Complete manual

Getting started

Install Secuenza, follow the wizard and in a few minutes your first campaign will be ready to go.

Install

Download the installer from the Download page and open it. It installs just for your user, without asking for admin rights, and Secuenza opens when it finishes. From then on it updates itself.

The first-run wizard

The first time, Secuenza walks you through six steps. You can leave any of them for later and come back from the Home screen.

1. Language: the interface language. Your emails can be in other languages.
2. Register: your email address and name. It’s free and needed for unsubscribe links, opens and clicks to work.
3. Your company: company name, address, logo and signature. They make up the legal footer of each email.
4. Mailbox: the mailbox you’ll send from. Secuenza recognises the provider and checks your domain.
5. Contacts: import an Excel or CSV file, or paste a list.
6. First campaign: start from an example sequence and adapt it.

And then

On Home you’ll see what’s left to do, how sending is going and who has replied. Secuenza sends while it’s open: if you close the window, it keeps working from the icon next to the clock.

Every screen links to its guide in this Academy in case you need more detail, and F1 opens Help. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+8 take you to each section in the sidebar, Ctrl+9 to My licence and Ctrl+K opens quick search.

Set up your sending mailbox

Your emails go out from your own mailbox, with your name and your domain. This is how to set it up in Senders.

Add a mailbox

In Senders, click Add a mailbox and type the address. Secuenza recognises the provider (Gmail, Microsoft 365, IONOS and many more) and fills in the server, port and encryption.

• Gmail and Google Workspace need an app password, not your usual one. Secuenza explains how to create it.
• Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com connect with your Microsoft account, without storing your password.
• Your hosting company’s email works with its username and password.

Before saving, Secuenza checks that it connects, that the connection is encrypted and that the server accepts the user. Passwords are stored encrypted on your PC.

Limits and warm-up

Each mailbox has a daily limit and an hourly limit. Secuenza suggests safe ones for your provider and never goes over them. With a new mailbox it starts by sending a little and increases day by day (warm-up), as a person would.

The notice mailbox

If you add the IMAP server, Secuenza can read bounced emails in that mailbox and, with Pro, replies. You can save it without IMAP and add it later.

Test it

With Send me a test you get an email with “[TEST]” in the subject at your test address. It doesn’t count towards your limits or your results.

Check and fix your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

Email providers look at three records of your domain before letting an email through. Secuenza checks them and tells you how to fix what’s missing.

What is checked

For each mailbox, the checks tab reviews:

• SPF: which servers may send on behalf of your domain.
• DKIM signature: that your emails are signed and the key is long enough.
• DMARC: what providers should do with an email that fails the other two.
• Mail reception (MX), reverse DNS (PTR), MTA-STS, BIMI and connection encryption.

Each check shows green, amber or red, with an explanation in plain language.

How to fix it

When something fails, Secuenza tells you which record to add and where, with the steps for your provider. If you’d rather have an AI explain it, Copy prompt for AI prepares the question with your details.

DNS changes take a while to show: check again after an hour.

With Pro

• Live send test: Secuenza sends a real email from your mailbox and tells you how the receiving server sees it: signature, SPF, DMARC alignment, encryption and spam check.
• Blocklists: checks whether your server or domain appears on the lists that filters use.

Import contacts

Bring in your contacts from Excel, CSV or a pasted list. Secuenza never duplicates anyone or writes again to someone who unsubscribed.

The steps

1. The data: choose the file (Excel or CSV) or paste rows copied from Excel. Secuenza detects the separator and accents.
2. Columns: Secuenza guesses what each column is. Check it: only the email column is required.
3. Source and list: say where the data comes from and why you may write to these people (the legal basis). It’s stored with each contact, as the GDPR requires. Also choose which list they join.
4. Review: before importing you see how many are new, how many you already had and which ones won’t go in.
5. Done: a summary of what was imported.

What’s left out

• Mistyped addresses and duplicates in the file.
• People who unsubscribed or are on the suppression list: they aren’t reactivated.
• People who asked for their data to be deleted: they can’t come back.
• If you tick it, domains that don’t receive email, because they would bounce.

Questionable addresses (a possible typo such as “gmial.com”) are shown separately, with the suggested correction.

In the free version

There’s room for 500 active contacts. If the file has more, those that fit are imported, in file order. With Pro there’s no limit.

Lists, tags and segments

Organise your contacts so you can write to each group about what interests them.

Lists

A list groups contacts that come from the same place or share something: “Customers”, “2026 trade fair”. A contact can be on several. Campaigns are sent to one or more lists.

Tags

Tags are quick labels, such as “VIP” or “Call”. You add and remove them from the contact details or for several contacts at once.

