Email outreach pipelines and test emails

On Starter and Pro, the AI assistant can run a whole email outreach from one card: add the lead list, write the campaign in your voice, send it now or schedule it, and follow up with anyone who hasn't replied. Email campaigns themselves, with test sends, your business footer and one-click unsubscribe, work on every plan, including Free.

What is an outreach pipeline?

A pipeline is one card that lists every step of an outreach in order. Depending on what you ask for, the steps are:

1. Add the lead list, when the leads came from a lead search.
2. Email the list now, or Write the email campaign to send later.
3. Schedule the send, if you gave a time. If you didn't, it suggests the next weekday at 9:00 AM.
4. Follow up with non-repliers: one follow-up email to anyone who hasn't replied.

You confirm once with Run these steps (or a casual "yes" in the chat), and the steps run in order. Pipelines are for owners and admins and can have up to 8 steps.

How do I start one?

Ask the assistant. For example:

• "Find 40 property managers in Calgary with emails and draft an intro email."
• "Email my spring list next Tuesday at 9am and follow up with anyone who doesn't reply."
• "Write a win-back email for clients who haven't booked this year."

Bigger requests run as a background task and come back with the pipeline card when they're ready.

What's on the pipeline card?

• A title, "Pipeline: …", and a summary of the steps, for example "Steps: 3 of 3 — Write the email campaign → Schedule the send → Follow up with non-repliers".
• For each step: a checkbox, a plain-English description, the send time (marked "suggested — change it if you like" when the assistant picked it) with a date-and-time editor, and the full subject and message.
• What people will get: a preview for a sample recipient, the tone check result, and any warnings.
• Send me a test first and Run these steps.

Untick any step you don't want and adjust the times before you confirm. Each step re-checks its own rules when it runs (permissions, consent, your mailing address and limits), and if one step fails, the steps after it don't run.

How do I send a test email?

Click Send me a test first on the card, or just ask ("send me a test"). A copy with "[Test]" before the subject goes to the email address you sign in with, with sample names filled in and the real footer. The card stays open and shows "Test sent to … — have a look before you confirm." You can also ask for a test as a specific recipient ("Send me a test as Dana"). You can send up to 10 test emails an hour.

On the Campaigns page, every campaign also has a Test Email field and a Send Test button.

How is each email personalized?

• Merge fields fill in each recipient's details, such as their first name, name and company, with fallback text when a detail is missing.
• A personal line: the email can open with one short line written from that person's own details. It's written when the email sends, and the preview shows how many recipients get one and the cost ("AI line per person for N"). These lines count toward your monthly background-task budget.

How does the assistant make it sound like me?

Drafts follow your writing voice settings: your name, role, sign-off and tone. Outreach emails are kept short with one clear question, overused sales phrases are avoided, and every draft gets a tone check ("Tone check: ✓"). To change the wording, ask: "make it shorter", "less salesy" or "sound more like me". You get new wording with the same recipients and schedule.

What goes at the bottom of every campaign email?

Every marketing email from Interdatum includes:

• your business name and mailing address;
• a way to contact you (your business email address, or your business phone);
• "Don't want these emails? Unsubscribe — one click, effective immediately.", where Unsubscribe is a link.

Each email also carries the one-click unsubscribe header that Gmail and other inbox providers use. Your mailing address is required: until you add it in Settings → Business, under Business Mailing Address, campaigns can be saved as drafts but not sent ("Add your business mailing address in Settings → Business before sending email campaigns — it's required in every marketing email (CASL).").

What happens when someone unsubscribes?

The unsubscribe takes effect immediately. The person sees "You are unsubscribed", and any emails still queued to that address are cancelled. Unsubscribed addresses are skipped in every future campaign.

How do follow-ups to non-repliers work?

The follow-up is one email, by default at 9:00 AM on the first weekday at least 3 days after the send, with a subject like "Re: <your subject>". When it runs, it skips anyone who has replied since you approved the outreach: a text from them, or an email from their address in your CRM Inbox. It also skips anyone who unsubscribed.

Email replies only count if they reach your CRM Inbox, so connect your business mailbox first. An out-of-office auto-reply counts as a reply, and a reply from a different address isn't matched to the lead.

For longer sequences with conditions, see Schedule actions, reminders and follow-ups.

Where do replies go, and who is the email from?

Campaign emails are sent from your Interdatum send-as address, with your From Name, and replies go to your Business email address. You'll find both in Settings → Notifications, on the General tab. Connect that mailbox under Business email inbox and replies show up in the CRM Inbox, linked to the lead and the campaign. See Email inbox: connect your business mailbox.

How do I see how a campaign is doing?

Open the campaign under Campaigns. The campaigns table and the campaign page show the same Results, and each number has a one-line explanation on the page:

• Sent: emails handed to the email service for this campaign. Your own replies in the conversation aren't counted.
• Delivered: the recipient's mail server confirmed it accepted the email. This is shown only when delivery confirmations are available for the campaign.
• Replied: people who emailed back.
• Bounced: the address rejected the email. They aren't emailed again.
• Unsubscribed: people who clicked unsubscribe, or marked it as spam, after getting the email. They aren't emailed again.

Below that, Sending queue shows what hasn't gone out: Queued, Waiting (held by the daily sending limit; they go out on their own when it resets), Sending, Failed, Already opted out (not sent, because the address had unsubscribed or bounced before the send) and Skipped (not sent, because the person said no after it was queued).

An email counts as sent only if the email service actually sent it. If the service accepts an email and then can't send it, the CRM corrects the record: it goes back to Waiting when the cause is the sending limit, and to Failed otherwise.

The Deliveries table lists each recipient, status, send time and any error. You can pause and resume a campaign there. Interdatum doesn't track opens or clicks; replies arrive in your Inbox.

An email that can't be sent as written, for example because it still has a placeholder nobody filled in, is never sent. Its row in Deliveries reads Held with the reason ("Held: the message had a formatting problem — …"), and everyone else's email goes out as usual. Fix the wording or that person's details and queue the campaign again: the held email is sent, and nobody gets it twice. See What if a message has a formatting problem?.

Are there any safety checks before sending?

Yes:

• If the audience grew after you approved a send, nothing goes out until you review it again ("The audience grew from X to Y since this was prepared — ask me again so you can review it.").
• A scheduled send that would go out more than two hours late is skipped.
• Unsubscribed addresses are never emailed, and leads found online are skipped by text campaigns and automated texts.