The contact sees your name, your email address, and can reply directly to you.

Tasks pause the sequence until you complete them. Use these for actions that can't be automated: making a phone call, sending a LinkedIn message, or reviewing whether to continue the sequence.

Delays set the time between steps. You configure these in business days, so a "3 day delay" skips weekends. This prevents emails from landing on Saturday mornings.

When you create a sequence, you're arranging these three elements in order. Email, wait three days, email, wait five days, task to call, wait two days, final email.

Templates are reusable emails you create once and use across multiple sequences.

You can make templates private (only you can use them) or shared (your whole team can access them). For personal outreach like LinkedIn connections, keep them private. For standard company sequences like proposal follow-up, share them.

Templates support personalisation tokens. These pull data from the contact record and insert it automatically:

• {{contact.firstname}} becomes "Sarah"
• {{company.name}} becomes "Acme Ltd"
• {{sender.meeting_link}} inserts your personal meeting link

The meeting link token is particularly useful for shared templates. When a colleague uses the same template, their meeting link appears instead of yours.

To create a template, go to Library > Templates > Create template. Give it an internal name your team will recognise, write your subject line and body, add personalisation where needed, and save.

Tasks break up automation with human action. The sequence pauses until you mark the task complete.

Common task types:

• Call task: Ring the contact
• To-do task: General reminder (send LinkedIn message, review account, etc.)
• Email task: Write a manual, personalised email rather than using a template

When you add a task, you set whether it should pause the sequence. I recommend keeping this on. It forces you to actually complete the action before the sequence continues, rather than letting tasks pile up while emails keep sending.

Delays are set in business days by default. A 3-day delay added on Thursday means the next step happens on Tuesday (skipping Saturday and Sunday).

You can also set specific send times. If your emails perform better at 9am, configure the sequence to only send during that window.

Once you've built a sequence that works, share it with your team. Go to the sequence settings and change access from "Private" to "Everyone" or specific teams.

Shared sequences create consistency. Every sales rep follows the same cadence, uses the same messaging, and you can compare performance across the team.

A/B testing lets you test different approaches. Create two versions of an email within the same sequence step, and HubSpot splits enrolments between them. After enough data, you'll see which version gets more replies or meetings booked.

To set this up, click on an email step and select "Add variant". Write your alternative version. HubSpot will show you performance metrics for each.

Start simple: test subject lines first, then email body, then timing between steps.

You now understand the four building blocks: emails, templates, tasks, and delays. You know how to share sequences with your team and set up A/B tests to improve performance over time.

The following chapters walk through specific sequences for different moments in your sales pipeline. Each one applies these building blocks to a real scenario, with example templates you can adapt for your own outreach.