The Outreach tab in Loxo is one of the most useful and powerful tools in the Talent Intelligence Platform. As a result, we receive a lot of questions about how Outreach Campaigns work and how to view the outcomes of Campaigns.
Keep reading for answers to frequently asked questions about Outreach statuses, managing ongoing or scheduled Campaigns, and the overall outcome of Outreach Campaigns.
Be sure to also check out How to Build a Campaign in Loxo and our Outreach Campaign Proven Practices.
Outreach Statuses
What do the different people's statuses mean in a Campaign?
When you go to your Prospects tab within a Campaign, you will notice several possible statuses within an Outreach Campaign: Active, Bounced, Spam, Complete, Paused, and Pending. Below is a brief outline of the different statuses and what they mean:
Active: The Campaign is still going through the stages.
Bounced: The email bounced - likely due to being an invalid email address.
Spam: The email host viewed the message as spam and did not allow it to be delivered. This does not mean that it ended up in the recipient's Spam folder.
Complete: The person has completed all stages of the Campaign, or was manually marked as complete by a user.
Replied: The person replied to an email stage. They will not receive any future stages unless they are unpaused by a user.
Not Delivered: The message attempted to go out, but it did not get delivered as expected. There will be a secondary badge that indicates the specific reason, such as "Canceled" or "Invalid Recipient."
Paused: The person was Active in the Campaign, but they were manually paused. They will not receive any future stages until they are unpaused by a user.
Pending: This means that the Campaign has been placed on hold by our systems due to a specific error, such as missing contact information.- Emails also remain in "Pending" if the recipient's email fails validation, for reasons like invalid or high-risk email addresses, or changes to the recipient's mailbox.
"Pending" also may occur due to the throttling system regulating the number of emails sent to comply with daily volume limits. These valid emails will still be sent once limits allow.
A pending status often occurs because the majority of campaign recipients lack a valid email address or you have hit your Loxo or email host's daily sending limit. To resolve this, ensure that all recipient profiles are updated with a proper email address or check your limits.
I received a response to my Outreach Email, but the Campaign is still running for that person. Why was the Campaign not marked as "Replied" automatically?
If you think that a particular person should have been marked as "Replied" and should have stopped receiving further stages, there are two common reasons why a person would continue in a Campaign after a potential reply:
If you send the Campaign from an email that does not have two-way sync enabled or if your email sync has broken, the Outreach Campaign will not be able to register or track responses that automatically come into Loxo. If your two-way sync is unchecked - like the below image shows - responses will not sync into Loxo. For Campaigns to automatically be marked "Replied" when a prospect responds, you need to make sure that you have the two-way sync box checked.
An email sync that is configured to send AND capture responses will have two checkmarks. If you see a red or grey exclamation point instead of a green check mark, you'll need to click the "Resync" button to fix it.
If you receive a reply to your Outreach Campaign from a different email address than what was included in the Campaign, Loxo may not stop the Campaign or mark it as "Replied."
This happens most often when an alias is used on the email address.
Sometimes email providers handle dot characters differently. When syncing a reply, Loxo looks for an exact 1:1 match when tracking Outreach Campaign responses. For example, sending an email to firstname.lastname@gmail.com will work the same as firstnamelastname@gmail.com. However, receiving a reply back from firstnamelastname@gmail.com will not sync into a profile where the email address is listed as firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
Sometimes a candidate may forward an email to another address and then reply to you from that one.
Some email providers do not honor email thread identifiers. Loxo references a thread ID to identify whether a reply is linked to an Outreach Campaign email stage. If the identifier is missing or different, the campaign where the thread originated may not reflect the Replied status.
If you spoke on the phone, over SMS, exchanged other messages on a platform like LinkedIn or WhatsApp, or someone booked a call with you through a scheduling application like Calendly, these forms of communication do not sync into Loxo. If any of these events occurred, the Campaign in Loxo will still continue to run until the campaign is manually paused or marked as finished for that prospect.
Why did my Campaign stage fail?
There are different reasons why a Campaign stage could fail. You can navigate to the Prospects tab of your Campaign and hover over the gray badge next to the Prospect's main status for the specific reason that they failed. The most common causes of failed emails are outlined below:
Null Email:
If the prospect does not have an email address listed on their profile, the email stage will fail.
If our internal validators have low confidence that an email can be delivered to an address, it may block the message from going out and override the email address as "null," showing it was an invalid recipient.
If the Campaign was set up with an email priority that disabled specific email types, the email stage will fail if a person does not have the enabled email types listed on their profile.
For example, if your Campaign is set up to send to Personal Emails, but that specific prospect only has a Work Email, then the Campaign would show as failed because it was set up to send only to Personal Emails.
Too Many Retries: If you have attempted to resend a message multiple times, but our system does not receive a response from the receiving server, the Campaign will fail since there was a continued lack of response.
Email Limit: If you have reached your Daily Email Limit, a Campaign may fail due to exceeding the recommended send rate for a healthy domain reputation.