Custom fields

Besides name, company or city, you can create your own fields (a member number, a renewal date) and use them in your emails.

Segments

A segment is a group that works itself out: for example, “opened in the last month” or “in London with no clicks”. It updates every time you use it, so a campaign aimed at a segment includes whoever joins it.

Contact statuses

Each contact has a status: Active, Unsubscribed, Address doesn’t exist, Marked as spam, Invalid format, Inactive or Replied. Only active contacts are emailed.

Deleting someone for good

If a person asks for their data to be deleted, permanent deletion removes their details and history and keeps only a fingerprint so they can’t be added again. Secuenza produces the deletion certificate for you to send them.

Create a campaign and its sequence

A campaign is a sequence of emails that sends itself, at its own pace, from your mailbox.

Getting started

In Campaigns, click New campaign. You can start from an example sequence (introduction, welcome, win-back…) and change it as you like, or start from scratch.

What a campaign includes

• The mailbox it sends from.
• Recipients: one or more lists or segments. Anyone who joins them later is added automatically.
• The emails: each with its days to wait after the previous one. The first goes out as soon as it’s due.
• The sending hours: the general ones from Settings or its own. Public holidays and no-send days are skipped.

An email only goes out once you mark it as ready. That way you can keep writing the next ones while the first are already being sent.

Start

Click Start. Secuenza first checks that nothing is missing: mailbox, legal footer, test address, spam check. Then it prepares the queue and sends within your mailbox’s limits.

Anyone who replies (Pro), unsubscribes or bounces drops out of the sequence.

Several campaigns at once

If you have several running campaigns with the same mailbox, they share its limit: each email comes from the one that has sent the least today, and a campaign you start while another fills the queue begins sending within a quarter of an hour. Each campaign’s priority comes first: a high-priority campaign uses up the limit before the others.

Pausing and the safety brake

You can pause a campaign whenever you like: nothing is lost and it carries on where it left off. If there are too many bounces or unsubscribes, the safety brake pauses it by itself and explains why; once you’ve checked it, click Resume sending. It protects your mailbox and your domain, and it can’t be turned off. All the brakes, with their figures, are in Sending safety.

Sign-ups from your website

On its Form and API tab, a campaign can take in people who sign up on your website or come from your system, and create the contact if they weren’t one. How it works: Sign-ups from your website or system.

Archiving

A campaign you no longer use is archived from its page: it stops sending and accepting sign-ups and leaves the list, but nothing is deleted; its emails, its people and its results are still there. To see it, tick Also show the archived ones in Campaigns. Restore from archive leaves it paused, ready to start again.

In the free version

Up to 2 running campaigns at a time and 7 emails per sequence.

Write and check an email

Each email in the sequence is written and checked in the editor before you mark it as ready.

Subject and preview text

The subject is the first thing people see; the preview text is the short line many email apps show next to it. Use it to complete the subject, not to repeat it.

The text

Write the way you would write to a person. You can add contact fields such as {{FirstName}} or {{Company}} so that each email carries their details.

The footer with your company details and the unsubscribe link is added to every email automatically.

If a link’s text is an address (such as www.yourcompany.com), the link goes straight there and that click isn’t counted: text that shows one domain and leads to another is exactly what anti-fraud filters look for.

Images

In the Image block, click Choose or upload an image; in HTML (advanced), Insert image puts it where the cursor is. Your images opens, your account’s gallery: pick one or upload another (JPG, PNG or GIF).

• Secuenza prepares it before uploading: it rotates it the way the phone took it and fits it to the width of the email. A phone photo ends up at about 100 KB.
• What it shows is required: it’s read by people with images turned off and by screen readers.
• Link (optional): where it leads when clicked.

Images are stored in your account, not on the PC, and can be seen from any of your installations. There’s room for 5 MB in the free version and 50 MB with Pro. If you delete one, it also disappears from the emails already sent that use it. Always put text around them: an email that’s just an image looks like an ad.

Several languages

If you have contacts who speak other languages, add a language version of the same email. Each contact gets theirs.

Choose the language in Create a version in another language… and Secuenza copies a prompt with this email to translate it. Paste it into your AI (ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot), paste its answer in step 2 and click Create the translated version. If you’d rather translate it yourself, I’ll translate it myself creates the version with the text of the one in front of you and you write over it. The footer, the unsubscribe link and “view in browser” come out in each version’s language by themselves.

Spam check

Secuenza analyses the email the way a filter would (subject, links, images, text-to-image balance and risky words) and gives it a score. At 5 points or more it looks like spam, and Secuenza warns you before you activate it. Each warning says what to change.

