Campaigns: Introduction

What is Campaigns?

ContactOut Campaigns helps you organize and manage outreach to your contacts in one place. You can create a campaign with a series of steps, add recipients, and start the campaign to carry out your outreach workflow.

A campaign can include different types of steps, such as emails, SMS messages, calls, LinkedIn steps, and custom manual tasks. This lets you organize multiple outreach activities in a single campaign.

Whether you're reaching out to new prospects or following up with existing contacts, Campaigns helps you structure your outreach and manage each recipient's progress.

What can you do with Campaigns?

With Campaigns, you can:

• Organize your outreach: Bring your recipients and outreach activities together in one campaign.
• Create a series of steps: Plan the order of your outreach activities using the campaign's Overview page.
• Use different outreach methods: Combine email, SMS, calls, LinkedIn steps, and other manual tasks in a campaign.
• Personalize your outreach: Use available contact information and supported placeholders in your messages.
• Manage email sending: Configure supported settings such as sending speed, allowed sending days, and sending hours.
• Track selected engagement metrics: View open and reply rates on the campaigns list page, and see step-level activity where supported.

Understanding the key concepts

Campaign

A campaign is the overall outreach workflow. It contains the steps you create and the recipients you want to reach.

Steps

Steps are the individual outreach activities within a campaign. Each step represents an action, such as sending an email, sending an SMS, making a call, completing a LinkedIn activity, or performing a manual task.

Recipients

Recipients are the contacts included in your campaign. Each recipient progresses through the campaign according to its steps and the completion requirements for those steps.

Overview

The campaign's Overview page displays the steps in your campaign and how they are arranged. You can think of it as the overview of your outreach sequence.

Manual tasks

Manual tasks are steps that require you to take action yourself. These include calls, LinkedIn activities, and custom tasks with a title and body that can serve as a reminder.

When you complete a manual step for a recipient, you must mark that step as complete in ContactOut. The recipient can then move ahead in the campaign, provided any other requirements are met.

How does a campaign work?

Getting started involves three main steps:

1. Create your campaign steps

Build your outreach workflow by adding the steps you want to use and arranging them in the desired order. Depending on your goal, these might include email steps, SMS steps, calls, LinkedIn activities, or other manual tasks.

2. Add recipients

Choose the contacts you want to include in the campaign. Make sure the contact information required for your planned outreach methods is available.

3. Start your campaign

Once you've configured the steps and added your recipients, start the campaign. Recipients will progress through the campaign according to the configured steps and applicable completion requirements.

Important: Manual steps require action from you. For each recipient, you must mark a manual step as complete before that recipient can move forward past it.

What types of steps can a campaign include?

Email steps

Use email steps to send messages as part of your outreach. You can configure the email content and applicable sending options.

Depending on the step, you can review metrics such as open rate, reply rate, click-through rate, and delivered count.

SMS steps

Use SMS steps to reach recipients by text message. SMS requires the appropriate setup and available calling credits.

Campaigns shows completed and skipped counts for SMS steps inside a campaign.

Call steps

Call steps help you include phone outreach in your campaign. Calls require available calling credits.

After completing a call-related manual step, mark it as complete for the relevant recipient so they can progress through the campaign.

LinkedIn steps

LinkedIn steps let you include LinkedIn-related outreach activities in your workflow. These are manual activities: you perform the action and then mark the step as complete for the relevant recipient.

Other manual tasks

You can also create a manual task with a title and body. Use these fields to describe an action or provide yourself with a reminder, such as researching a prospect or preparing for a follow-up.

After completing the task, mark it as complete for the recipient so they can move ahead in the campaign.

What should I know about calling credits?

Calling credits are required for activities involving calling or SMS. Before creating a campaign that includes these activities, make sure you have the required calling credits available.

If a campaign includes email and manual steps that don't involve calling or SMS, those steps do not require calling credits just because they are part of the same campaign.

What campaign activity can I track?

Campaigns currently provides a focused set of engagement and step-level metrics rather than a comprehensive analytics dashboard.

• On the campaigns list page: You can view the open rate and reply rate for campaigns.
• For email steps inside a campaign: You can view open rate, reply rate, click-through rate, and delivered count.
• For SMS and manual task steps inside a campaign: You can view completed and skipped counts.

These metrics help you review engagement and step progress. Broader campaign analytics are not currently available.

Before you start your first campaign

A little preparation can make setup easier:

• Define your goal: Decide what you want to achieve with your outreach.
• Plan your steps: Decide which messages and manual activities you want to include, and in what order.
• Prepare your recipients: Identify the contacts you want to reach and check that the relevant contact information is available.
• Check your credits: Make sure you have calling credits available if your campaign includes calls or SMS.
• Review email sending settings: If you're using email, consider the sending speed, allowed days, and sending hours that fit your workflow.

Where should you go next?

If you're new to Campaigns, we recommend following these guides in order:

1. Understanding Multichannel Campaigns: Steps, Channels, and the Sequence Overview — understand how different steps work together.
2. How to Add Recipients to a Campaign — learn how to add the contacts you want to reach.
3. How to Create and Configure a Campaign — learn how to set up your campaign.
4. How to Set Up Email Steps in a Campaign — prepare email outreach.
5. How to Set Up SMS Steps in a Campaign — learn how to configure SMS outreach and understand credit requirements.
6. How Manual Tasks Work in Campaigns — learn how to manage calls, LinkedIn activities, and other manual steps.
7. How to Configure Campaign Sending Speed, Days, Hours, and Recipient Time Zones — review email scheduling and recipient time zones.

Summary

ContactOut Campaigns helps you organize outreach through a series of steps for your recipients. You can create steps, add recipients, and start your campaign to manage your outreach workflow.

Remember that manual steps require you to mark them as complete for each recipient before they can progress. Activities involving calls or SMS require calling credits. Campaigns also provides selected engagement and step-level metrics so you can review activity as your campaign runs.