MCP

Sequences and follow-ups — Touch counts from 15-touch Agoge to two-email minimalism, what each bump adds, and the stop rules that are duties

This module owns the timeline: how many touches a prospect gets, the job each touch does, and the rules for stopping. What any single email says is Writing the email's subject; the mechanics of executing sends safely — volumes, schedules, infrastructure — belong to Sending operations. The split matters: a well-shaped sequence full of weak emails fails, and so does a strong email fired on a reckless schedule.

The pages:

  • Sequence architecture — The three touch-count schools — 15-touch Agoge, complaint-economics minimalism, the moderate 3-5 default — and why the 2024 bulk-sender rules outrank all three.
  • Follow-up emails — Why follow-ups roughly double replies (8.3% vs 4.1%, 20M emails), what a bump must add, and the same-thread versus new-thread schools with a hybrid default.
  • Breakup emails — The breakup-yes school's 10-33% final-touch reply claim, Josh Braun's case against goodbye theater, and the guilt-stripped closing note as the default.
  • Multichannel touches — What the vendor-reported 3-3.5x multichannel reply claim is worth, the 10-14-touch cadences sales courses teach, and the one-channel-at-a-time staffing rule.
  • Re-engagement — Josh Braun's status-quo question for stalled threads, why an aged list gets a fresh-angle campaign rather than a re-run, and who is never re-engaged.
  • Stopping rules and suppression — The three stop conditions — exhaustion, any reply, an opt-out in any wording — and why suppression is permanent, shared across campaigns, and re-import-proof.

Three genuine debates live here: how many touches, whether breakup emails belong, and whether follow-ups ride the original thread. Where sources disagree, pages present named approaches with Fits when / Avoid when criteria, Recognizable by cues, and a stated default — so you can choose deliberately, or detect which school a running campaign already follows.