The default Daily Email Limit is 5,000 outgoing emails per day for your account. For example, if your team is trying to send 5,500 emails, then the first 5,000 emails will be sent as usual. However, the remaining 500 emails will be marked as failed, and there will be no automatic follow-up attempt to send them the next day.
This limit has been put in place in response to Google's changing spam threshold rules.
Email Not Synced: Confirm that the email address being used to send the Campaign is currently synced with Loxo and has two check marks displayed, as shown in the image below:
No account selected: If you set up an Outreach Campaign, but do not have a synced email selected as the "From" address on your Email Stages, those messages will be unable to go out. You'll want to add a sender and then "Retry" the Campaign for your prospects. If the Campaign fails for the same reason, you may need to disable and duplicate the broken Campaign, making sure the proper "From" address has been set before moving your prospects over to the updated Campaign.
Managing Outreach Campaigns
What is the difference between Remove, Pause, and Mark finished?
When you're looking at a person's profile, you have the ability to see where they are within an Outreach Campaign. From here, you can take quick actions to manage their progress or status in a Campaign.
To find this quick action list on a person's profile, go to the Details section of their profile and scroll to the Loxo Outreach section. You will notice the quick actions for this person in the listed Campaign(s). The list is displayed according to the current status of that Candidate in the Campaign(s). Below is a description of what each quick action will do:
Remove: Completely delete the person from the Campaign. It will prevent them from receiving future stages, but it will also delete their progress within this Campaign.
Pause: Pause the person temporarily from receiving future stages in the Campaign. You can always go back and "Unpause" them later!
Mark finished: Mark the person as finished in a Campaign if you don't want to delete them, but don't want them to receive future stages either. Unlike pausing a person, this action can't be undone. However, it will retain the person's progress within that Campaign for tracking purposes, unlike "Remove."
Skip Stage: The person will not receive the email or SMS from the stage they are currently in and will move on to the next stage. Or, if the person's current stage is a required call or task, this will move them on to the next stage without you having to complete the call or task.
Retry: If the person didn't receive the stage as expected, retry directly from their profile!
How do I resend to someone who failed a Campaign?
When you see the red failed status for a Prospect, it usually means they need updated contact information or that your email has become unsynced with Loxo.
If outreach failed because of an incorrect phone or email address, click into the prospect's profile and update their phone or email address. If you don't know their current contact info, try using a Loxo Credit!
If outreach fails because your email is unsynced, resync your email address.
After you have updated their contact information or resynced your email, click on the Retry stage button. You can also select multiple prospects, and then use the option at the top to retry the failed stage.
If an email is pending or undelivered due to validation errors, but you are confident that the email address is correct and can receive mail from you, you can navigate to the Email Log to use the "retry" button, which will bypass the validation check. If an email still fails after bypassing the validation check, it's likely that the message cannot be delivered as expected to that address.
How can I reply to emails sent through Loxo?
Loxo is not an inbox. Your Email Log is not interactive like Outlook or Gmail, and you will not be able to send replies from the Email Log.
The best way to respond to a person and retain the same email thread is to reply from your personal email inbox. Just make sure that the email address you're sending to is associated with the person's profile in your database and that your email is synced with Loxo.
Even if a candidate responds to an Outreach Campaign email that was sent through Loxo, you can respond to their reply directly from your personal inbox!
Will emails that I send from outside of Loxo log the message in a person's profile?
If your email is synced with Loxo and you have two-way syncing enabled, any emails sent directly from your email inbox to an email address that exists in your Loxo database will automatically log on to the corresponding person's profile.
If no profile in Loxo contains the email address you replied to, the email will not sync into Loxo.
How do I recall or unsend an email sent through Loxo?
You can use your Email Log to view all scheduled outreach. Find the message that you want to recall or unschedule, and click the red 'X' next to the "Waiting" status. This will cancel the send.
If the status of the Campaign displays as Sent, the communication has already gone out and - like other email providers - you cannot unsend an email from Loxo once it has been distributed.
You cannot delete an Email Stage from an Outreach Campaign that has active recipients in it, but you can skip your prospects past that stage if you no longer wish for it to go out. If you are looking to make a lot of modifications to the upcoming stages of an Outreach Campaign, you may benefit from turning off the original Campaign, duplicating it, making any of the changes you'd like, and then moving the prospects over from the original to your updated Campaign.
How do I sort my Outreach tab?
There are many ways to sort your Campaigns.
You can use the Filters on the right-hand side to drill down to certain Campaigns. You can filter by Owners, Status, Shared, Job, or Job Stage.
You also have the Sort by on the right-hand side to sort by Creation Date, Status, Campaign Name, Prospect Total, or Stage Total.
When you are on the Prospects tab of an individual Campaign, you have similar filters and sort options.
Can I perform bulk actions for the people in my Campaign?
Yes, you can select the specific people you need to take action on or click the checkbox next to one person's name to choose "Select All X."
