Outreach

Outreach is how your organization finds businesses that might want what you sell, keeps a record of each one, and writes to them from your own mailbox. You decide how many go out a day and which ones you read first.

Before you start

Before a single email can leave, you need all of these. The settings page lists whatever is still missing underneath the main switch.

• A connected mailbox. Outreach sends from a real mailbox you own: Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, or any provider with IMAP and SMTP. See Mailboxes for outreach for how to connect one.
• The country your leads are in. The United States and the United Kingdom have different law, and the platform applies whichever one you choose.
• Who the email is from. A business name and, depending on the country, a postal address.

Setting it up, field by field

Everything below is on Organization → Outreach. Change as much as you like and press Save settings once at the bottom.

The switch

• Which country are your leads in? Choose United States — CAN-SPAM or United Kingdom — PECR. New organizations start on the United States because that is where this platform operates; change it if your leads are elsewhere. Nothing can be sent until a country is chosen, and the two countries accept different evidence that a business may be emailed at all. See What the platform will not let you send below.
• Send emails to leads. The main switch, and it starts off. While it is off your seats can still find, research and qualify businesses; they just cannot email any of them. It will not turn on until the sender details below are filled in.

Test mode

Covered in full under Test mode below. It sits directly under the main switch because it is the thing to use before you let anything reach a stranger.

Who the emails come from

• Business name shown as the sender. In the United States this is optional and defaults to your organization’s own name. In the United Kingdom the field is called Registered business name and it must be the name your business is registered under, because it is shown at the foot of every message.
• Postal address. A PO box or a virtual mailbox is fine. In the United Kingdom it is required. In the United States the field reads Postal address (optional in the US), and if you leave it empty a tick box appears asking you to confirm that you understand US law expects one and that you take responsibility for sending without it. The date you confirmed, and who confirmed it, are then shown on the page.
• Sending mailbox. The mailbox the organization sends from, and the same one replies are read from. If the list is empty, buttons appear to connect Gmail, Outlook, or Other provider (IMAP/SMTP). A seat that has a mailbox of its own sends from that one instead. This inbox is always read, and it is where replies to a send-only seat mailbox are directed, so it cannot be switched off.
• Folder to read replies from. INBOX unless you have set up a rule that files replies somewhere else. A seat’s own mailbox is always read from INBOX, and a send-only one is not read at all.
• Company register key. United Kingdom only, and free to obtain. Before a company can be emailed under legitimate interest the platform checks the official Companies House register itself and reads back the legal form and whether the company is still active. Add the key under Credentials and it will appear in this list.

How much, and how carefully

• Most messages a day. Twenty by default. This is the limit for each mailbox, not for the organization as a whole. It protects one address’s reputation, so a seat with its own mailbox gets its own allowance. A brand-new sending address is also held below this number while it warms up: 5 a day for the first week, 10 a day for the second, and your own limit from day 15. Setting it to 0 pauses sending without touching the main switch.
• Who checks a message before it goes. Me, for the first few holds messages for your approval until a set number have actually been sent, then lets the rest go automatically. Me, every single one never stops asking.
• How many is “the first few”. Ten by default. Set it to 0 to approve nothing by hand. The count is of messages genuinely sent, so a failed send never shortens your review window.

Who handles replies

• Seat. Pick the seat that reads and answers replies, or leave it on Nobody — replies are recorded and left for me. Requests to unsubscribe and failed deliveries are always handled automatically and never reach a seat; this setting is only for the replies that need reading.

Sorting the post

• Check what each message is before giving it to a seat. On by default. A quick, cheap read of each email that looks like a real person writing, so pitches aimed at you, recruiters, “no thanks” replies and mail meant for somebody else do not each cost a full piece of work. You still see every one of them, with the reason, and can process any of them anyway. Requests to stop and failed deliveries are never decided this way. Covered in full under Inbox triage below.
• Seat that handles support. Where a message that reads like an existing customer needing help goes instead of to whoever would normally answer. It also works the other way round: a sales enquiry arriving at this seat’s own address is handed to the seat that answers new enquiries. Leave it empty and nothing moves.