Before activating it

• Send me a test: it reaches your test address with “[TEST]” in the subject, without tracking.
• View the email source: the code exactly as it goes out.

Write with AI

Secuenza prepares the instructions for your favourite AI and turns its answer into an email ready to check.

How it works

1. In the editor, click Write with AI and choose what you want: a new email, improve one, shorten it, change the tone or rewrite it so it doesn’t look like spam.
2. Copy the prompt: Secuenza prepares it with your company details, the campaign’s goal and the previous email in the sequence.
3. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or whichever you use.
4. Paste the AI’s answer: Secuenza separates the subject, preview text and body and puts them in the editor.

Why this way

Secuenza doesn’t send your data to any AI: you decide what you copy and where you paste it. It works with any AI, free or paid, and with the account you already have.

Afterwards

Always read what the AI has written. Run the spam check, adjust anything that doesn’t sound like you and send yourself a test before activating it.

Templates and designs

Templates save you starting from scratch: ready-written sequences and designs that carry your brand.

Company details

First of all, fill in your company: company name, address, logo, main colour and signature. They make up the legal footer and the designs.

Designs

A design is how the email looks: from one that looks hand-written (what works best for sales emails) to one with your logo and colours. They all look right on mobile and in dark mode.

If you change a design, you can save it as your own design to use in other campaigns.

Example sequences

In Templates you’ll find complete sequences in five languages: sales introduction, welcome for new customers, win-back, follow-up after a trade fair… Each comes with its emails and days to wait. When you use one, a paused campaign is created for you to adapt.

What you must always change

The parts in square brackets, such as [your product], are for you: Secuenza warns you if an email still has any.

Start and monitor sending

The Home screen tells you how everything is going and what to do now.

What you can do now

At the top, Secuenza shows what’s missing before you can send (a mailbox, company details, contacts…) or what’s worth checking. Each notice has its button.

Sending

• Start sending and Stop sending control all sending at once.
• You see how many emails went out today, how many are waiting and when the next one is due.
• Secuenza sends while it’s open. If you close the window, it carries on from the icon next to the clock. You can make it start with Windows in Settings.

Clear the queue removes the prepared emails that haven’t gone out yet, without touching the campaigns.

Sending health

For each mailbox: today’s limit, bounced emails and recent unsubscribes. If a provider starts rejecting you, you’ll see it here before it gets worse.

The safety brake

If there are too many bounces or unsubscribes, a server rejects your mailbox or an email provider stops opening your emails, the brake pauses the campaign, the mailbox or sending to that provider and explains why, with the figures. Review it takes you to where it’s fixed, Resume sending to… resumes a provider and I’ve checked it clears the notice. Everything it watches is in Sending safety.

Replies and activity

With Pro, Replied shows who has answered this week. Activity shows the latest events: opens, clicks and unsubscribes.

Read your results and who to call

Results tells you what works, where your emails land and who has shown interest.

The tabs

• By campaign: sent, opens, clicks, replies and unsubscribes for each campaign.
• By email: each email in the sequence, so you know which works best and which to change.
• Day by day: how it’s developing.
• By provider (Pro): where you get in and where you don’t (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo…), with a warning if you’re probably landing in spam.
• Who opened and Who clicked: the people, with their email address and date.
• Who to call (Pro): the most interested people.

Real opens

Apple Mail and Gmail open emails automatically to protect people from tracking. Secuenza separates these automatic opens from human ones, and the main figures count only people. That’s why your rates may look lower than in other tools: they’re the real ones.

Who to call

With Pro, Secuenza ranks contacts by interest: who has opened several times, clicked or replied. It’s the short list for picking up the phone.

Export

With Pro, every table can be exported to Excel or CSV.

Reading the figures

On the screen itself, How to read the figures compares your results with what’s usual for sales emails, so you know whether you’re on track.

Sending safety: brakes and protections

The Safety section tells you whether a brake has stopped anything, how your figures are doing and what Secuenza does so that your emails reach the inbox.

Right now

At the top you see what the safety brake has stopped, if anything, with a button to review it. Below, the figures for the last 30 days: sent, bounced, unsubscribes and spam complaints, each next to its limit, and how many inactive contacts have been set aside.

And your mailboxes: whether they’re sending normally, whether they’re warming up (and which day they’re on) and how SPF, DKIM and DMARC came out in their last check.

The brakes

They stop sending by themselves when something goes wrong, before a problem turns into a bad reputation. They’re always on and can’t be turned off.