Once you have selected the people, use the options at the top to perform bulk actions such as Export, Retry stage, or Mark finished.
How can I tell what time the first email in a Campaign will go out?
To see when your first Stage is set to go out:
Go to your Outreach page
Open the Campaign
Go to the Prospects tab
Hover over the Stage to view the timer delay for sending
Scheduled emails will show a general time delay based on when they will be sent. For example, you might see 2 Days or 1 Hour to indicate how long before that message will go out.
How can I pull everyone who completed an Outreach Campaign into another Campaign?
You can bulk-select groups of Prospects from one Campaign and add them to another Campaign. Once you have created the Campaign you want to follow up with:
Open the original Campaign
Go to the Prospects tab
Select the contacts you want to move over
Click the "+Add to..." button in the upper right to select the follow-up Campaign
Email Metrics and Campaign Performance
What do Open, Click, Reply, and Downloaded mean?
Open, Click, Reply, and Downloaded are basic metrics used to help you keep track of what is happening with your outreach.
Open tracks when a person opens your email. In some cases, this may be reflected when the email system "opens" the email. This will only record a single instance of opening, not how many times or when exactly the email was opened.
Click and Downloaded are counted when there is a link to click or an attachment to download, and action is taken on the link or attachment.
Reply tracks whenever someone replies to your Campaign message.
How are Open, Click, Reply, and Downloaded numbers tracked?
These percentages are tracked on both an individual stage basis and a total Campaign basis.
The individual stages are tracked by the total number of people in the Campaign. This means that the first stage will have a higher open rate than the last stage, especially if the last stage hasn't finished sending.
The rates at the top of the Campaign represent the percentage of recipients that have clicked/opened/downloaded throughout ANY stage of the Campaign. Think of it as your average performance across all stages in that Campaign.
Can I see the open rate, click rate, or reply rate across all of my campaigns?
Currently, Loxo Email Logs track individual Campaign performance and do not include cumulative Campaign data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do my open, click, and download rates seem unusually low or high?
The data we display, such as open, click, and download rates, is based on the information your email provider shares with us. This means that these metrics are dependent on what your email provider reports.
It’s important to note that sometimes a recipient’s email provider may report that an email wasn’t opened, even if it was. Conversely, there are cases where the email might not have been opened, but the provider might report it as opened.
Why is my reply rate so low when I’ve received multiple replies?
Make sure all replies are synced into Loxo. If some didn’t sync, that’s likely why your reply rate is low.
Why is my outreach campaign experiencing so many failures?
Here are some common reasons why an Outreach Campaign may experience a lot of failures:
Email Sync Broken: Verify that your email sync is working by going to Settings > My email. If it's broken or running only a partial sync, click the orange Resync button to reconnect.
Invalid or Outdated Contact Information: Incorrect or outdated email addresses or phone numbers in your campaign can prevent messages from being delivered. Double-check your contact details.
Email/Phone Provider Restrictions: Some email or SMS providers may block or flag your messages as spam, particularly if you're sending a high volume of outreach. Ensure your sender address and number are trusted.
Spam Filters: If your messages are marked as spam by the recipient’s email or SMS provider, they may not be delivered. Avoid using language or formatting that could trigger spam filters.
Recipient's Email Settings: If the recipient’s email settings block messages from unrecognized senders or their inbox is full, your outreach might not be delivered.
High Sending Volume: Sending too many messages too quickly can trigger spam filters or cause throttling by your provider. Try spacing out your outreach or sending smaller batches.
Geo-Restrictions: Certain countries or regions have specific rules or restrictions that may prevent messages from being delivered, like requiring a local phone number or A2P (Application-to-Person) approval for SMS.
Why are my emails ending up in recipients' spam folders?
Here are some common reasons why your emails might end up in a recipient's spam folder:
Poor Sender Reputation: If your email address or domain has been flagged for sending spam in the past, it can affect your deliverability. A poor reputation with email providers can lead to your messages being sent to the spam folder.
Lack of Authentication: Emails that don’t pass authentication checks (like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) are more likely to be marked as spam. These protocols help verify that the email is legitimate and not spoofed.
Spammy Subject Lines: Subject lines that sound too "salesy," include all caps, or have excessive punctuation, can trigger spam filters.
Content with Spam Triggers: Certain words or phrases, such as "Make Money," "Not Spam," "Dear," etc., can trigger spam filters. Additionally, excessive use of exclamation marks or overly promotional language may also increase the likelihood of your email being flagged as spam.
High Volume of Emails: Sending a large number of emails in a short period of time can trigger spam filters, especially if many recipients report the emails as spam or they contain invalid addresses.
Lack of Personalization: Generic emails that don’t include the recipient’s name or other personalized elements are more likely to be flagged as spam, as they resemble mass-marketing campaigns.
No Unsubscribe Link: If you’re sending bulk emails, it’s crucial to include an unsubscribe link. Without it, your email might be flagged as spam, especially by services that comply with anti-spam laws.