New enquiries

• Answer people who email us out of the blue. Off by default, and a separate switch from the main one on purpose: letting your seats write to businesses you chose is a different decision from letting them answer anybody who writes to you. Covered in full under New enquiries below.
• Seat that answers them. Who answers an enquiry that arrived at the organization’s own address. An enquiry that arrived in a seat’s own mailbox is answered by that seat whatever this says. Leave it on Nobody and those enquiries are still recorded, but they come to you instead.
• Follow up with people who wrote in. On by default. If somebody emailed you, got an answer and then went quiet, the seat that answered writes to them again in the same thread, from the same address. Set How many follow-ups (at most 2 per conversation) and Days apart (never fewer than 3, counted from your last message). Each follow-up tells them to reply STOP, and follow-ups end for good once they reply, ask to stop, bounce, or you mark them not interested.

Press Save settings. If anything required is still missing, it is listed under the main switch and nothing will send until it is supplied.

Test mode: see the email before a stranger does

Turn on Send every email to me instead of to the lead and fill in Send the tests to with one address, normally your own. It is required while test mode is on.

While it is on:

• Every outreach email goes to you. First messages, follow-ups and replies to people who wrote back.
• The subject says who it would have gone to. It is prefixed [TEST → someone [at] example.com], and the first line of the message repeats it along with the company name. The @ is written out as [at] on purpose, so the real address cannot be read back out of a bounce.
• No company is contacted and nothing is recorded against them. No message is counted against that lead’s three-message limit, their status does not change, and their “last contacted” date does not move. The same email can still go out for real once you switch test mode off.
• The rules still apply. A company that asked to be left alone, or one you have no lawful basis to email, is refused in test mode exactly as it is otherwise. Test mode changes where an email goes, never whether it was allowed.
• It does spend one of the day’s sends. A redirected message is a real email leaving your mailbox, so it counts against that mailbox’s daily limit and its warm-up.
• The unsubscribe link in a test email does nothing. That is deliberate: clicking it in your own test must never silence a real prospect.

A yellow banner reading Test mode is on appears on the Leads page, the Outreach settings page and the Inbox, with a Turn it off button. Everything test mode has delivered to you is listed on the settings page under Emails sent to you as tests, and stays listed after you switch it off so there is a record that those messages reached you and not the companies named in them.

To switch it off, untick the box on the Outreach settings page and press Save settings.

How leads get found and recorded

Leads are found by your seats, not by this page. A seat that has the lead tools attached adds a business the moment it finds one, records the company name, website, contact address and where that address was published, and updates the stage as things happen. You can also correct anything by hand.

The Leads page lists every business the organization has found, with a filter by stage and a search over company, website and contact. Each row shows:

Above the list are cards for Sent today (added up across every mailbox, each with its own limit), Replied, Interested and Awaiting approval.

Open on any row shows that one business: the messages you have sent, the replies they sent back, anything waiting for your decision, their stage and notes, and a place to record consent.

The line that says a seat is not a person

By default every message a seat sends (a first cold email, a follow-up, an answer to a reply, or a message you approved by hand) ends with one sentence saying the sender is an AI assistant, for example “Sarah is an AI assistant at Example Services Ltd.” It is on for every organization and every seat until you change it.

You choose the wording on each seat’s Profile & mailbox page. You can put it in your own voice, and it has to still say plainly that the seat is software. Wording that implies a person wrote the message is refused.

Sending without it

Whether people must be told is the sender’s duty, not the platform’s, so you can send without the line. On the Outreach settings page, under The line that says a seat is not a person, tick:

Only the organization owner can check it, and the box is the whole mechanism: there is no separate switch, and the line cannot be turned off without it. Who confirmed, and the date, are recorded and shown on the page. Clear it and the line comes straight back on every message: withdrawing the confirmation is how you turn it on again.

It is an organization-wide decision. There is no per-seat version, because one prospect being told and the next not, depending on which seat answered, is worse than either answer on its own.

While it is off, each seat’s profile page says Off for this organization (owner’s choice) with a link back to the setting, and the preview of how an email ends no longer shows the line. Anything you had written as the wording is kept, and is used again if you put the line back on.

What is not optional

A seat never claims to be a person, in either position of that setting. It is told never to claim to be a person, and to say it is an AI assistant if somebody asks whether they are talking to one. Wording that says a human wrote the message is refused whether the line is being sent or not. Choosing not to volunteer the sentence is yours to make; choosing to deny it is not.

