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An automatic follow-up tags a chosen cohort of a broadcast's recipients (readers, non-readers, non-delivered, clickers or repliers) a set number of hours after the campaign finishes, and can optionally enrol that cohort in a sequence, all without you coming back to click anything. This article covers how to set it up and exactly what runs on its own.
Automatic follow-ups: first 5 of 6 steps
- 1Reach the Schedule step of the composer
- 2Find "Follow up automatically" near the bottom
- 3Set the delay
- 4Choose whether to just tag, or also
- 5Finish the rest of the composer and
Before you start
- Set this up while building the campaign, on the Schedule step; it cannot be added to a campaign after it has already been sent.
- If you plan to enrol the cohort in a sequence, that sequence needs to already exist and be active. See setting up drip sequences.
- Understand this runs once per campaign, at a fixed delay after that campaign finishes; it is not a recurring or ongoing rule.
Steps
- Reach the Schedule step of the composer. Build your audience and message as normal, then move to the third step.
Find "Follow up automatically" near the bottom of the Schedule step. Choose a cohort from the dropdown: No follow-up (default), Everyone who did not read it, Everyone who read it, Everyone it did not reach, Everyone who clicked, or Everyone who replied.
Set the delay. Once a cohort is chosen, a second dropdown appears: after 1, 2, 4, 24, or 72 hours.
Choose whether to just tag, or also enrol in a sequence. A third dropdown lets you pick Just tag them, or Start "[Sequence name]" for any active sequence in your organization.
Finish the rest of the composer and send. No further action is required; the follow-up runs automatically once the delay elapses after the campaign completes.
Check the results after the delay has passed. The tag created appears under Contacts, named after the campaign and cohort, and if a sequence was chosen, enrolled contacts show the sequence running on their conversation.
Why does this exist, and how does it run safely on its own?
"Message everyone who read the offer but did not reply, a couple of hours later" is the follow-up most marketers already do by hand: export a list from the first campaign, build a second one, and remember to actually send it at the right time. That manual step is where follow-ups get skipped entirely, sent too early while people are still deciding, or sent to the wrong group because the export was done before the funnel had fully settled. An automatic follow-up removes the manual step by resolving the cohort and, if a sequence is chosen, enrolling contacts the exact same way the on-demand Retarget action does, just triggered by a timer instead of a click.
Because it runs unattended, every safety check that applies to a normal send still applies here in full. Opt-out and blocked status are re-checked at the moment the follow-up actually executes, not when the original campaign finished, so a contact who stops your marketing messages in the hours between is correctly excluded from a sequence enrolment even though the campaign already reached them. And because a follow-up runs through the same sequence machinery as any other enrolment, STOP handling, the AI-takeover pause when a human agent replies, and every other sequence behavior work identically, there is no separate, less-guarded code path for automated follow-ups to fall through.
Example
A coaching institute sends an admissions-open broadcast to 2,000 leads and sets an automatic follow-up for "Everyone who did not read it," after 24 hours, tagging them without enrolling a sequence. The next morning, 420 contacts are tagged "Admissions Open - Not read," and the institute builds a second campaign from that tag with a different subject line, aimed specifically at people the first message never actually reached.
What you will see
Nothing changes visibly on the campaign itself while it is running or immediately after it completes; the follow-up note under the dropdown reminds you: "They are tagged either way, so you can reach them from anywhere. A sequence runs through the normal rules: anyone who opts out in between is left alone." Once the delay elapses, the tag appears under Contacts with the cohort's actual count, and, if a sequence was chosen, enrolled contacts begin receiving that sequence's first step.
Settings and options
| Setting | What it does | Options |
|---|---|---|
| Cohort | Which recipients the follow-up applies to | No follow-up, Not read, Read, Not delivered, Clicked, Replied |
| Delay | Hours after the campaign finishes before the follow-up runs | 1, 2, 4, 24, 72 |
| Action | What happens to the cohort once identified | Just tag them, or start a chosen sequence |
| Tag name | Automatically generated tag applied to the cohort | "[Campaign name] - [Cohort label]" |
What happens if the follow-up's delay elapses while the original campaign is still sending?
The delay is measured from when the campaign finishes, not from when it started, so a large campaign that takes hours to fully send, whether from pacing, quiet hours, or a daily-limit park mid-send, correctly pushes the follow-up's trigger point later along with it. This matters because resolving the cohort (who read it, who did not, who clicked) only makes sense once the campaign has actually stopped changing; running the follow-up while a third of the audience is still pending would tag people into the wrong cohort simply because their message had not gone out yet, not because of anything real about their behavior. Waiting for a genuine finish, whatever that ends up taking, is what keeps the cohort the follow-up acts on accurate.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No tag appeared after the delay passed | The chosen cohort had zero matching contacts, or the campaign had not actually finished sending yet | Check the campaign's own status finished before the delay's start point; an empty cohort simply produces no tag |
| A contact was tagged but not enrolled in the sequence | They opted out or were blocked between the campaign and the follow-up running, or they were already running that same sequence | Both are expected behavior; opt-out and duplicate-run checks apply at the moment the follow-up executes, not when the campaign finished |
| Follow-up option is missing entirely for a campaign already sent | The option can only be set while building the campaign on the Schedule step | Not available retroactively; use manual Retarget on the finished campaign's detail page instead |
| Sequence never appears in the "start" dropdown | The sequence is not active, or has been deleted or disabled | Check the sequence's status under Automation, Sequences |
| Same contact received the campaign's follow-up sequence twice | Unlikely, since the check is scoped to running or waiting states specifically | If it happens, check whether two separate campaigns targeted the same follow-up sequence for the same cohort |
Should I always tag, or sometimes enrol in a sequence too?
Tagging alone is the safer default when you are not yet sure what the follow-up message should say, or when the goal is simply to build a reusable audience for a campaign you will design deliberately later. Enrolling straight into a sequence makes sense when you already have a proven, specific next step for that exact cohort, for example a short "still interested?" sequence for non-readers, or a thank-you-and-upsell sequence for repliers, since the follow-up then runs unattended end to end with no second manual step. Because both happen together whenever a sequence is chosen (the cohort is tagged either way), you never lose the ability to reach that group manually later even if you also let a sequence run automatically now.
Related reading
For a manual, on-demand version of this same idea, see retry failed vs retarget. To understand what happens once a cohort is enrolled, see setting up drip sequences and enrolment.