GMass auto follow-ups already give you quite a bit of control inside each campaign. You can choose who gets each stage, how many days GMass should wait, whether the message goes out as a reply or a new thread, which days of the week you want to send, and more.

But there is another layer of auto follow-up controls in the GMass dashboard.

Go to Dashboard > Settings > Auto Follow-ups, and you will find seven account-level checkboxes. These settings handle the edge cases: What happens when one person at a company replies? How should GMass count skipped days? What if an email is blocked? Can you add a follow-up after the original campaign is already finished? And when you say a later stage should go to “Everyone,” do you really mean everyone?

Here is what all seven settings do — and when you would want to use each one.

1. Domain matching

What it does: If one person at a domain replies, GMass stops the campaign’s remaining auto follow-ups to the other recipients at that same domain.

Normally, GMass evaluates replies recipient by recipient. If you email five people at acme.com and one person replies, that person leaves the follow-up sequence. The other four people can continue receiving follow-ups.

Domain matching changes that behavior. Once GMass detects a reply from one person at acme.com, it treats the reply as engagement from the company and stops the remaining follow-ups to the other acme.com recipients in that campaign as well.

When domain matching is useful

Turn it on when your goal is to get one response from the organization, rather than a separate response from every person you contacted there.

For example, suppose you email ten employees at the same company to find the right person who handles purchasing. As soon as one employee replies, continuing to email the other nine may feel unnecessary — or, worse, make it look like your automation is not paying attention. Domain matching prevents that.

Leave it off when each recipient should be treated independently, even when several recipients work at the same company.

Read more about stopping auto follow-ups when anyone at a company replies.

2. Force prior conversation below message

What it does: GMass includes the prior email conversation underneath an auto follow-up even when that follow-up is sent as a new message with a different subject line.

When an auto follow-up is sent as a normal reply, Gmail already shows the earlier messages in the thread. But GMass also lets you send a follow-up as a new message — often with a new subject line — to give the email another chance to get noticed.

The tradeoff is context. A new thread can look disconnected from the email that came before it.

With Force prior conversation below message enabled, GMass adds the earlier conversation below the new follow-up. The recipient gets the attention-grabbing benefit of a new subject line while still being able to see the history and understand what you are following up about.

When to use it

This setting is especially useful when one or more of your follow-up stages:

• use a different subject line;
• are configured to start a new thread; or
• use a separate rich-text campaign as the follow-up message.

If every stage is sent as a reply in the same Gmail thread, the setting usually will not make a visible difference because the conversation is already there.

3. Count only selected days of week

What it does: When you have limited a campaign to specific sending days, GMass counts only those selected days when calculating the auto follow-up delay.

This is different from merely refusing to send on an excluded day.

Suppose your campaign sends on weekdays only, the original email goes out on Wednesday, and Stage 1 is scheduled for four days later.

With the default calculation, GMass counts all calendar days:

• Thursday is Day 1.
• Friday is Day 2.
• Saturday is Day 3.
• Sunday is Day 4.

The follow-up is due Sunday, but Sunday is not an allowed sending day, so GMass holds it until Monday.

With Count only selected days of week enabled, Saturday and Sunday do not count at all:

• Thursday is Day 1.
• Friday is Day 2.
• Saturday and Sunday are skipped.
• Monday is Day 3.
• Tuesday is Day 4.

The follow-up goes out Tuesday.

Why you might turn it on

The default calendar-day method can cause a large number of follow-ups that came due over the weekend to bunch up on Monday. Counting only your selected days preserves a business-day-style cadence and can spread that volume more evenly.

This setting matters only when you are using GMass’s Choose specific days feature. If all seven days are allowed, every day is already a selected day, so there is nothing to exclude from the count.

See more examples of how GMass counts selected sending days.

4. Strict count of days between stages

What it does: GMass preserves the intended delay between one follow-up stage and the next, based on when each recipient actually received the prior stage.

By default, the number of days on each auto follow-up stage is tied to the original campaign. That lets GMass “catch up” when a campaign is paused, delayed by Gmail’s sending limits, or otherwise falls behind.

That flexibility can occasionally compress the spacing between stages.

For example:

• Stage 1 is set for Day 2.
• Stage 2 is set for Day 5.
• The intended gap between those stages is three days.

If Stage 1 is delayed and a particular recipient does not receive it until Day 4, the normal schedule may still try to send Stage 2 around its original Day 5 target. GMass has protections against stages going out back-to-back — including a minimum gap in the auto follow-up logic — but the full three-day spacing may not be preserved.

With Strict count of days between stages turned on, Stage 2 is anchored to that recipient’s actual Stage 1 send. If Stage 1 went out on Day 4, Stage 2 waits the prescribed three days and goes out around Day 7.

When strict spacing is useful

Use it when the rhythm between messages matters more than keeping every stage close to its original calendar date. It is particularly helpful for long-running campaigns, campaigns that may hit sending limits, and sequences where one email logically builds on the previous email.

Leave it off when you prefer GMass’s more flexible catch-up behavior after delays.