What the platform will not let you send

Every message is checked before it leaves, in code, whatever a seat has been told to do. A send is refused when:

• Outreach is off, or a required setting is missing.
• The lead has no contact address yet.
• They have unsubscribed, bounced, said they are not interested, already become a customer, or been disqualified.
• Their address or its whole domain is on your do-not-contact list.
• There is no lawful basis recorded. In the United States that means either a business email published on the company’s own website (on that site’s own domain, not a personal Gmail, with the page it appears on recorded), or consent you have written down. In the United Kingdom it means either a company the official register confirms is an active corporate subscriber, or consent. In the United States, leads outside the US are refused.
• The company register says the company is dissolved or being wound up. This is refused in both countries.
• They have already had three messages, or the last one was fewer than three days ago. These two protect the recipient and are fixed; they are not settings.
• The sending mailbox has reached today’s limit, or is still warming up.

When a send is refused the reason is recorded against that lead, so you can open the lead and read why rather than guessing.

Unsubscribing and the do-not-contact list

Every cold message carries an unsubscribe link, and mail clients with their own unsubscribe button use it too. Clicking it needs no account and no second confirmation: one click and that address is suppressed. The page never shows the address back, and clicking twice is harmless.

The Never contact panel on the Outreach settings page lists everyone who has asked to be left alone and every address that has bounced, with the reason:

• Used the unsubscribe link
• Asked by reply: they wrote back asking to stop, and the platform recognized it without a seat being involved
• Address does not exist: the message bounced
• Added by you

You can add an entry yourself: choose One address or Whole domain, type it in, and press Add permanently.

Replies from leads

Your mailbox is read automatically, from the folder you named, as often as you choose. What happens next depends on what arrived:

• A bounce: the address is suppressed and the lead is marked bounced. No seat is involved and nothing is billed. An address that soft-bounces repeatedly within two weeks is suppressed too.
• A request to stop: suppressed, and the lead is marked unsubscribed. Again decided in code, so it holds even when nothing else is running.
• Anything that needs reading: the lead is marked as having replied, the message is stored against them, and it is handed to the seat you nominated under Who handles replies.

That seat answers in the same email thread, from the same address the prospect already knows. An answer is a conversation rather than an advertisement, so it carries no marketing footer and no unsubscribe link. The line saying the sender is software is always added, though, and cannot be switched off.

An answer is not cold outreach, so the three-message limit, the three-day gap and the daily sending limit do not apply to it. One limit does: at most three answers to any one company in a day, which is what stops an automatic out-of-office reply and your seat answering each other forever.

How often an inbox is checked

Under Check this inbox on the outreach settings page, choose how often your organization’s mailbox is opened:

• Every 5 minutes (the default, and what every mailbox did before this setting existed)
• Every 15 minutes
• Every 30 minutes
• Every hour
• Every 6 hours
• Once a day

Five minutes is as often as any inbox can be checked. That is a platform limit, not a default you can lower: opening a mailbox more often than that is how a mail provider starts refusing the connection, and eventually locks the account. A slower interval is sometimes the better choice, since an address that rarely gets replies does not need opening 288 times a day. Remember, though, that it also delays how quickly a reply is picked up, including a request to stop.

Every seat with a mailbox of its own chooses its own interval, on its Profile & mailbox page, because the choice belongs to the inbox being opened. Your organization’s own mailbox has one extra rule: it is always read, so “send only” is not offered for it. It is where requests to stop arrive.

What happened at the last check

Each address under Mailboxes in use, and each seat’s own mailbox card, tells you when it was last opened and what came out of it:

• “Checked 3 minutes ago · 0 new messages”: it is working. The count is what that one check read, not a running total.
• “Tried 4 minutes ago: the mailbox could not be read”: the platform could not open it. Usually a password that has changed or a connection that needs reconnecting. This line is the only way to notice that: an inbox nothing can read looks exactly like an inbox nobody has replied to.
• “Next check in about an hour”: when it is due again, on the interval you chose.
• A send only mailbox has no line here at all. It is never opened, so there is nothing to report. See send-only mailboxes.

