How to Import Contacts Into HubSpot Sequence at Specific Steps?

[RegSchanzenbach]

Hi,

I’ve been sending some cold emails manually using a campaign template, but now I want to automate the process through HubSpot. I’ve already created my sequence, but the problem is that many contacts have already received one or more of the emails — so everyone is at a different stage.

I have an Excel sheet with each contact’s name, their current stage in the campaign, and which specific email in the sequence they should receive next (along with a planned send date).

How can I enroll these contacts into the sequence so that they start at the correct step instead of from the beginning?

Any guidance or best practices would be hugely appreciated!

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @RegSchanzenbach,

This is, as far as I know, currently not possible if you want to enroll these contacts in bulk. The easiest approach would be to clone your existing sequence and remove the steps that contacts have already completed. You would repeat this process as many times as you have different variations of this journey.

For example:

• Sequence contains emails 1, 2, 3, 4
• Contacts who already received email 1 get enrolled in a cloned version of the sequence with emails 2, 3, 4 only
• Contacts who already received email 1, 2 get enrolled in a cloned version of the sequence with emails 3, 4 only

In workflows, with automated marketing emails, this could be solved with branches which check if a contact was already sent a specific email. This is unfortunately not possible in sequences.

Best regards

[RegSchanzenbach · Accepted solution]

Hi Karsten, I think I solved the issue in an easier way, but I'd love if you can tell me if this will work:

• In HubSpot, I created a Segment.

• Used the filter “Email is equal to any of” and paste the emails of all contacts who are at the same stage of the campaign. THAT ALLOWED ME TO BULK SELECT THE CONTACTS IN THE EXCEL SPREADSHEET.

• Once the segment is created, I selected all contacts and enrolled them into the sequence, choosing the correct step for them to start at. E.g. Segment #1 goes for all contacts that needs to get started with email #3 of the sequence.
• Since I wanted the email to match the cadence I was using before, clicked “Send later” and chose the correct date. E.g. +15 biz days after my last manual email.

[karstenkoehler]

@RegSchanzenbach you're right, that's also a way to approach it 🙂