How to create your first email sequence
Go to the Email Sequences section and click the “+ New sequence” button on the upper right-hand side of your screen.
How to add recipients to an email sequence
The first step to create an email sequence is to add your recipients.
You can do so from the Audience section of your email sequence in three different ways:
From Leads: select leads or a list of leads already saved in Hunter.
Upload a CSV: upload a CSV or TXT file, to import new leads and their attributes.
Manually: add new leads to a sequence by entering email addresses manually.
👉 You can also add recipients to a new or existing sequence directly from your Leads section, more on this here.
From leads: import from existing leads
Starting with the option to import From leads, you can import existing leads in Hunter into your sequence's Audience section.
To find the specific leads you’re looking for, you can apply multiple filters to narrow down your search. Filtering options are extensive, including both default criteria and custom attributes based on the data associated with your leads.
💡 When adding recipients from your Leads list, a default filter of “Never contacted” will be applied. You can choose to keep this filter or remove it as needed.
Upload a CSV: import leads via CSV or TXT file
When you choose to import leads by uploading a CSV, you’ll be redirected to a new page to upload your file.
You’ll then be prompted to map each column to the correct attributes, with options to verify and enrich your leads, and to add them to an existing leads list or create a new one. Verification will consume 0.5 credits per email verification.
You can upload a CSV or TXT file. It's important to note that the file must use commas or semicolons as column delimiters. To be valid, your rows must contain at least an email column.
💡When uploading a CSV file with more recipients than allowed in your plan for each sequence, the system will extract only the initial rows from your file, corresponding to the number of recipients allowed per sequence in your plan (e.g. 500 for a Free plan).
Manually: add email addresses manually
By choosing the option Manually, you can add the recipients manually by entering their email address, comma-separated, or one per line.
💡Keep in mind, that when doing so, they will be saved as Leads, and when pasting more than 100 emails into the box, a new Leads import will be created.
Add leads to an email sequence from the Leads section
Finally, you can also add leads to a new or existing email sequence directly from the Leads section.
To do so, first select the chosen lead (s), and a blue actions menu will appear. Now select Add to a sequence or click on the three dots to select the option Create a new sequence, based on your preference, as shown in the image below.
Verify your recipients
Once you have added your leads to your email sequence's Audience, you can also verify the email addresses before launching your sequence. We will let you know the cost associated with the verifications. We charge 0.5 credits for each email verified.
Hunter will tell you the percentage of unverified emails in your Audience list and allow you to test all unverified email addresses or verify single emails by clicking on Verify email.
Verifying your leads is part of a successful cold email outreach strategy as it will drastically reduce your bounce rate, increase your success, and limit the risks of harming your email reputation.
Add leads to an existing sequence
To add new leads to an existing email sequence, just go to the Audience section of your sequence and select + Add. This way you can add additional recipients to your sequence using one of the three methods explained previously.
As soon as a new lead is added to an active email sequence, a new email is created and sent according to your sending schedule.
👉 If you a part of a Team, and you are not an Admin or the Owner of the subscription, keep in mind that you can only add leads to your own sequences, and not to sequences created by other Team members.
Troubleshooting: Why recipients might not be added
If you try to add leads to a sequence and see the message "No recipients were added to the sequence", or fewer recipients were added than expected, this can happen for one of the following reasons:
Previously removed recipients: Leads that were manually removed from a draft sequence can’t be re-added until you clear the "Removed recipients" list.
To fix this: Go to the Audience tab and click on “(Number) removed recipients”
Then click “Clear the list.”
Cancelled recipients in an active sequence: If the sequence is already launched, manually cancelled recipients can’t be re-added to that same email sequence.
Incorrectly formatted emails: Some addresses (for example,
info@domainwithout a valid extension, or malformed syntax) will be skipped automatically.Fix: Review your CSV or list and make sure all emails follow a valid format, such as
name@company.com.
Unsubscribed addresses: Emails on your unsubscription list can’t be re-added to any sequence.
💡By design, bounced or unsubscribed leads won't be included again in any sequence and will end up directly in your Unsubscriptions list. More details on unsubscriptions can be found HERE.
How many recipients can be added to a sequence?
The number of recipients that can be added to an email sequence varies based on your plan; however, there is no limit to the number of sequences you can create.
Plan | Free | Starter | Growth | Scale |
Recipients per sequence | 500 | 2,500 | 5,000 | 15,000 |
👉 In case you have reached the limit of recipients per email sequences allowed in your plan, but need to add more, we simply suggest duplicating your sequence and adding the remaining leads to the new sequence.
If you are adding leads through a CSV upload, keep in mind that Hunter will always extract the initial rows from your file, corresponding to the number of recipients allowed per sequence in your plan (e.g. the first 500 for a Free plan).sw
✅ Now that you have added the recipients to your email sequence, learn how to draft the content of your sequence.