• Bounce brake. If more than 3% of a campaign’s last 200 sends come back because the address doesn’t exist, the campaign pauses. It’s usually an old or bought list.
• Unsubscribe brake. If more than 1% of a campaign’s last 200 sends end in an unsubscribe, the campaign pauses: those people aren’t interested in what they receive.
• Provider brake. If 50 emails from the last 7 days to the same email provider (gmail.com, hotmail.com…) still have no open or click 48 hours later, sending to that provider stops: they’re most likely landing in its spam folder. Any open counts, automatic ones too.
• Rejection brake. If a server rejects your emails because your server or your domain is on a blocklist, the mailbox pauses at once; for any other rule, at the third rejection in 24 hours.

The first two only judge a campaign once it has at least 100 sends.

Resuming

When a brake kicks in, the notice says what happened and with which figures, and nothing else goes out until you decide:

• A paused campaign: on its page, Resume sending. First, check where those contacts came from and what the email says to them.
• A paused mailbox: in its details, Resume the mailbox, once the cause is fixed. The details show what the server replied.
• A paused provider: Resume sending to… in the notice, here or in Settings › Sending, where all paused providers are listed. First, check the mailbox’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

On Home, I’ve checked it clears the notice. If you change nothing before resuming, the brake will most likely kick in again.

The other protections

• Inactive clean-up: anyone who doesn’t open or click anything in 8 emails over 120 days stops receiving them. You set it in Settings › Sending, and an inactive contact can be reactivated.
• Warm-up: a new mailbox starts with 20 emails on the first day and goes up over 14 days until it reaches its limit.
• Limits and pace: each mailbox has a daily and an hourly limit, below its provider’s, and sends are spread over your sending hours with a different pause between each one.
• Cap per email provider: at most 20 emails an hour to the same provider. Sending waits and carries on the next hour.
• Suppression list: unsubscribes, addresses that don’t exist, spam complaints and people who asked for their data to be deleted never receive anything again, even if you import them again.
• Easy unsubscribe: every email carries the unsubscribe link, the one-click unsubscribe that Gmail and Yahoo require and your legal footer.
• Spam check and domain checks: every email is checked against the rules filters use, and each mailbox’s details check SPF, DKIM, DMARC, the server’s reverse name and encryption.

To learn more

At the bottom of the page there are six short guides: how to stay out of spam, why use several mailboxes, bounced emails, unsubscribes and complaints, SPF, DKIM and DMARC in two minutes, and clean lists. The deliverability guide covers it all in detail, including how to set up each record with your provider.

Bounced emails and replies

When an email doesn’t arrive, the recipient’s server sends a bounce notice to your mailbox. Secuenza reads them and acts for you.

Bounced emails

With the notice mailbox (IMAP) set up, Secuenza checks those notices:

• This address doesn’t exist: the contact is unsubscribed and not emailed again.
• Mailbox full or a server that doesn’t respond: it’s noted and retried later; if it keeps happening, emailing stops.
• It rejects your mailbox (because of a blocklist or its reputation): it isn’t the contact’s fault. The brake pauses the mailbox, and its details show what the server replied.

You can check them whenever you like with Check bounced emails now, or with Just look, without changing anything to see what it would do. With Pro, they’re checked automatically every day.

Replies (Pro)

Secuenza detects replies to your campaigns in your mailbox. Anyone who replies drops out of the sequence: they don’t get the next automatic email while you answer them. Auto-replies (holidays, out of office) are recognised and don’t count.

You’ll see them on Home, in the contact details and in Results.

Sign-ups from your website or system: form and API

People who sign up on your website, or come from your shop or your CRM, join a campaign by themselves. If they weren’t a contact yet, Secuenza creates them.

Turning sign-ups on

Every campaign has its Form and API tab. Tick Accept sign-ups from outside and the campaign gets a 10-letter code, used by both the form and the API. If you turn them off, the code is kept: a form you’ve already pasted works again when you turn them back on.

To receive sign-ups, Secuenza has to be registered: they reach your account and from there go to the program.

The form for your website

Secuenza generates the HTML code, with no scripts, for you to paste into WordPress, Wix, Shopify or a hand-made page. You choose:

• What it asks for besides the email address (name, company, phone…) and what’s required.
• The language of its labels, which will also be the language of the contacts who arrive through it.
• The button text.
• Your privacy policy, linked from the consent checkbox. The checkbox is required.
• The thank-you page, where people go after signing up. If you leave it empty, Secuenza shows one with your name and logo.
• With basic styling or without it, if you’d rather your website styled it.

How it looks shows you the result. Click Copy the code and paste it into your page. The form has a hidden field against bots and accepts ten sign-ups per IP address every ten minutes.

The API for your system

To sign people up from your website, your shop or your CRM: a POST request to https://api.secuenza.com/v1/altas with the person in JSON and your key in the Authorization: Bearer sz_alta_… header.

