How To Build Follow Up Sequences: The Keap CRM Campaign Builder

If I had a nickel for everyone who said...

• "Infusionsoft is hard."
• "It should be called 'Confusionsoft.'"
• "I just want to send an email."
• "Can you just do this for me?"

...I'd have a big jar full of nickels.

Look, I get it. Learning any new software is tough.

But the real reason marketing automation feels hard is that it forces you, the owner, to take a close look at your business and document how you actually attract, nurture, sell, deliver, and keep customers. Most owners have never written that down.

At least not in the detail it takes to automate it.

The ABCDEs of growing a business

• A - Attract / Acquire - you attract visitors to your website or place of business, which is the first step to acquiring names, prospects, and subscribers with whom you can now...
• B - Bond - you bond, connect, and nurture with multi-step, multi-media follow-up. This is the heart of your follow-up sequence, and it leads to...
• C - Convert - once you've built a bond and you offer what they need, they'll buy. Smart marketers give new customers the chance to buy more than one thing. You earn repeat orders and upsells by...
• D - Dazzle / Deliver a "WOW" Experience - trading your goods or services for money isn't enough to build a thriving business. You under-promise and over-deliver, which leads to...

• E - Endear - customers who are thrilled with you send referrals and testimonials. They become fans, talk you up online, send their friends and family, and defend you to strangers.

What to automate first

Don't try to automate all five letters at once. That's how owners end up with half a campaign and a software bill. Start with the follow-up that loses you money every week:

1. Speed-to-lead. A new inquiry gets a reply in minutes, not tomorrow. The first business to respond usually wins.
2. Quote chase. Every proposal gets followed up until it's a yes or a no. Most quotes die from silence, not from price.
3. New-lead nurture. People who aren't ready yet keep hearing from you until they are.
4. Past-customer reactivation. The people who already trust you hear from you again. Cheapest sale you'll ever make.

Today, AI can draft those messages, sort replies, and remind your team who to call. It still needs setup and oversight, and a human approving what goes out. That part hasn't changed since I recorded the video below.

Building a follow-up sequence in the Campaign Builder

Here's a walkthrough of building a follow-up sequence in the Keap Campaign Builder. The screens have changed over the years, but the logic is the same in any modern tool: a trigger, a wait, a message, a decision, repeat.

Why the CRM Didn't Fix It

I've used Salesforce since 2004, Keap since 2008, and HubSpot and Ontraport since 2014. Every tool on this page works. Plenty of owners still give up on it.

The tool was never the problem. A shiny CRM with no written process is just expensive dashboardery. Write down how a stranger becomes a customer first. Then pick the software that fits that process.

Get a process before you get the software →

Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.