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Automate Outreach with Lead Gen Initiatives
How to build a multi-step outreach sequence, add email, SMS, and team-notification steps, enrol leads, add them to your CRM with consent, configure sending cadence, and understand how the dispatcher paces each step on your behalf.
Lead Gen Initiatives let you build a multi-step outreach sequence — email messages, SMS messages, team notifications — and automatically work leads through it. Each step fires at a configured delay after the previous one, using the real connected email account and phone number in your workspace. No bulk-blast platform relay: emails send from your actual inbox and land in your Sent folder.
Initiatives live on the same page as your lead searches: https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen.
Before you start
Check the following before building your first initiative:
- Email steps — at least one team member must have a personal email account connected at https://app.trustpager.com/settings/integrations. The person who enrols a lead becomes the From: address for every email step in that enrolment, so enrol as the team member who will be the personal point of contact for that lead.
- SMS steps — your workspace needs at least one SMS-capable phone number. Buy one at https://app.trustpager.com/settings/phone.
- Notify Team steps — no prerequisites. Uses your workspace notification settings only.
Tip: turn on "Require email address" when searching
If your initiative includes email or SMS steps, run your Lead Gen search with Require email address toggled on (under Advanced Filters at https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen). This ensures every lead returned has a verified email address and website. The dispatcher checks for contact data at send time — a lead enrolled without an email will cause email steps to fail, and a lead without a phone will cause SMS steps to fail. Filtering at the search stage saves the hassle.
Creating an initiative
- Go to https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen and scroll to the Initiatives section below the search form.
- Click New initiative.
- Give it a name and description, then save. The initiative detail page opens.
Adding steps
- On the initiative detail page, click Add Step.
- Choose a step type: Send Email, Send SMS, or Notify Assigned Staff. These are the only types supported — other action types are hidden because the dispatcher cannot execute them.
- Set the wait duration — how long after the previous step (or after enrolment, for the first step) before this step fires.
- Save. The automation editor opens with the action already attached.
- Configure the subject and body. You can use these merge tokens:
{{lead.business_name}},{{lead.email}},{{lead.phone}},{{lead.website}},{{lead.city}}. - Repeat for as many steps as you need.
Sending cadence — pacing your outreach
Each initiative has its own sending cadence settings. These sit in the right column of the initiative detail page at https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen/initiatives and protect your connected email account from being flagged as a bulk sender. All five settings are inline-editable — click any value to change it, and TrustPager saves it automatically when you move to the next field.
Today's budget
The Today's budget card shows how many emails this initiative has sent today versus its daily cap — for example, 12/40 emails sent today. The progress bar turns amber when you pass 80% of the cap, and red when the cap is reached. Once the cap is hit, the card shows the time sends will resume the next morning at your configured window start. This counter resets at midnight in the initiative's timezone.
Sending cadence settings
The Sending cadence card has five settings you can adjust per initiative:
- Daily send cap — the maximum number of emails this initiative will send per calendar day. The default is 40. Personal email accounts can get flagged by email providers above roughly 50 cold-outreach emails per day, so the default keeps you safely under that threshold. You can raise the cap up to 200 if you are using a dedicated outreach account, or lower it if you want to warm up a new address gradually.
- Window start and end — the time range during which sends are allowed. Defaults to 09:00–17:00. Tasks that fall due outside this window are deferred automatically to the next allowed day at the window start time. Keeping sends within business hours means they arrive when recipients are at their desks and avoids the spam signal of a message arriving at 2am.
- Timezone — the timezone used to evaluate the send window and reset the daily cap at midnight. Defaults to Australia/Sydney. Choose the timezone that matches your leads if you are targeting a specific market.
- Send days — seven day-of-week toggle pills (Mon through Sun). Defaults to Monday–Friday. Any task that falls due on a day not toggled on is deferred to the next allowed day at the window start time. Toggle Saturday and Sunday on if you want weekend sends.
- Minimum gap between sends — the minimum number of seconds between consecutive sends on this initiative. Defaults to 90 seconds. This prevents a burst of 40 ready tasks firing at once — at 90 seconds per send, 40 sends are spread across at least 60 minutes. Raise it if you want even more breathing room between messages.
How the dispatcher uses these settings
When the dispatcher picks up a task it runs three checks in order, then picks the latest defer time across any that fail — so a single reschedule clears all conditions at once rather than bouncing the task back repeatedly:
- Send window — is the current time within the configured window on an allowed send day? This check applies to all step types (email and SMS). If not, the task defers to the next allowed day at the window start time.
- Minimum gap — has at least the configured gap elapsed since the last successful send on this initiative? If not, the task defers until that gap elapses.
- Daily cap — applies to email steps only. Has today's count reached the cap? If so, all email-channel tasks defer to tomorrow's window start. SMS steps are not affected by the daily cap.
Enrolling leads
Open an initiative at https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen/initiatives, then click Add to Initiative in the top-right of the Active Enrollments card to open the lead picker.
