How to set up Close Sequences that book meetings without burning your sender reputation

Open Close → Sequences (left sidebar) → New Sequence.

Good Sequence use cases: cold outbound to a target list, post-demo follow-up, post-trial activation, renewal outreach, ICP re-engagement after 90 days dormant.

Bad Sequence use cases: newsletter, product announcements, broad nurture to 10K cold contacts. Those belong in a marketing tool with proper IP warm-up. Mixing them = rep inbox gets flagged within 30 days.

A Sequence enrolls one Contact at a time per send slot. Email steps send from the rep's connected inbox via Gmail/Outlook API. Daily volume is naturally capped at 50-150 enrollments per rep depending on inbox health and warm-up status.

See sister tool tutorials: for top-of-funnel cold email at scale, layer in [Lemlist](/tutorials/lemlist) for warm-up + sender rotation, or use [Apollo](/tutorials/apollo) Sequences if Apollo is your prospecting tool.

Sequences → New Sequence → name it for the use case: "Outbound — SaaS Series A — VP Eng — Q2 2026," not "Cold Email v3."

B2B cold outbound 6-step pattern that works for most: Day 1 — Email 1 (intro, soft ask). Day 1 — Call task. Day 3 — Email 2 (different angle, value add). Day 5 — Call task + LinkedIn touch. Day 8 — Email 3 (case study). Day 12 — Email 4 (breakup, "moving on" angle).

Each step is either an Email step (auto-sends), a Call task (creates a Task), an SMS step (auto-sends if 10DLC registered), or a Generic Task (LinkedIn touch, custom step).

Set delays in business days, not calendar days. Default in Close is calendar days — change explicitly to business days in step settings or your Sequence will send on Saturday morning.

For each Email step: write subject + body + attach files if needed. For Call/Task steps: write what the rep should actually do ("Call from queue, leave Voicemail Drop variant B if no answer").

In any Sequence step body, type {{ to insert a merge field. Close offers Contact fields, Lead fields, Custom fields, Sender (the rep) fields.

Safe merge fields: {{contact.first_name}}, {{lead.company}}, {{sender.first_name}}, {{sender.company}}.

Risky merge fields: {{contact.title}} (often blank or stale), {{lead.industry}} (frequently miscategorized in scraped data), custom enrichment fields (Apollo / Clearbit data is often outdated).

Always set a fallback: type the merge field → "Default value" → fallback text. "{{contact.first_name|there}}" renders "Hi there" if first name is empty, never "Hi {{contact.first_name}}."

Before activating: Sequences → Preview → load 5 real Contacts that have field gaps. If any rendering looks ugly, fix the fallback or remove the field.

Hyper-personalized first lines (mentioning the prospect's recent post, funding round, etc.) outperform merge-field-heavy emails 3-5x but cannot be sent at scale via merge fields. Use AI personalization tools or manual research for hot accounts.

Sequences → click your Sequence → Settings → Throttle: cap at 50-100 sends per day per sender for the first 30 days while warming up the inbox. Higher = spam risk for fresh sending domains.

Sending window: 8:00-17:00 in the prospect's local time zone (Close detects the timezone from Lead data). Emails at 6am or 11pm look automated and get worse reply rates.

Exit criteria (the most-skipped setting): auto-pause Sequence enrollment when (1) Contact replies, (2) meeting booked, (3) Opportunity moves to a specific stage, (4) Contact bounces, (5) Lead status changes to "Do Not Contact."

Without exit criteria, the Sequence keeps sending to people who already replied — fastest way to look like a robot and trigger spam reports.

Settings → Domain throttling: cap at 20 emails per day per recipient domain (so you do not blast 30 emails to 30 contacts at Stripe in a day — that gets the whole org domain flagged).

Pick 20 representative Contacts from your full target list. Enroll only those into the Sequence.

Watch the Sequence Inbox daily: bounces (should be <3%), out-of-office replies, actual replies. Bounces above 5% = data-quality problem, fix the list before scaling.

After 5 business days: measure reply rate. Healthy cold-outbound reply rate is 3-8% across the full Sequence (not per step). Under 1% = copy or targeting is wrong.

If reply rate is healthy, scale to the full list in batches: 50 enrollments/day → 100/day after week 1 → 150/day after week 2. Never enroll 500 on day 1 from a new Sequence.

If reply rate is poor: do not just "tweak subject line." Rewrite Email 1 fully, change targeting filter, or pause and re-evaluate the offer.

Build a Smart View that defines "everyone who should be in this Sequence right now." Example: Lead Status = New + Industry = SaaS + Employee Count 50-200 + no prior Sequence enrollment.

Sequences → click your Sequence → Auto-Enrollment → enable + pick the Smart View. Close enrolls new matching Contacts automatically as they enter the view.

Critical: set "max active enrollments per Sequence" to prevent runaway enrollment if your Smart View suddenly grows (e.g., bulk import floods in 5,000 new leads). Cap at 200-400 actives per Sequence.

Audit weekly: Sequences → click → Active Enrollments → spot-check 10 random Contacts. Are they real fits? Is the data quality OK? Auto-enrollment amplifies bad data 10x.

Sequences → click → Reports tab. Shows opens, clicks, replies, bounces, meetings per step.

Open rates above 60% with default open-tracking are noisy (Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates them). Treat open rate as a deliverability signal, not engagement.

Reply rate is the real signal: 3-8% healthy on cold outbound to a targeted list. Under 2% = list or copy problem. Over 10% = either your list is super warm or you are not at scale yet.

Meeting-booked rate: 0.5-2% of total Sequence sends become booked meetings. A 5-step Sequence to 500 Contacts (2,500 total sends) should produce 12-50 booked meetings.

Weekly iteration: kill the worst-performing step (drop reply rate the most), rewrite, A/B test the rewrite against the current version. Compounding small wins beats annual rewrites.