Click Create the key. It’s the same for all your campaigns: keep it on your server, never in a web page, because anyone who has it can sign people up to your campaigns. If it leaks, Change the key cancels the old one.

curl -X POST https://api.secuenza.com/v1/altas \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sz_alta_…" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"campana":"abcdefghjk","email":"jane@example.com","nombre":"Jane","empresa":"Northside Advisors","idioma":"en","consentimiento":true}'

Only campana (the code) and email are required. It also accepts nombre (first name), apellidos (surname), empresa (company), cargo (job title), telefono (phone), ciudad (city), pais (country), web, idioma (es, en, fr, it or de), consentimiento (true if they agreed to receive your emails) and campos, with your custom fields by their key.

It replies 202 if it received it, 400 if the address is missing or invalid, 401 if the key isn’t valid, 404 if the campaign doesn’t accept sign-ups and 429 if too many arrive in a row.

When they reach the program

Sign-ups wait in Secuenza until the program collects them: every 5 minutes while it’s sending, every hour otherwise, and when you open it. With the PC off they aren’t lost: they arrive when you switch it on. Those nobody collects within 30 days are deleted.

What happens with each sign-up

• If they weren’t a contact, they’re created with what the sign-up brings and added to the campaign. Their source says “Web form” or “Sign-up via the API”, and if they ticked the box, their consent is saved with its date.
• If they were already a contact, only what was missing is filled in and they’re added. An inactive contact becomes active again.
• They aren’t added if they unsubscribed, their address doesn’t exist, they marked an email as spam or they’re on the suppression list. For people who asked for their data to be deleted, not even the address is saved.
• In the free version, a sign-up that doesn’t fit within the contact limit is recorded as “Doesn’t fit in the free version”.

Latest sign-ups, on the same tab, shows the ones that have arrived and what was done with each.

Secuenza doesn’t send a confirmation email before adding anyone (double opt-in). If you write to countries where it’s expected, such as Germany, bear it in mind: legal sending explains it.

Settings, backups and holidays

Anything that applies to the whole program is changed in Settings.

Hours and holidays

• General sending hours: the days and times when emails are sent. Each campaign can have its own.
• Public holidays: by country and region, so nobody is emailed on their holiday. They update themselves.
• No-send days: your own, such as holidays or a closure.

Tests and summary

• Test address: where the “Send me a test” emails arrive.
• Daily summary (Pro): an email summary of what has happened.

Inactive contacts

Emailing people who never open harms your reputation. Anyone who gets 8 emails in 120 days without opening any or clicking anything becomes inactive and stops receiving them. Any open counts, including the automatic ones from Gmail or Apple Mail. You decide how many emails over how many days, and you can reactivate anyone whenever you like.

Paused email providers

If the safety brake stops sending to an email provider (gmail.com, hotmail.com…), Settings › Sending shows it with the date and the reason, and Resume sending restarts it. More in Sending safety.

Backups

Secuenza makes a backup every day and keeps the last 14. You can keep another in a folder outside the PC (OneDrive, an external drive) and restore any of them. Before restoring, a backup of the current state is made, in case you make a mistake.

With Export everything you get a .secuenza file with your contacts, campaigns, results and settings. If you give it a password, your mailbox passwords travel encrypted.

Moving Secuenza to another PC

1. Export everything with a password.
2. If you have Pro, in My licence click Move to another PC.
3. On the new PC, install Secuenza and choose to restore that file.
4. With Pro, activate the licence there with your code.

Your licence and Pro

In My licence you see what you have on this PC and how to upgrade to Pro.

Register the PC

Registering Secuenza is free and needed for unsubscribe links, opens and clicks to work. You do it in the wizard or in My licence, with your email address.

Free and Pro

The free version never expires: 1 mailbox, 500 contacts, 2 running campaigns and 7 emails per sequence. Pro removes the limits and adds automatic bounced emails and replies, the daily summary, the campaign end forecast, results by provider, export, who to call, the live send test and blocklists.

Upgrade to Pro

Click Upgrade to Pro: the purchase opens in your browser. When you finish, Pro activates itself on this PC. If you bought from the website, use I have a code and paste the code you received by email.

Each licence goes with its own email address and is used on one PC.

Changing PC

Move to another PC frees the licence: this PC goes back to the free version without deleting anything, and you activate it on the other one with your code.

The subscription

Manage my subscription opens My account on the website: your card, the invoices Stripe sends you, cancelling or carrying on. If a payment fails, Pro keeps working while Stripe retries it. If the subscription ends, you go back to the free version without losing anything.