- Use the sidebar filters (industry, location, keywords) to narrow the pool.
- Search by business name or domain in the right pane.
- Tick individual leads or use Select all visible to pick the whole filtered set.
- Click Add N to Initiative to confirm enrolment.
Whoever performs the enrolment becomes the From: address for every email step in that sequence — enrol as the team member who should own the relationship with those leads.
Pre-enrolment budget banner
Before you confirm, the lead picker shows a soft banner above the search input so you can see exactly what today's budget can handle:
- When nothing is selected yet: the banner shows today's usage and remaining capacity — for example, Daily cap 40/day · used 12 · 28 left today.
- When your selection fits within today's budget: the banner confirms First-step sends will fit in today's budget, with a count of how many send today and how much budget remains after.
- When your selection exceeds today's budget: the banner turns amber and tells you how many first-step emails fire today, how many are deferred to following days, and roughly how many business days the initiative needs to reach all selected leads at the current daily cap — for example, 20 fire today, 30 deferred. At 40/day this initiative will reach all selected leads in roughly 2 business days.
The estimate is advisory — you can still proceed. Deferred sends queue automatically and fire on subsequent days within your cadence window.
Tracking active enrolments
The Active Enrollments card on the initiative detail page shows every lead currently in the sequence, which step they are on, and the scheduled time for their next step. Each row also shows the enroller (the team member whose connected email account and phone number will be used for sends).
Cancelling enrolments
To remove a lead from an initiative before the sequence completes, open the initiative at https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen/initiatives, find the lead in the Active Enrollments card, and click Cancel. Any pending steps for that lead are discarded. Steps already sent are not affected.
Enrolment history
The Enrolment History card shows completed and cancelled enrolments, including which steps were sent and which failed. Failed steps show a short error message — the most common causes are a missing email connection and a lead with no email address on file.
Adding a lead to your CRM
Once a lead has completed an initiative (or at any point from a search result), you can bring it into your CRM as a contact, account, and opportunity. Every CRM conversion is per-lead and consent-gated — there is no bulk import. The consent requirement and the sending cadence controls work together: cadence paces your outreach responsibly, and the consent gate ensures only genuinely interested leads make it into your pipeline.
- Find the lead in the Completed Enrollments card on the initiative detail page, or in the results of any saved search at https://app.trustpager.com/growth/lead-gen.
- Click Add to CRM on the lead row.
- In the dialog that opens, fill in the contact first name (required) and optionally last name, email, and phone. The email and phone from the lead search are pre-filled — edit them if you have better details.
- Optionally choose a Pipeline and Stage to create an opportunity at the same time. Give the opportunity a name and select a lead source if you want.
- Tick I confirm this contact has given consent to be contacted. This is required before the import can proceed.
- Click Add to CRM to confirm.
TrustPager creates a contact, an account (company record), and — if you selected a pipeline stage — an opportunity. If a contact or account with the same email or name already exists in your workspace, TrustPager matches to the existing record rather than creating a duplicate. After import the button on the lead row changes to View in CRM, linking directly to the new contact.
How the dispatcher works
The dispatcher runs on a schedule and processes each due step. For every step it first runs the three cadence gates described above — send window, minimum gap, and daily cap — then checks the step-specific requirements:
- Email step — does the enroller have an active connected email account? Does the lead have an email address? If either check fails, the task is marked failed with a clear error message and the sequence continues to the next step. Missing connection: connect at https://app.trustpager.com/settings/integrations.
- SMS step — does the workspace have an SMS-capable phone number? Does the lead have a phone number? If not, the task fails and the sequence continues. Add a number at https://app.trustpager.com/settings/phone.
- Notify Team step — no lead contact data needed. Always fires if the enrolment is active.
- Suppression — before every send, the dispatcher checks your workspace unsubscribe list and the lead contact record. Suppressed leads have that step skipped; the sequence continues to the next step.
A failed step does not stop the sequence. The lead continues through subsequent steps.
What team members can do
- lead-gen:read scope — view initiatives, steps, and enrolment status.
- lead-gen:write scope — create and edit initiatives, add and edit steps, enrol leads, and adjust sending cadence settings.
Initiatives are not restricted to admins — any team member with the write scope can build and run them.
Good to know
- Emails are real personal sends. They appear in the enroller's Sent folder and replies arrive in their real inbox — not a platform relay.
- Cadence is per initiative. Each initiative has its own daily cap, send window, send days, timezone, and minimum gap. One initiative can run a conservative warm-up pace while another runs at full speed — they do not share a budget.
- Suppression is automatic. The workspace unsubscribe list and per-contact unsubscribe flags are checked on every step. You do not need to manage this manually.
- Reply detection is coming. A future update will automatically stop an enrolment when a lead replies to an email step. For now, monitor replies in your inbox and unenrol manually if needed.
To find the leads you will enrol, see How to Find Leads with Lead Gen Prospector.
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