Evergreen email sequences are some of the most valuable automations you’ll ever set up.

When you get one right, they’re as close to a “set it and forget it” sales, marketing, and growth lever as you’ll ever pull.

And, believe it or not, you can create and run evergreen email sequences in Gmail.

In this article, I’ll walk you through creating evergreen emails — from a drip welcome series to a cold outreach sequence and everything in between. Plus, I’ll share a step-by-step guide for creating one with your Gmail account.

Evergreen Email Sequence: Table of Contents

• What Is Evergreen Email Marketing?
• The Easiest Way to Set Up an Evergreen Email Sequence
• How to Set Up Your Evergreen Email Sequences in Gmail
• Evergreen Email Sequence: Next Steps

What Is Evergreen Email Marketing?

Before we get too deep, I want to make sure we’re all using the term “evergreen email” the same way — because I’ve seen it tossed around a bunch of different ways over my many, many years in the email world.

The best definition of evergreen email I can give you is:

Evergreen email marketing is creating an automated email and/or email sequence that remains relevant and valuable over time — and goes out automatically when someone takes a specific action.

It has three MAJOR pros:

• It’s a one-time effort with a long-term payoff. Yes, you may tweak your evergreen sequences from time to time, but the vast majority of the work takes place up front.
• It’s automated, saving you a ton of time. You don’t have to do anything to send out your evergreen email — the machines handle that.
• Automated, relevant emails are highly engaging and highly lucrative.

Unlike traditional campaigns that may have a limited shelf life, evergreen emails are designed to be relevant for an extended period, making them a savvy choice for any email marketing strategy.

What are some examples of evergreen email marketing sequences?

Some of the best examples of evergreen email sequences are:

Welcome series. This is an email flow that introduces your product/company, gets new customers or participants excited and educated, and nurtures both brand loyalty and engagement.

Lead magnet delivery plus nurturing. A person signs up to receive a lead magnet, like a PDF or eBook. They receive that lead magnet free in the first email in the series, then continue to receive nurturing emails to try to convert them into customers.

Product education and onboarding. These sequences help new users become acclimated to your product. They can help reduce churn.

Cold outreach sequence. If you’ve nailed your cold outreach messaging, you can set up a campaign that automatically goes out to new prospects whenever you add them to a Google Sheet.

Cart abandonment sequence. When a customer on your eCommerce site leaves a product in their cart, they receive a sequence of emails encouraging them to complete checkout. (Sometimes with a discount, sometimes with just a sense of urgency.)

Content drips. Educational emails that drip out over time to help cultivate long-term interest.

Inbound lead follow-up sequence. When someone on your website requests a demo or otherwise is looking for more info, they’re entered into a sequence that includes a scheduling link — followed by more emails nudging them until they respond.

Re-engagement campaign. These emails try to get inactive email subscribers and/or customers to once again engage with your brand. They can have a lower success rate than other automations — but often, they bring at least some otherwise lost customers back into the fold.

Lost deal revival sequence. Automatically send a sequence to past leads that didn’t work out to see if they’re now interested in your solution.

Can I create evergreen cold email sequences?

Yes, absolutely.

Keep in mind that just because a sequence is evergreen, that doesn’t mean its content is static.

You can use mail merge to bring in details about each prospect so when they receive their message, it’s personalized to them and their pain point.

How long should an evergreen email sequence be?

It really depends on the sequence.

I’ve seen welcome campaigns that are a single email and some that are dozens.

Some cold emailers will send one outreach message, some will follow up daily for weeks.

You’re aiming for a balance — enough to prompt action, but not so much that it’s a turn-off.

Also, note: Not every evergreen series has to be a drip campaign where everyone gets every single message. You can set up end triggers — for instance, sending messages in the sequence until a person replies or clicks.

Can I have more than one evergreen sequence going at a time?

You not only “can” do that — you should.

Because, once again, automations are incredibly effective tools that require little to no ongoing work on your part.

The Easiest Way to Set Up an Evergreen Email Sequence

I’m now going to show you the easiest way to set up an evergreen email sequence in Gmail.

To pull this off, you’ll need a Chrome extension called GMass.

GMass actually transforms your Gmail account into an email marketing platform — you can use it to send everything from newsletters to sales outreach to mail merge campaigns all from Gmail.

It also makes it dead simple to set up evergreen email sequences in Gmail.

Why is it better to set up an evergreen sequence with GMass (not with Mailchimp or ConvertKit)?

There are three big advantages of using GMass for your evergreen email marketing sequences over apps like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, and Constant Contact.

1. GMass supports all types of evergreen campaigns. GMass is the only software that’s versatile enough to allow cold outreach, traditional marketing, and mail merge campaigns. Software like Mailchimp is only for traditional marketing; Klaviyo is even a step narrower, for eCommerce automations. GMass will work for anything you need to do.
2. Everything happens in Gmail. You don’t need to learn a new platform to create evergreen email sequences with GMass, since everything happens inside Gmail. You create your campaign in the Gmail compose window.
3. It’s way more affordable. That’s right: GMass gives you unlimited everything with your plan. So this won’t be a situation like Mailchimp where it starts cheap and then explodes in price once you’re sending to a larger list.
4. GMass allows for as many stages as you need. With GMass, you have unlimited sequence stages — so go ahead and send as many emails as you need.

