Skip to content
HomeStar Docs

Set Up Follow-up Sequences

A follow-up sequence is a short series of plain-text emails, sent on a schedule, to every lead that reaches a particular stage of your pipeline. You write the emails once with a few placeholders; HomeStar fills in the lead’s name and the assigned agent’s details and sends each step when its delay is up. The lead’s agent is the Reply-To, so an answer lands in their inbox, not in a shared one.

Sequences belong to your brokerage. Brokers and owners create and edit them; agents can see them and can see which sequences a lead is on.

Create a sequence

Section titled “Create a sequence”

  1. Open Sequences under More in the admin sidebar (or go to /admin/drips).

  2. Click New sequence and give it a name. Names are unique within your brokerage.

  3. Pick the stage that starts it. A lead is enrolled at the moment it enters that stage:

    StageEnrolls
    Newthe moment a lead arrives, before anyone has reached out
    Contactingafter the first contact attempt is logged
    Qualifiedonce motivation is confirmed and the lead is actively searching
    Archivedwhen a lead goes quiet and times out

    A lead that is already past the stage when you create the sequence is not enrolled retroactively. You can put it on by hand from the lead page.

  4. Add steps. Each step is one email with a delay in days. The first step’s delay counts from enrollment; every later step counts from the one before it. A delay of zero on the first step sends within about a minute of the lead arriving.

  5. Leave Stop when the stage changes on unless you have a reason not to (see below).

  6. Click Create sequence. It is on by default. Use the switch in the list to pause it without losing anything.

Write the steps

Section titled “Write the steps”

Steps are plain text. Write them the way the agent would write a short personal note, not the way a newsletter reads. These placeholders are replaced when each email is sent:

PlaceholderBecomes
{{first_name}}the lead’s first name
{{last_name}}the lead’s last name
{{agent_name}}the assigned agent’s name
{{agent_phone}}the assigned agent’s phone
{{agent_email}}the assigned agent’s email
{{brokerage_name}}your brokerage’s name
{{brokerage_phone}}your brokerage’s office phone

A placeholder with nothing behind it renders as empty text, so a lead with no assigned agent gets a blank where {{agent_name}} was. Write around that: “Reach us at {{brokerage_phone}}” is safe in every case, “I’m {{agent_name}}” is only safe when routing assigns an agent before the first step fires.

Anything that is not one of these names is removed rather than sent through, so a typo in a placeholder produces a blank, never a literal {{...}} in the lead’s inbox. Use the Preview tab to render any step against a real lead before you rely on it.

How a sequence stops

Section titled “How a sequence stops”

Sending stops, for that lead, when any of these happens. The reason is recorded on the enrollment and shown on the lead page and in the sequence’s Enrollments tab.

The stage changes. With Stop when the stage changes on, a lead that moves out of the stage it was enrolled in stops receiving the sequence, and if another sequence starts on the new stage, it picks up there. A lead who replies and gets a contact attempt logged does not keep getting “just checking in” emails. Turn the switch off only for a sequence that should run to the end regardless, such as a short welcome series.

The lead unsubscribes. Every email ends with an unsubscribe line. Clicking it sets the Unsubscribed flag on the lead and stops every sequence they are on.

Someone sets a flag. Setting Unsubscribed, Do Not Contact, or No Email on a lead stops their sequences immediately. No Text and No Call do not affect email.

Someone clicks Stop. On the lead page or in the Enrollments tab.

The sequence is turned off. Pausing a sequence stops everyone currently on it. Turning it back on does not resume them; new leads enroll from then on.

Email keeps failing. A step that cannot be delivered is retried on the next pass. After three failures in a row the enrollment stops so nobody is retried forever.

Enroll or stop by hand

Section titled “Enroll or stop by hand”

On a lead’s detail page, the Follow-up sequences card under Lifecycle lists the lead’s enrollments. Brokers and owners can Stop an active one or pick a sequence from Enroll in to start it from step one, regardless of the lead’s current stage. Re-enrolling a lead who finished or was stopped starts them over from the first step.

The unsubscribe line

Section titled “The unsubscribe line”

The footer of every step is added for you and cannot be removed. When the instance is configured for it, the line carries a signed link that opts that one lead out with a single click. When it is not, the line asks the reader to reply to stop, and the sequence page shows a notice so you know which case you are in. Either way, the wording above the footer is yours.

Section titled “Related”