Reading the Sequence Dashboard
The Sequence Dashboard is where you check whether your Pulse sequences are actually working — how many emails went out, how many landed, and how leads engaged with them. This article walks through what each metric means and what "healthy" looks like.
Find it under Pulse › Sequence Dashboard.
The filter — All Sequences vs. a specific sequence
The dropdown in the top-right (defaults to All Sequences) controls the scope of every metric on the page.
All Sequences — aggregates every sequence in your org, active and paused
A specific sequence — narrows every card, chart, and funnel below to just that sequence
Use All Sequences when you want a big-picture health check. Switch to a single sequence when you're investigating a specific one or comparing sequences side-by-side (open two tabs).
Top-line metrics
Six cards across the top summarize send volume and engagement.
Total Emails Sent
The raw count of emails Pulse has sent in the selected scope. Includes every step across every enrolled lead.
Note this counts sends, not unique leads. A three-step sequence with 100 leads produces up to 300 sends.
Bounced
Emails that failed to deliver — the recipient's mail server rejected them.
What causes a bounce: bad or mistyped email addresses, full inboxes, corporate mail servers blocking unknown senders, retired addresses. Most bounces in practice are typos and out-of-date data.
Healthy range: under 2% of Total Emails Sent. Above 5% is a real problem — a high bounce rate hurts your sender reputation, which hurts open rates on the good emails.
If bounced is high: check the source of your leads. Bad OCR, incomplete manual entry, and old CSV uploads are the usual culprits.
Spam Complaints
The number of recipients who marked a Pulse email as spam in their inbox.
Healthy value: zero, or near zero. Spam complaints are the single strongest negative signal you can send to email providers, and even a small rate can start affecting deliverability.
If you see complaints: pause the sequence and review the content. Are you sending to leads who actually opted in? Is the subject line misleading? Are you sending too frequently?
Open Rate
Percentage of successfully-delivered emails that were opened.
Healthy range: 20-40% for B2B follow-up is normal. Above 40% is great. Under 15% suggests weak subject lines, low relevance, or a stale list.
Important caveat: open tracking works by loading a pixel image, and many mail clients (Apple Mail in particular) now pre-load images by default. This inflates Open Rate for iPhone-heavy audiences — treat it as directional, not exact.
Click Rate
Percentage of successfully-delivered emails where the recipient clicked at least one link.
Healthy range: 2-8% for cold follow-up, higher for warm event follow-up (5-15%). Click Rate is a much more honest signal than Open Rate because it requires deliberate action.
If clicks are low but opens are high: the subject line is doing its job but the body isn't. Look at the call-to-action.
Reply Rate
Percentage of successfully-delivered emails that got a reply back to the sender.
Healthy range: for post-event follow-up sent from a real person (which is Pulse's default), 3-10% is typical. Below 1% suggests the emails feel automated or don't ask a question worth answering.
If replies are low but clicks are strong: the offer is compelling but the ask isn't clear. Add a direct question or specific next step.
Activity Overview — Email volume vs. Bounced over time
The line chart in the middle of the page plots two series over time:
Emails Sent (purple) — how many emails went out that day
Bounced (orange) — how many bounced that day
What to look for:
Volume trend — is the sequence keeping cadence? Empty spikes mean a big batch shipped (say, a batch of leads captured at an event). Steady low volume means drip mode.
Bounce line tracking the send line — if the bounce line moves in step with the send line, you have a systemic data-quality issue (bad emails coming in with every batch). If bounces stay flat while sends spike, your data is healthy — the bounces are just a few outliers.
A sudden bounce spike with no matching send spike is worth investigating — probably a specific bad list got uploaded.
Funnel Conversion — where leads drop off
The horizontal bar chart on the right shows the funnel from Sent → Opened → Clicked → Replied.
Each bar's length is the count at that stage. The drop-offs between stages tell you where your sequence is working and where it isn't:
Big drop from Sent to Opened: subject-line problem. Rewrite for relevance.
Big drop from Opened to Clicked: body / call-to-action problem. Make the ask clearer or the value more concrete.
Big drop from Clicked to Replied: they engaged but didn't respond. Is the reply path obvious? Are you asking a question?
The Funnel Conversion view respects the filter — narrow to one sequence to see its specific drop-off pattern.
What "healthy" looks like — quick reference
Bounced
Under 2%
2-5%
Above 5%
Spam Complaints
0
1-2
3+
Open Rate
25-40%
15-25%
Under 15%
Click Rate
3-10%
1-3%
Under 1%
Reply Rate
3-10%
1-3%
Under 1%
These ranges are general benchmarks. Your specific benchmarks depend on your industry, list quality, and the type of event. What matters most is the trend — are your numbers improving over time as you tune subject lines and content?
When something looks wrong
Nothing has sent (Total Emails Sent is 0 but the sequence is active)
Check whether the sender has approved the MailerSend permission email. Until they do, sends are blocked.
Check that the sequence is linked to an event with scanned leads (or that a matching trigger has fired).
Bounce rate is high
Look at where your leads are coming from. Bad OCR? CSV upload with stale data? Manual typos?
Consider adding a lead-cleanup step before enrolling into Pulse.
Spam Complaints > 0
Pause the sequence.
Review the content — misleading subject line, too-frequent sends, or wrong audience are the usual causes.
Consider reducing send frequency and improving personalization before resuming.
Everything looks fine but sequences aren't driving replies
Check the funnel — where's the drop-off? That's what to fix.
Consider whether the email actually asks for a response, or just delivers information.
Related articles
Understanding Sequences — what Pulse is and how sequences work
Setting Up a Pulse Sequence — how to build one
Pausing, editing, or canceling a sequence — including how to stop a runaway
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