So you’ve set up your automation, and you have subscribers going into your sequence. But for some reason, they aren’t receiving the sequence emails. This can be incredibly frustrating - you’ve done all the work to get them in the sequence, so why isn’t it sending the emails?
Fortunately, there are usually a few reasons why a sequence isn’t sending emails. I’ll list them in this guide and you can use it to troubleshoot your sequence.
Is the automation adding people to the sequence?
The first thing to check is that the automation is actually adding people to the sequence.
When you are looking at an automation, you’ll see how many people are currently in a sequence, and how many have completed. Make sure these numbers are what you expect. If they aren’t, you might have subscribers in a step further up in the automation.
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Is the email status still in draft?
Each email in a sequence has a status of either Draft or Active. When you add a new email to a sequence, ConvertKit will automatically set this to Draft. This is to ensure that the email isn’t actually sent to subscribers before you are ready.
But sometimes people forget to change this from Draft to Active. If the email still has a Draft status, then it will not be sent.
How to fix
Simply change the status for each email to active (make sure you are happy for it to be sent first!).
Is “Send Emails” date set to the future?
In the sequence settings, you’ll find a “Send Emails” field, which has a list of days. For each day that is ticked, ConvertKit can potentially send an email from the sequence. For example, if you have 7 emails in the sequence and every day is ticked, ConvertKit will send an email every day for 7 days.
But what happens if one day isn’t ticked? ConvertKit will not send emails on that day. And if this is the day that you are testing your sequence, then this could be the reason you are not getting the email.
How to fix
Check the “Send Emails” field in the form settings and make sure you aren’t skipping a day that you are testing the emails.
Is the “When to Send” date set to the future?
The “Send Emails” settings can also be overridden for individual emails in the sequence. Open up an email and you’ll see the “When to Send” field. You can set the number of days to send since the last email and the days to send on.
You may have set the next email to be a few days after the last one. And if you are testing it before that day arrives, you won’t get the email.
Similarly, you may have skipped a day and be testing it on that day.
How to fix
Check the settings for the days after the last email and make sure you aren’t testing within that window. If you are, either wait until the required number of days have passed, or change the settings.
Similarly, check that you haven’t skipped a day that you are testing on.
Is a filter excluding people?
ConvertKit sequence emails include the ability to filter out subscribers from receiving emails. This can be based on tags, segments, custom fields, locations etc. In other words, you can exclude people from getting one of the emails if they have a certain tag, or belong to a specific segment.
The problem is, you may set this and then forget about it. And then some subscribers don’t receive the email and you have no idea why!
How to fix
Check the filter settings in each email in the sequence (or just the one that isn’t being sent). To test that the email is being sent to subscribers who aren’t filtered out, try adding a test subscriber to the sequence who doesn’t have the tag or segment that is filtered out.
Summary
There are a few reasons why subscribers might not be getting sequence emails:
- The automation is not adding people to the sequence
- Status is still draft
- “Send Emails” date is set to the future
- “When to Send” date is set to the future
- A filter is excluding people
Check each of these in turn and hopefully, one of them will be the culprit.