Next to it is Check now, which opens that one mailbox immediately without waiting for its interval. Use it straight after reconnecting a mailbox, to see whether the fix worked. It queues the check and the page tells you so; reload in a moment and the “Checked…” line will have moved. One mailbox can be checked this way once a minute, for the same reason the five-minute floor exists.

Approving a message

While you are still in your approval window, nothing goes out until you say so. Held messages appear in two places: your Inbox, and the lead’s own page under Waiting for your decision.

You see the subject and the message. For a reply you also see what the prospect wrote, above the answer, because deciding whether an answer is right is impossible without it. Then:

• Approve and send (or Approve and reply) sends it. With test mode on the button instead reads Approve & send to me, and a note on the row spells out where it will actually go.
• Decline stops it permanently. That exact message will not be sent later; the seat has to write something different, or leave the lead alone.

New enquiries: people who write to you first

Everything above is about businesses you chose to write to. Sooner or later somebody emails your business who you have never contacted: from your website, from a card, from a recommendation. This is what happens to that email.

It starts off. While it is off, mail that matches none of your leads is left in the mailbox for you to read, as it always has been. Turn it on with Answer people who email us out of the blue on Organization → Outreach. It only has any effect while the main Send emails to leads switch is on as well.

While it is on, an email from somebody new is recorded as a lead marked New enquiry, their message is stored against it, and it is given to a seat to answer in the same thread from the same address they wrote to. The seat is chosen in this order:

• The seat whose own mailbox it arrived in. If a seat has a mailbox of its own and somebody emails it, that seat answers, because it is that seat’s inbox. This never happens for a send-only mailbox, which the platform does not open at all.
• Otherwise the seat you picked under Seat that answers them. That covers anything sent to the organization’s own address.
• Otherwise it comes to you. If you picked nobody, or the seat is paused or empty, the enquiry is still recorded and you are told about it; nothing is thrown away. If the seat exists but has not been given the tool that sends replies, it writes you a draft instead of sending anything.

If they are at a company you already have on your list, their message is recorded against that company rather than as a second one, because a colleague of a prospect is the same firm. A private address at Gmail, Outlook, iCloud and the like is treated as one person rather than one company, so two strangers who both happen to use Gmail are two separate records.

What is never answered

An outreach mailbox receives a great deal that is not a person asking a question, and answering any of it would be your business’s own address writing back to a machine. These are ignored and left in the mailbox for you:

• Newsletters and mailing lists: the reply would go to the list.
• Automatic replies, out-of-office notices and receipts that say they were machine-generated.
• Bulk mail that marks itself as bulk, and anything your mail server flagged as spam.
• Addresses nobody reads: no-reply@, bounces@, postmaster@ and the rest of that family.
• Anyone on your do-not-contact list, or whose whole domain is on it. Writing in does not cancel having asked to be left alone.
• Your own mailboxes. A forwarding rule or a seat copying in the organization’s address would otherwise have the platform corresponding with itself forever.
• Mail sent by this platform: including another business running it. Every email that leaves here is stamped, so if a company you wrote to answers you automatically, that answer comes to you rather than to a seat. Two businesses answering each other has nothing to stop it otherwise.
• Bounces and requests to stop, which are handled as they always were; see above.
• Messages with nothing in them: an attachment on its own, or a read receipt.

What still applies

• Your approval setting. Me, every single one and Me, for the first few both hold an answer to an enquiry exactly as they hold a cold message. Nothing reaches a stranger before you have said so, if that is how you set it.
• Test mode. While it is on, the answer is delivered to you and the enquirer gets nothing.
• At most three answers to one company in a day: the same stop that keeps a seat and an autoresponder from writing to each other forever. It covers an enquirer who keeps writing too: their second and third messages are ordinary replies in the thread they started, answered in it, and bounded by that same three-a-day limit.
• A daily limit on how many enquiries one mailbox will answer, currently 20. It counts people writing in for the first time. Newsletters and spam that were ignored before reaching it do not count, and neither do an enquirer’s own follow-ups. Over the limit, the rest are left unread in the mailbox and you are told once that day which address it was.

