Run an outbound campaign

An outbound campaign calls a list of leads with one of the client’s agents, on the schedule you set, and records every result in the portal. The campaign builder takes you through five steps: Brief, Lead lists, Schedule, Advanced and Review.

Before you begin

• Outbound calling is on for the client, with at least one bundle. See Configure outbound calling.
• Your leads are in a CSV file, with a column for every required variable in the bundle’s template. See Create an outbound calling template.
• Phone numbers include the country code, for example +44 7700 900123. Store them as text in your spreadsheet, so they are not turned into scientific notation.

Start a campaign

Open the client, then select Campaigns in the Outbound section of the sidebar. Select New Campaign. If the button is greyed out, the client has reached their plan’s campaign limit.

1. Brief

   • Campaign name (required): a short label, for example Spring check-ins.
   • Campaign notes for your AI (optional): guidance for this campaign, such as an offer to mention or leads to skip. The text is passed to the agent as {{campaign_notes}}, so the agent’s prompt must include it.
   • Calling setup: choose one of the client’s bundles. The builder shows its AI caller, Contact template and Caller ID, the number your leads will see.

   Select Next.

2. Lead lists

   Choose one or more existing lead lists for this calling setup, or create a new list and upload a CSV.

   When you upload:

   • The file must be a .csv of up to 5 MB.
   • Match each CSV column to a Campaign field: lead name, phone number, email, one of the template’s variables, a custom field, or ignore the column. Required fields are highlighted.
   • Choose what happens to leads already on file: Skip duplicates, Update existing leads or Abort upload.

   The result shows how many leads were inserted, updated or skipped, and any rows with errors. Each client can upload up to 10 files an hour.

   Select Next.

3. Schedule

   • Start: Run immediately, which begins calling within a minute of launch, or Schedule for later with a start date and time.
   • Cadence: Single run, or Recurring to repeat weekly on the Days of week you choose.
   • Calling window: the start and end time for calls, 09:00 to 17:00 by default. Calls are placed only in this window, in the client’s timezone. For scheduled campaigns the window must be at least 15 minutes.
   • Pacing: by default, 15 calls an hour with 3 at once. Open Advanced pacing settings to change it: from 1 to 50 calls an hour (10 to 20 is recommended) and from 1 to 5 Concurrent calls.

   Select Next.

4. Advanced

   Under When call completes successfully, choose:

   • End call automatically: the agent hangs up once the conversation is done.
   • Transfer to phone number: hand qualified leads to a person on your client’s team. Enter the number in international format, for example +447700900123.

   Under Limits, you can set Max calls and Stop conditions to stop the campaign early. Both are optional.

   Select Next.

5. Review

   Check the Campaign name, Target leads, Voice agent, Caller ID, Schedule and Pacing. Go back to change anything, then select Launch Campaign.

Follow the campaign

The Campaigns page lists every campaign with its status, progress, connected calls and schedule. Filter by Draft, Scheduled, Active, Paused, Completed or Cancelled.

Open a campaign to see where it is in its lifecycle, its progress, the leads, and each call with a summary, a recording to listen to and full details. From the campaign you can:

• Pause an active campaign and Resume it later
• Edit it
• Rerun campaign to call the list again
• Delete it

Retries

Calls that are not answered, are busy, reach voicemail or fail are tried again after 30 minutes, up to 3 attempts per lead by default.

Plan limits

Your plan sets how many campaigns and leads each client can have. The sidebar shows how many are used next to Campaigns and Lead Lists, and Client settings shows the same in the Outbound limits & defaults section.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to do
“No calling setups are configured for this account”	The client has no bundles. See Configure outbound calling.
“You need at least one lead list for this calling setup to continue”	Select a list, or upload one, in step 2.
Upload says no leads were added	Check phone numbers include the country code and are stored as text, and check the duplicate setting.
“Upload rate limit exceeded”	You have uploaded 10 files for this client in the last hour. Try again later.
“Enter a valid transfer number”	Use international format with the country code, for example +447700900123.
New Campaign is greyed out	The client has reached their plan’s campaign limit.

Next steps

• Configure outbound calling
• Create an outbound calling template
• Product page: Outbound campaigns