Sequences FAQ

Set a sequence's name and description, its delivery settings, its sender name and reply-to, and its exit criteria. Those save as you set them.

The steps themselves are read-only: the start delay, each step card, and the waits between them are all drawn, and none of them takes an edit. Writing a step, publishing, enabling a sequence, and enrolling anyone arrive with the campaigns engine. Every control that is waiting on it is drawn disabled and carries the reason when you point at it, so nothing in the editor can fail silently.

Yes. Sequences are independent, so someone can be in a first-gift thank-you and a group follow-up at the same time.

What cannot happen is two runs of the same sequence at once. Whether they can ever start a second run depends on that sequence's re-entry rule: enter once means one run ever, enter again after finishing means a fresh run can start once the previous one has ended.

Your edits go into the draft, and the blue band above the document tells you the draft and the published version differ. Publish changes and Discard changes are drawn disabled for now, because publishing arrives with the campaigns engine. Nothing is at risk while they wait: the draft is what the editor saves to.

Publish changes will replace the published version with the draft; Discard changes will throw the draft edits away, and cannot be undone.

Publishing is not a fresh copy for new people only. Parable reads the sequence as it stands when a person's next step comes due, so what you publish reaches everyone still in the sequence from their next step onwards, not just the people enrolled after it. Emails already sent are not affected.

Open the Recipients tab and select them. Their timeline shows an Exited entry with the date and the reason.

The possibilities are: they unsubscribed; their address bounced back as undeliverable or they marked the email as spam; an exit criterion you set matched — a donation received, a follow-up contacted or resolved, or the Exit after limit in days since they were enrolled; or the sequence was archived, which ends every run still in progress. Without an Exit after limit, a run has no time limit.

Someone who reached the last step shows as Completed, not Exited. That is the sequence finishing normally.

No. Sequence email goes out on Parable's own sending infrastructure, not from a staff mailbox, which is what keeps it authenticated and lets the unsubscribe button in mail clients work.

The From line shows your church's name, and replies go to the reply-to address in your organization's email settings — point that at an address someone actually reads. A sequence also carries its own Sender name and Reply-to in the rail and on the Settings tab; those are saved with the sequence and will override the organization defaults once the sending engine ships. The sender name is also what fills {{sender_name}} in your emails.

The step document is read-only until step editing arrives with the campaigns engine. What a step body accepts does not change: paragraphs, line breaks, bold, italic, strikethrough, muted (grey) text, and links to http:// or https:// addresses. That is the whole list.

Headings, bullet lists, tables, images, and attachments are not supported — the image, attachment, and Draft with AI buttons on a step's toolbar are inactive. Anything else you paste in arrives as plain text. The subject line must be a single line with no formatting.

Four: {{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{church_name}}, and {{sender_name}}. Insert them from the {x} button, or by typing { in the body, rather than writing one out by hand.

A missing first name falls back to there, and a missing sender name falls back to your church name. A missing last name or church name simply renders as nothing.

Each person's first email is due after the sequence's start delay, counted from when they were enrolled, and each later step is due after the wait in front of it. Because every person is on their own clock, two people enrolled a day apart get their steps a day apart.

The sequence also carries a sending window, its timezone, and Business days only. Set them to the hours and days you want the sequence to send in; they are saved with the sequence and will govern delivery once the sending engine ships.

Use Pause in the row menu on the list. A paused sequence sends nothing, and everyone in it holds their position until you enable it again. The Enable toggle in the editor is inert for now on every sequence. On a sequence your team wrote, the row menu's status items are inert too — changing a sequence's status arrives with the campaigns engine. On the sequences Parable ships with, the row menu's Enable and Pause are live, and the note above the editor's first step links to the playbook page, where the sequence can also be switched on and off.

Archive is the end of the road: it retires the sequence and ends every run still in progress. Pause instead if you might switch the sequence back on; Unarchive brings a sequence back paused rather than sending.

Delete is permanent and takes the steps, enrolments, and statistics with it. Parable refuses to delete a sequence that is still enabled or that still has people mid-run.

Send test to me sits on a step's ⋮ menu, which a read-only document does not draw, so sending yourself a test arrives with step editing. It sends that step to your own address, rendered with your organization's real values, so you can check the subject, the formatting, and the merge fields in a real inbox. Test sends are rate-limited for the whole organization — about a minute between them, whoever sent the last one.

Tests do not enroll anyone and do not appear on the Recipients tab.

Not from the sequence. An unsubscribe suppresses that address for your whole organization, exits their active runs, and keeps them out of future sequences — which is the behaviour that keeps your domain deliverable.

Suppressions are managed at the organization level, and re-adding someone should only ever follow a request from that person.