How to Set Up Your Evergreen Email Sequences in Gmail

Make sure you have GMass installed

The first step is installing the GMass Chrome extension. You can get that going from the Chrome Web Store.

You don’t need to put in a credit card to try out GMass — you don’t even need to fill out a form. Once you’ve installed the Chrome extension, you’ll automatically be up and running.

Create a Google Sheet where you’ll add your contacts

GMass uses a Google Sheet of contacts which, again, is designed to keep your life simple.

At a minimum, your Google Sheet needs a column for email addresses. But if you want to use Google Sheets mail merge personalization, you can add more columns to do so.

You can put as many contacts as you need in the Google Sheet. (And don’t worry about getting them all in there now; you’ll be able to add contacts in the future and they’ll automatically receive your evergreen sequence.)

Note: You don’t have to title your Google Sheet “Evergreen [whatever]” like I did.

Create the campaign

Now that we’ve got our list of contacts, we’ll put together our campaign.

In Gmail, click the Google Sheets icon that GMass added next to the Gmail search bar.

Select your Google Sheet of contacts from the dropdown. Then click Connect to Spreadsheet.

GMass brings in all your contacts from the sheet. Now you can type up the first message in your evergreen sequence.

You’ll see in the email above I’m running a Gmail mail merge — using mail merge tags to include each contact’s first name and company name.

Add your follow-up emails

Now open up the GMass settings box for this campaign. You can do that by clicking the little arrow next to the red GMass button in the Compose window.

Go to the Auto Follow-ups section of the settings box.

Here, you’ll be able to set up some important things:

• How many days after the initial message to send each follow-up.
• Any stop trigger, for instance stopping the sequence if someone replies. To create a drip campaign where everyone gets every email in the sequence, choose “Everyone” from the dropdown menu.
• What time to send that message (optionally).

Now you can type in your first follow-up message right in the box. It will go out as a plain-text reply to your initial message as scheduled.

If you want more options — like using rich text formatting and HTML, or having the follow-up go out with a separate subject line in a new thread — use the rich-text options instead.

Here are instructions for creating rich-text auto follow-ups. (Basically, you’ll need to type each one in the Gmail compose window. It’s easy, though not as easy as plunking in plain text follow-ups right here in the settings box.)

You can now repeat this process for as many auto follow-up stages as you need. (Once again: There’s no limit on how many stages you can use in GMass.)

Make your list dynamic and recurring

We now want to make our campaign dynamic and recurring.

When we make the campaign dynamic, it allows us to use the Google Sheet of contacts as our source of truth. If we remove someone from that sheet, they’ll stop getting auto follow-ups, for example.

To make the list dynamic, you’ll need to add a word to the email alias address GMass gave your list in the compose window. Click into the email address and add “-dynamic” before the @ symbol.

Now we’ll make it a recurring campaign, so every time we add someone new to the Google Sheet they’ll automatically begin our evergreen sequence.

Back in the GMass settings box, head down to the Schedule section.

Check the box next to Repeat. Then choose the frequency at which you want GMass to check your Google Sheet for new rows. In my example, I’ll have it check every hour.

And that’s all it takes to create this automation.

Initiate the campaign

While you’re in the settings box, you can also fine tune other settings you want (like scheduling a time for the campaign to go out).

You can also send yourself a test of the entire sequence.

Once everything’s ready to go, click the red GMass button to send the campaign. Do NOT click the usual blue Gmail send button, or none of the GMass features will work.

Now your evergreen campaign will run, indefinitely, until you stop it.

Monitor and edit your campaign as you need

Even though evergreen email campaigns are set-it-and-forget-it by nature, there’s still more you can do after your campaign is running.

If you need to edit your campaign, go into the Drafts folder in Gmail. Find the draft, make your changes, and click the SAVE Changes button in the GMass settings box.

There are also plenty of other things you can do now that your campaign has started:

• Monitor your analytics. You can even share them.
• Manage your replies using GMass’s unique Reply Project tool.
• Create a follow-up campaign (for instance, one to everyone who goes through your sequence without ever opening a message — and yes, this can be automated too).
• Edit your automated follow-ups.

But, of course, you don’t have to do any of that. You can keep letting your sequence run untouched and keep getting all the value out of it that you’re looking for.

Evergreen Email Sequence: Next Steps

Evergreen emails are a powerful tool in your arsenal — automations with relevant and timeless content that indefinitely sell, nurture, and more without any extra effort on your part.

The best part: With GMass, you can create an evergreen email sequence inside Gmail and have it up and running in less than a half hour.

To get started with GMass, just install the extension in Google Chrome.

Come see why nearly 400,000 people use (and love) GMass — and why they’ve given it an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars across tens of thousands of reviews.