What it does not do

• It never adds them to a sequence. A lead marked New enquiry is refused for cold outreach, so no seat working your prospect list can pitch to somebody who only wrote in. Follow-ups to an enquirer, if you leave them on, stay in the thread they started.
• It does not spend your sending allowance. Answering somebody who wrote to you is a conversation, not a campaign, so it costs nothing against the daily send limit, the three-message limit or the three-day gap.
• It does not quote a price or invent a fact. The seat is told to answer from your knowledge bases and from nothing else, and to propose a next step rather than commit the business to anything.

Every enquiry shows up on the Leads page as an ordinary lead you can open, with a New enquiry badge on their message. Answers waiting for your approval appear in your Inbox alongside everything else.

Inbox triage: sorting mail before a seat reads it

A business’s public address gets a great deal of mail from real people that is not worth a reply. Vendors pitching you. Recruiters. Somebody telling you they have gone with another supplier. Somebody who meant to write to a different company. From the outside, every one of those looks exactly like a real enquiry, and without triage each one costs a full piece of work: a seat reads it and concludes there is nothing to do.

Inbox triage is a quick, cheap read of each message first. It is on by default, under Sorting the post on Organization → Outreach. It only ever looks at mail that has already got past the fixed rules. Newsletters, mailing lists, automatic replies, failed deliveries, spam your mail server flagged and anyone on your do-not-contact list never reach it, because those rules have already dealt with them for free.

Two checks, in order

The first and usual reader is a decision check. It is not asked to write anything: it is handed the message and the list of possible answers, and it replies with how likely each answer is, plus a separate likelihood that the sender is asking you to stop. That is why the line you see on a set-aside message carries numbers rather than a written sentence, for example “92% confident. Chance they were asking us to stop: 3%.” It is cheap to run.

Behind it sits a second, general-purpose check, which is asked only when the first cannot be reached or gives an answer that cannot be used. It answers in words, so a message it sorted carries its own short reason instead of the numbers. Either check on its own is enough, and when both are needed for one message both are charged, because two reads really did happen. Your daily allowance still counts messages, so a message that needed both only uses one of them.

Which check decided a given message is recorded against it, so a decision that surprises you can always be traced to the reader that made it.

What it can decide, and what happens

• An enquiry, or anything it is unsure about: given to a seat to answer, exactly as it would have been. This is also what happens whenever it is only fairly sure rather than sure.
• A support request: given to your Seat that handles support, if you have picked one. It works in both directions: a sales enquiry that lands at the support seat’s own address is handed to the seat that answers new enquiries instead. Pick nobody and nothing moves.
• Not interested: the company is marked not interested, which stops the sequence. Nothing is sent and nobody is asked to answer.
• A pitch to you, or mail for somebody else: set aside. Nothing is sent, nobody is asked to answer, and for a stranger no company record is created at all.
• Possibly asking to stop: added to your do-not-contact list, exactly as a plainly worded request would be. It errs that way on purpose: honoring a request that was not quite made costs one conversation, and missing one that was made is a compliance failure. This one is asked as its own separate question and is held to a lower bar than every other answer (an even chance is enough to stop), and it wins whenever it fires, even over a plain “no thanks”.

What it cannot decide

• Requests to stop and failed deliveries are never decided this way. Those are fixed rules in the platform that apply whatever this switch says, and they keep working when nothing else does. Triage can add to your do-not-contact list; it can never take anything off it.
• It never creates work and never sends anything. The only things it can do are withhold a piece of work, move one between two of your own seats, or stop sending to somebody. All three are cheaper or safer than doing nothing.
• It never reads instructions out of an email. The message is handed over as data in its own named fields, with a fixed brief, and the only thing the answer can say is which of the categories above it is. An email telling it what to do cannot make it answer anything else, and text like that counts against the sender, not for them.

Nothing is hidden from you

Every set-aside message stays visible with the reason it was set aside:

• From a company on your list: on that company’s page, under their message, as a line beginning Triage:.
• From a stranger: in Set aside on the Leads page. No company record is created for them until you ask for one.

Both carry a Process anyway button. Pressing it records the message and gives it to a seat exactly as if it had never been set aside, so disagreeing with the decision costs you one click, not a support ticket. The one case with no button is a message that was added to your do-not-contact list: the way back from an opt-out is still recording consent evidence, which is deliberately the only route.

