Guide
Three headers decide whether follow-up four reads as persistence or as the fourth stranger this month. Here is what CraftNudge sets, why, and every reason it stops sending.
Leave the follow-up’s subject empty. It inherits the subject of the email before it with Re: in front, and it carries In-Reply-To and References headers that name the message you already sent. Gmail and Outlook group on those headers, so the follow-up appears under the first email rather than as a fourth stranger in the inbox.
Then it starts a new thread, with no reply headers. Do that on purpose when the topic changes. Do not do it by accident: a sequence where every step has its own subject is a sequence of cold emails, not a conversation.
Every send gets its own Message-ID and it is stored. The inbox is read over IMAP and an incoming message is matched to the send it answers by that id. Mail that answers nothing you sent, including warmup traffic from another tool, is never taken for a campaign reply.
The moment a real reply lands, before anyone has read it. Also on a bounce, on an unsubscribe, and, if you switch those on, on an out-of-office or on a reply from anyone at the same company. The one exception is a step written for a reply: a step set aside for interested or not interested answers goes to a lead once their reply is marked that way, and to nobody else. You can pause one lead by hand. What you cannot do is delete a lead you have already emailed, because deleting would free the cap and let a re-upload start the sequence again.
The wait counts from the previous send. When it is up, the follow-up goes at the next moment one of the campaign’s sending windows is open, from an inbox that is under its cap and past its gap. On the default weekday window, a three day wait that ends on a Saturday evening sends on Monday morning.
Yes. A test of step three renders with the inherited subject, so what lands in your own inbox reads the way it will read for the lead. The subject is marked [test] so you never mistake it for a real send.
The editor does this for you: a follow-up with an empty subject threads, the preview shows the inherited subject, and the worker stops the sequence the instant a reply is matched. You write the words.