Define who enters and who leaves
Write it in one sentence each. Entry: a lead has been captured and has not booked a meeting. Exit: they book, reply, unsubscribe or become a customer. Set the exit rule in your tool, such as HubSpot, ActiveCampaign or Customer.io. Without it, you will email people who are already on your calendar.
Split leads by intent
Create two routes:
- Hot: visited the pricing or demo page, clicked a booking link, replied to an email, or came from a high-intent form.
- Warm: downloaded content or signed up for a newsletter and did nothing else.
Hot leads should get a personal email from a real person within hours, with the booking link in the first paragraph. Warm leads get the sequence below. The welcome step before this is in New subscriber welcome flow.
Map a five-email sequence over two weeks
This is a starting pattern for the warm route:
- Day 0: deliver what they asked for and say what you will send next.
- Day 2: one useful idea that corrects a common misconception.
- Day 5: a short case study, using a real result that is relevant to their segment.
- Day 8: answer the most common objection, in the way you would on a call.
- Day 12: a direct invitation to book, with a reason to do it now.
Keep it to five. A long sequence is not nurture, it is noise.
Give every email one job and one link
Each email teaches one point and has one link. If the job is to build trust, the link goes to the case study. If the job is to book, the link goes to the calendar. Emails with four links ask four questions and get none of them answered. Put a soft booking line in the middle emails and the full ask in the last two.
Write the ask so it is easy to say yes to
A good invitation names the length, the topic and what they get. For example: "If getting more qualified leads is on your list this quarter, grab 25 minutes here: [link]. I will come with three ideas based on your site." Avoid "let me know if you are interested", which leaves the work to the reader. Send from a named person, in plain text, not a designed newsletter.
Add triggers for behaviour
The calendar does not wait for day 12. Set a few rules:
- Clicks the booking link but does not book: send a short note within 24 hours asking if anything got in the way.
- Visits the pricing page twice: alert the owner and pause the sequence for a personal message.
- Replies: stop the sequence and let a person answer.
Hand over cleanly once they book
When someone books, remove them from the nurture route and add them to the confirmation route, described in Post-booking confirmation flow. The scheduling side is in Meeting setup. If you also have leads who went silent, the answer is in Re-engagement.
Common mistakes
- Treating every lead the same, whether they visited pricing or read one blog post.
- Asking for a meeting in the first email to someone who barely knows you.
- Never asking at all, because it feels pushy.
- Writing emails about your company instead of their problem.
- Leaving booked leads in the sequence.
How you know it works
Look at three numbers over the first eight weeks: the share of warm leads who book within 30 days, the replies per email, and the unsubscribe rate. Replies and bookings should rise while unsubscribes stay low. How to read the rates is in Review open and click rates monthly.
