How to run outreach to a qualified prospect list with PersistIQ

You run outreach in PersistIQ by getting your prospects into it as leads and then adding those leads to a campaign. A lead is one person, with fields such as email, first name, last name, company, and title, plus any custom fields your team creates. A lead also carries a status, such as one your team uses for interested prospects or for people who asked not to be contacted. A campaign is the outreach itself: a sequence of steps that can include emails, calls, and other tasks, with the emails either sent automatically or held for you to review before they go out, all from the mailbox of the person who owns the campaign.

PersistIQ gives you a few ways to bring leads in. You can upload a CSV file and map its columns to lead fields, add people one at a time from LinkedIn and other websites with PersistIQ's Chrome extension, or pull them from Salesforce through PersistIQ's Salesforce integration. From there, you select the leads and add them to a campaign. PersistIQ then sends each step on schedule and stops the campaign for a lead when that person replies.

That setup is good at moving people through steps, but it doesn't decide who should be in the campaign. If you upload 200 rows, PersistIQ adds 200 leads. That includes the person who left the company in the spring, the account that became a customer last month, and the prospect a colleague already emailed last quarter. It also adds leads with empty fields, so an email that opens with a variable for the prospect's recent news either waits until someone fills the gap or falls back to a generic default line.

So a good result in PersistIQ is a campaign full of people who fit your ideal customer profile and still hold the role, with verified work emails, no one at a company you've marked as Do Not Contact, no one your team is already talking to, and a value in every variable the emails use. Kite does that work for you. It qualifies the list, checks PersistIQ for leads that already exist, fills in what each email needs, and adds the leads to the campaign once you approve.

Start by telling Kite which prospects you want to reach and which PersistIQ campaign they're for. You can ask in the Kite web app or in Slack. You can hand Kite a list you already have:

"Here's the list of webinar signups from last week. Qualify them and add the good ones to our Webinar Follow-Up campaign in PersistIQ."

Or you can ask Kite to build the list as well:

"Find 40 operations leaders at US logistics companies with 50 to 300 employees and put the best fits into our Q4 Outbound campaign in PersistIQ."

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. From that research, it already knows your ideal customer profile, your current customers, and your competitors, so it can qualify a list without a long brief. If your request leaves the profile open, Kite proposes the titles, seniority, company size, and locations to target, and you confirm or adjust them.

You'll need to connect your PersistIQ account so Kite can read your campaigns and add leads. PersistIQ connects with an API key, which you copy from your PersistIQ account settings and paste into Kite. To build a new list, you don't need any other account, because Kite finds people through its own built-in Apollo connection. To work from a list you already have, upload the CSV file to the conversation, point Kite to the spreadsheet or CRM where it lives, or tell Kite which lead status the prospects already have in PersistIQ.

Kite starts by finding the campaign you named, because the campaign decides who sends the emails and what each lead needs to carry. It lists your PersistIQ campaigns, finds the one you meant, and notes which user owns it. It also lists your PersistIQ users and their default mailboxes, so each lead is enrolled from the mailbox of the person whose name will be on the emails.

Kite then reads your custom lead fields. If your emails use a variable for a personalized opening line, a recent event, or a pain point, Kite makes sure that field gets a value on every lead it adds. If the campaign you want doesn't exist yet, Kite can create it in PersistIQ with the owner you choose and draft the emails for each step, which you then add in PersistIQ's campaign editor.

Kite works from the list you gave it, or it builds a new one, depending on what you asked for. A CSV file, a spreadsheet, a set of records in your CRM, or a group of leads already in PersistIQ all work as a starting point. When the prospects are already in PersistIQ, Kite reads those leads directly and can filter them by status, such as everyone your team marked as a good fit but never contacted.

When you ask Kite to find prospects, it searches for companies by industry, headcount, location, funding, and the technology they use, then searches for people at those companies by job title, seniority, and location. It also pulls recent company news and open job postings, which often supply the reason to get in touch, such as a new head of operations or a recent funding round.

Kite decides who belongs in the campaign by checking each prospect against your profile before it adds anyone. It first confirms that the person still holds the role at that company, using their public profile or the company's own pages, and it drops anyone who has moved on. Next, it removes your existing customers and your competitors. It also reads your Do Not Contact domains in PersistIQ and leaves out everyone at those companies, so an account that asked you to stop doesn't hear from you again.

Every prospect who passes gets a fit score from one to five, with a one-line reason, such as "VP of operations at a 140-person freight company that's hiring two dispatch managers." When the list is long, Kite splits it into primary and secondary groups, so you can send to the strongest fits first or put each group in a different campaign.

If fewer people qualify than you expected, Kite tells you how many made it and why the rest fell short. A smaller list of good prospects protects your sending mailboxes and gets better reply rates than a padded one.

Kite checks every email before a lead goes into PersistIQ, because bounces hurt the reputation of the mailbox your campaign sends from. It keeps each address's verification status exactly as the provider returns it, whether that's verified, catch-all, risky, or unverified. A missing email stays marked as not found rather than guessed. Kite uses work emails only, so personal addresses stay out of the campaign.

Kite reads your existing PersistIQ leads before it creates anything, so you don't end up with two records for the same person. When a lead with the same email already exists, Kite updates it with the new details instead of adding a duplicate. It also reads your lead statuses and the recent activity on existing leads, which shows whether someone is already in another campaign or has replied to your team. If a person is midway through another campaign, or their status shows they're already in a conversation or opted out, Kite tells you and leaves them out unless you say otherwise.

Kite fills in every field the campaign's emails use, so each message reads as if it was written for that person. Each lead gets the following:

• Email address
• First and last name
• Company and job title
• LinkedIn profile, so a call or LinkedIn task in the campaign has someone to look up
• A lead status that fits your team's process, such as one for new outbound prospects
• Custom fields that match your emails, such as the fit reason, a recent event at their company, or a personalized opening line

The opening line comes from Kite's research on the person and their company, and it says something true and specific, such as the funding round they announced or the role they're hiring for. Kite writes it to fit the sentence in your email where the variable appears, so the email still reads naturally when the line drops in.

Kite shows you the finished list for review before anyone is added to a campaign. Adding a lead to a running campaign means PersistIQ starts working through its steps for that person, so Kite treats this step as sending outreach and asks first. The review shows each lead's fit score and reason, their email status, the opening line they'll receive, and anyone Kite left out and why.

Approve the list with the Approve button or a reply, or ask Kite to change or drop anyone. Kite then creates or updates the leads in PersistIQ and adds each one to the campaign from the owner's mailbox. If the campaign is set to manual sending, the owner sees each first email in PersistIQ ready to review and send, with Kite's opening line already in place.

Once the campaign is running, Kite reads the activity PersistIQ records for it, such as emails sent and replies received, and reports which prospects are responding and which opening lines are working. It can draft replies to the people who wrote back and update each lead's status as the conversation moves, such as marking someone interested after a good reply.

Kite also keeps the outreach from going where it shouldn't. When someone answers through another channel, such as a call or a LinkedIn message, Kite can remove that lead from the campaign so the next email doesn't go out. When a company becomes a customer or asks you to stop, Kite can add its domain to your Do Not Contact list, so no one else at that company gets your emails either.

If you want new prospects added regularly, ask Kite to repeat the job on a schedule, such as every Monday morning. Each run qualifies a new batch, checks it against PersistIQ, and brings it to you for approval before adding anyone to the campaign.

When Kite finishes, your PersistIQ campaign is working through a set of qualified prospects, and your conversation with Kite holds the record of who was added and why.