When it does not run

Any of these leaves every message handled exactly as it would be with the switch off (given to a seat, as before):

• You switched it off.
• Both checks are unavailable, too slow, or give an answer that cannot be used. One of the two being unavailable is not enough; the other one answers.
• Your balance is empty. The check is cheap but it is not free, and it is charged to your credits as Inbox triage, which is far less than the piece of work it usually avoids.
• It has already looked at 500 messages for this organization today. Past that the day’s remaining mail is handled the ordinary way.
• There is nobody to give the message to anyway. With no seat answering replies there is no work to save, so nothing is spent finding out what the message was.

Send-only mailboxes: send as a person without reading their mail

A seat with its own mailbox normally does both: it sends from the address, and the platform opens that inbox on the interval you chose to match replies, honor requests to stop, and record failed deliveries. That is right for an address whose job is outreach. It is the wrong thing to do to a real person’s working mailbox, which also carries their own mail, their suppliers’ invoices and mail from their accountant. With new enquiries switched on, a seat would also answer any stranger’s message in that inbox.

So a seat mailbox can be marked send only. On the seat’s Profile & mailbox page, the one control Check this inbox carries both halves of the decision: how often, or never.

• Send only — never open this inbox
• Every 5 minutes, every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, every hour, every 6 hours, or once a day

Then:

• The platform never opens that inbox. It is not opened and then skipped; no connection is made to it at all. Nothing in it is read, nothing in it is marked as read, and nothing in it ever reaches a seat.
• Mail still goes out as that person. The From line is their address and their name, exactly as before. The prospect sees no difference.
• Replies are steered to your organization’s own mailbox using the standard Reply-To header, so a reply arrives where the platform does read. It is still matched to the right company, conversation and seat, because a thread is identified by the message it answers rather than by the inbox it landed in.
• The answer still comes from the seat’s address. A prospect who has had a message from sarah@ keeps corresponding with sarah@, and the answer carries the same Reply-To so their next reply comes back to you too.
• Its daily limit and warm-up are unchanged. A send-only address is still an address that sends, so it still appears under Mailboxes in use (marked send only) with its own allowance and its own ramp.

The platform enforces these rules for you:

• You need an organization sending mailbox first. Send-only replies are directed there, so with none chosen the option is not offered, since replies would have nowhere to go. If your organization later loses that mailbox, a send-only seat stops sending rather than mailing from an inbox nobody opens, its page says so, and the control is locked until you choose a sending mailbox again.
• Your organization’s own mailbox is always read. It cannot be made send-only, because replies to every seat’s messages arrive there, including every request to be left alone. If a seat happens to be bound to that same mailbox, the address is still read, as the organization’s.

When something fails

• “Outreach is switched off” on the Leads page. Exactly what it says: leads are still being found, nothing is being emailed. Open the settings and turn the switch on.
• The settings page lists missing items under the switch. Fill those in. The switch has no effect until you do.
• A seat has a mailbox saved but it cannot be used. Shown as a warning on that seat’s Profile & mailbox page. The seat sends nothing at all rather than quietly writing from a different address in the middle of a conversation. Reconnect the mailbox, or clear it so the seat uses the organization’s mailbox instead.
• A send-only seat says it has nowhere to send replies. Its own mailbox is fine; your organization’s sending mailbox is not. Choose a working one under Sending mailbox. Until you do, that seat sends nothing, and its Check this inbox control is locked, because every other value would start reading a mailbox you asked nobody to open. See send-only mailboxes.
• A mailbox says “Tried N minutes ago: the mailbox could not be read”. The platform cannot open it. Usually a password has changed, or the connection needs reconnecting under Credentials. Fix it and press Check now to find out immediately whether it worked, rather than waiting for the next scheduled check.
• A message was set aside. You get an email saying one inbound message could not be processed, with who it was from and its subject. Nothing was recorded from it. If its text looks like a request to stop, the email says so plainly and asks you to act on it in your own mail client straight away.
• Everything stops at the daily limit. Check Mailboxes in use on the settings page. It shows each address, how much of today it has spent, and whether it is still warming up.
• A run failed before it got anywhere. That shows up as a card in your Inbox; see Inbox and approvals for what the reasons mean.

Next: Mailboxes for outreach to connect the address you send from, and Inbox and approvals for the decisions that land on you. What runs costs is on Credits and billing.