Email sequences

Import from MailerLite Classic

On the Sequences page, choose Import from Classic. Upload a migration JSON, select a newsletter, and map the source groups. You can leave groups for later; the resulting draft cannot be published until its sources are selected. Review the steps, email HTML, links and timing before choosing Import draft.

This is a migration format prepared from your original workflow, not a native MailerLite export. Classic’s public API does not document an automation or email HTML export. Use the example in the import dialog and transcribe the trigger, connections and original unpersonalized HTML from Classic. An operator can combine local HTML files with scripts/mailerlite-classic-sequence-pack.mjs.

The supported steps are emails, elapsed-time delays, weekday-and-time waits, removal from a group, group-membership conditions and explicit ends, with a group-joined trigger. Open/click conditions, fixed-date waits, adding to groups and loops must be rebuilt deliberately; the importer reports unsupported steps instead of skipping them. Each bundle contains one sequence, with up to 50 steps and 20 emails. Keep waits after the final email: they affect when participation ends.

Only the Classic unsubscribe placeholder in a quoted link destination is converted automatically. Replace other Classic placeholders, including personalization and view-online links, before importing. Received emails may contain personal tracking or unsubscribe links: use original HTML. Review custom tracking domains and external images; assets keep their original locations and are not copied by the importer.

Importing creates a draft only. It does not copy participants, their positions or sending history, and does not start any messages. The chosen newsletter supplies the sender. Review the entry policy and the time zone of every weekday wait separately from the sending window. A source label such as CET does not establish an IANA zone or daylight-saving behavior; confirm that the timing rules below match the intended workflow. Import subscribers separately through the CSV migration wizard; importing group memberships does not enroll them in a sequence.

Reimporting the same source account and sequence into the same newsletter returns the original draft. Changed content under that identity cannot overwrite it: open the existing sequence to edit. After a connection error, use Retry same import to recover the original result.

From signup to the first email

Create a sequence and choose the newsletter it will send from. Then select a trigger: joining a group or confirming a signup through a specific form. Submitting a form without confirming the email address does not start a sequence.

Only recipients with active consent can join, and only through new events while the sequence is active. Publishing does not enroll existing group members. Imports, adding an existing group member again, and clicking a confirmation link again do not start another enrollment.

Choose who can enter again

Once per subscriber is the default for new and existing sequences. A subscriber cannot enter that sequence again, even after participation history is cleared. Form-confirmed sequences always use this policy; changing the trigger to a form resets the entry policy.

For a group-joined trigger, After a new group join allows another participation only when the previous one has ended and the subscriber leaves and newly joins the trigger group. It never starts two participations at once. A join during a current or paused participation, or while delivery is unresolved, is ignored and never queued for later. After that participation ends, a fresh leave-and-join is needed.

Events during an inactive sequence are not replayed. Existing and imported memberships never start a participation, and repeating an event cannot start it twice. Active consent is still required for every entry and send. Publishing a policy change affects future entries; participants already in progress keep their published version.

On self-hosted installations, publishing repeat entry requires the completed subscriber-v2 upgrade. Until the account is ready, publication of this policy is blocked; once-per-subscriber sequences remain supported.

Build a path step by step

Click the plus on a connection to add an email, delay, weekday wait, group removal, or condition. Click a card to open its settings. The layout adjusts automatically; there is no need to drag blocks. Plus buttons and cards also work with the keyboard. On a phone, the diagram becomes a list with clear YES and NO branches.

• Email: subject, preview text, reply-to address, and content in the shared editor. The newsletter chosen when creating the sequence determines the sender.
• Delay: minutes, hours, or days. A day means 24 hours. Time is measured from enrollment, the previous weekday-wait deadline, or acceptance of the previous email for sending. Consecutive delays add up.
• Wait until: choose a weekday, time and named IANA time zone for this step. It waits for that clock time at or after the preceding steps are due. It also works before an end step.
• Remove from group: remove this participant’s membership of the chosen group. This does not unsubscribe them.
• Condition: current group membership or the form that produced this particular enrollment. You can invert the result. The form condition does not match any past signup by that person.
• End: ends the selected path. Extend it by adding a block above the end.