Read more about strict spacing between auto follow-up stages.

5. Suppress blocks from later stages

What it does: If an email is blocked during a campaign sequence, GMass suppresses that address from the campaign’s remaining auto follow-up stages.

A block is not always the same thing as a permanent bounce. A receiving server may reject an email because of a temporary reputation issue, a policy decision, rate limiting, or some other condition that might not apply to the next message. That is why GMass does not, by default, treat every block as proof that the address should never be tried again.

With this checkbox enabled, however, a block tells GMass: Do not send any more stages of this campaign to this address.

That distinction is important. Suppress blocks from later stages is campaign-sequence suppression. It does not automatically ban the address from every future campaign.

How it differs from “Treat blocks as bounces”

GMass has a separate setting under Dashboard > Settings > Bounces called Treat blocks as bounces. That is the stronger option. It adds blocked addresses to your bounce list, which suppresses them from the remaining follow-ups and future campaigns.

If you already treat blocks as bounces, this auto follow-up checkbox is effectively redundant because the bounce-list suppression is broader.

Learn more about GMass block and bounce handling.

6. Allow adding follow-ups after campaign is sent

What it does: GMass keeps the campaign draft after the original campaign finishes, allowing you to return to the draft and add auto follow-up stages later.

The campaign draft is not just a copy of the original message. It is also the control center for that campaign’s settings and auto follow-up sequence.

By default, GMass can remove the draft after the campaign is finished sending. Once the draft is gone, you can no longer reopen it and add traditional auto follow-up stages to that campaign.

When Allow adding follow-ups after campaign is sent is enabled, GMass leaves the draft in Gmail after the original campaign completes. You can open it later, add or edit follow-up stages, and save the campaign again.

The important timing detail

Turn this setting on before you need it. It preserves campaign drafts going forward. It cannot bring back a draft that GMass already removed after a completed campaign.

Also remember that retained drafts remain in Gmail until you delete them yourself. That is the small housekeeping tradeoff for keeping the ability to extend old campaigns.

See how to add, edit, pause, or cancel auto follow-ups.

7. For ALL-based auto follow-ups, skip prior stage check

What it does: A later auto follow-up stage set to Everyone can go to recipients from the original campaign even if they did not receive the immediately preceding follow-up stage.

This one needs an example.

Suppose you configure this sequence:

• Stage 1: Send after three days to people who have not replied.
• Stage 2: Send after seven days to everyone.

Some recipients reply before Stage 1. As intended, they do not receive Stage 1.

Normally, GMass also checks whether a recipient received the prior stage before including that person in a later stage. So even though Stage 2 says Everyone, the Stage 2 audience is still constrained by who received Stage 1. The early responders who skipped Stage 1 also skip Stage 2.

Turn on For ALL-based auto follow-ups, skip prior stage check, and Stage 2 is allowed to go back to the original campaign audience. A recipient does not need to have received Stage 1 to qualify for the ALL-based Stage 2.

The auto follow-up engine also knows that, for those recipients, there is no prior-stage send time to use. It therefore evaluates their timing from the original campaign instead of waiting for a previous stage that never existed for them.

When you would use it

Use this setting when Everyone truly means everyone who received the original campaign.

For instance, your earlier stages might be behavioral reminders — “send if no reply” or “send if no click” — while your final stage is a universal announcement, deadline notice, correction, or last message that every original recipient should see.

The big caution

This option can intentionally bring people back into a sequence after they were excluded from the prior stage by that stage’s behavioral rule. In the example above, someone who replied and therefore skipped Stage 1 can still receive Stage 2 because Stage 2 says Everyone.

So check this box only when you mean that literally.

The setting affects only later stages whose action is Everyone. It does not make “No reply,” “No click,” “No open,” or other behavior-based stages ignore their normal eligibility rules.

A quick comparison of the seven settings

Setting	What changes when it is enabled
Domain matching	One reply can stop remaining follow-ups to other recipients at the same domain.
Force prior conversation below message	A new-thread follow-up can still include the earlier conversation for context.
Count only selected days of week	Excluded weekdays do not count toward the stage’s delay.
Strict count of days between stages	Each stage preserves its intended spacing from the recipient’s actual prior-stage send.
Suppress blocks from later stages	A blocked address is removed from the rest of that campaign’s follow-up sequence.
Allow adding follow-ups after campaign is sent	GMass retains the campaign draft so stages can be added after the original send is complete.
For ALL-based auto follow-ups, skip prior stage check	An Everyone stage can include original recipients who did not receive the immediately preceding stage.

These are advanced settings — which is a good thing

Most GMass users can create effective auto follow-up sequences without changing any of these checkboxes. The defaults are designed to work for the most common campaigns.

But “most common” is not the same as “every possible sequence.”

These seven settings let you define what GMass should do when real-world sending gets messy: multiple contacts at one company, new subject lines, weekends, delays, blocks, finished campaigns, and stages with audiences that do not neatly overlap.

That is the real value of these options. They do not just give you more switches to flip. They let you decide what the word follow-up should mean for your particular campaign.