Deleting a regular block reconnects its neighboring steps. When deleting a condition, choose which branch to keep; the other branch and its blocks are removed from the draft. Each sequence supports up to 50 blocks, 20 emails, and 50 levels, within a 512 KiB draft. Paths cannot loop or merge.

When switching from custom HTML to the visual editor, you will see a warning: tables and custom styles may not be supported. You can stay in HTML mode to keep the code unchanged. When adding an image, wait for the upload to finish before saving or switching blocks.

Remove a participant from a group

Choose a group in the same newsletter. The step removes only the current participant’s membership; it does not delete the group, the subscriber or their consent. If the participant is already outside the group, the sequence continues. Later conditions see the updated membership. Removing someone from the trigger group does not stop their current run.

If the selected group is missing, archived or no longer available to this sequence, participation pauses safely for review. Simulation shows the removal using hypothetical memberships without changing real groups.

Wait for a weekday and time

Each Wait until step has its own IANA time zone, such as Europe/Warsaw. It finds the first real occurrence of the chosen weekday and clock time at or after the preceding steps’ due time. For Thursday at 10:30, exactly 10:30:00.000 qualifies. Any fraction of a second later normally waits until the following Thursday, rather than rounding down.

When clocks move forward and the chosen local time does not exist, that week is skipped; the time is not shifted to another hour. When clocks move back and the time occurs twice, the first occurrence at or after the preceding due time is used. This can be the second occurrence if the first has already passed.

The deadline is based on the sequence’s timing, not when a background job happens to run. Retrying a job or resuming late keeps the selected deadline, so it does not add another week. A wait after the final email delays completion, and further elapsed delays start from that wait’s deadline. Email delivery still respects the separate sending window and minimum gap below. Expiry deadlines still apply: a late email may expire instead of being sent.

Sending days and hours

Set a time zone, weekdays, and optional sending hours for every email, including the first. These settings do not replace Wait until steps and changing them does not change a step’s own time zone. The end time is exclusive, and a window cannot cross midnight. Enter 24:00 to include the rest of the day. Once a delay ends, the email waits for the next allowed sending time. Daylight saving changes are handled automatically.

There is at least a 60-second gap between emails. Pausing does not move the original expiry deadlines. A send attempt expires 72 hours after its scheduled allowed time; an entire enrollment can last up to 365 days.

Save, review, and publish

Use Save to save your draft. An error does not discard your content. Following a link to another dashboard page with unsaved changes asks for confirmation; choose “Stay in builder” to return to editing. If a request has an unknown outcome, retrying uses the same operation. If another tab creates a conflict, copy your unsaved text before loading the newer draft.

Preview shows all saved emails in desktop, mobile, and plain-text views. In the shared dashboard, HTML previews cannot run scripts, submit forms or follow links. Scroll inside long previews. Some imported formatting is removed, and remote images may contact their image host. Saved and sent emails are unchanged. Simulation uses the hypothetical groups and origin form you provide; it does not send emails or affect a real recipient. Change those facts to test the other branch.

You publish exactly the version you reviewed. New participants receive the new version, while existing participants keep theirs. Publishing changes to a paused sequence does not resume sending.

History and safe stopping

The Participants tab shows status, version, next step time, and decision history. You can pause or resume a sequence or an individual participant. Each row is one participation, so a subscriber may have several rows when repeat entry is enabled. Stopping a participation permanently ends that run; future entry follows the published entry policy. Stopping or archiving the sequence prevents new entries. A send already started with the provider cannot be recalled.

“Delivery outcome unknown” blocks further steps. There is no resend button because the email may already have arrived. Once the outcome is resolved, a manual resume may be required. Unsubscribing, deleting a recipient, or changing consent blocks future emails. Removing someone from a group is not a global unsubscribe; a later condition may choose a different branch. Archiving an enrollment source stops dependent sequences.