Launching your first cold email campaign in Smartlead takes six prompts to SmartAssistant: create the campaign, write the sequence, add or find leads, set the schedule and limit, run a deliverability check, and launch. On an already-warmed mailbox the whole thing takes 15 to 30 minutes; on a brand-new mailbox, plan for a few weeks of warmup first, most of it running in the background.
The first cold email campaign is the one that scares people the most. You have a product to sell, a rough idea of who you want to reach, and a fresh Smartlead account. Somewhere in between sits a wall of buttons, settings, and acronyms you have never had to care about before. Most new BDRs lose two or three days here before a single email goes out.
This walkthrough is what it actually looks like when you let SmartAssistant do the heavy lifting. Here is a real example, selling a project management tool to agency owners, with a 3 step sequence. The prompts in this piece are ones you can type yourself, word for word, into the chat panel on the right of your screen.
Not much, you need a Smartlead account, one sending mailbox you control (a Gmail, Outlook, or custom domain inbox), and a rough idea of who you want to reach.
If your sending mailbox is brand new, your personal assistant present on every page will tell you to warm it up before sending anything serious. That part matters more than people realise. A fresh mailbox blasted with 200 cold emails on day one will land in spam no matter how good the copy is. If you are starting from zero, the full cold email setup covers the domain and warmup groundwork first. More on this below.
You open the chat panel on the right side of any Smartlead page and type what you want.
For this walkthrough, type something like this.
"Create a campaign for selling our project management tool to agency owners."
That is the whole prompt. You do not need to write a brief, you do not need to pick a template, you do not need to know which menu the campaign builder is in.
The assistant creates the campaign, gives it a name, and navigates you to the editor. You will see a card in the chat that says something like "Navigated to Email Campaigns", and the editor opens on screen.
Next prompt.
"Write a 3 step sequence."
The assistant writes three emails directly into the editor.
Each email uses personalisation variables like {{first_name}} and {{company}}. Those get filled in from your lead list when the campaign sends, so every email reads like it was written to that one person.
You read through what the assistant wrote. If the tone is off, you tell it. Type something like "Make step 1 shorter and more casual" or "Swap step 2 for a case study angle" and it rewrites that step in place. You are not editing in a separate doc and pasting in. You are talking to the assistant about the copy and it adjusts.
Two ways depending on what you have.
If you already have a list of agency owners (a CSV from a tool like Apollo, a list a colleague gave you, or your own outreach research), you upload it the normal way and tell the assistant to attach it. Type something like "Use the list I just uploaded for this campaign".
If you do not have a list yet, you can ask the assistant to find some leads inside Smartlead. It navigates to SmartProspect page inside the product, applies the filters, and finds the list for you. All you do is ask.
"Find me agency owners at marketing agencies with 5 to 50 employees in the US."
The assistant navigates to Smart Prospect, applies the filters, and shows you the matching count. It will remind you that unlocking emails uses Smart Prospect credits and show your current balance, so you do not accidentally burn credits on a search you did not mean to run.
Once the leads are unlocked, you tell it to push them into the campaign and it does.
You do not really need to. The assistant picks a sensible default. If you ask "What sending limit should I use" it will tell you something honest, like "Your sending mailbox is 12 days old, so we should keep this at 20 to 30 per day until warmup hits 30 days, then ramp up."
If you want to override, you just say it.
"Set the daily sending limit to 25 and use my Eastern Time zone."
Done.
This is the part that catches every new BDR off guard. Your copy can be perfect, your list can be perfect, and your emails can still end up in spam if the technical setup is off. The good news is the assistant checks all of this before you launch if you ask it to.
"Run a deliverability check on my sending mailbox before I send."
It checks four things.
If something is broken, the assistant either fixes it directly (like enabling warmup on a mailbox where it was off) or walks you to the exact setting you need to change. You are not Googling "how to set up DMARC" at 11pm.
For agency owners as your target audience, the realistic expectation on a properly warmed mailbox is reply rates in the 2 to 8 percent range. If you are seeing 0 percent, something is technically wrong and the deliverability check usually catches it.
When everything is ready, you type one more prompt.
"Launch the campaign."
The assistant asks you to confirm. This is the one place it will always stop and ask, because launching a live send is the kind of thing you want to be sure about. You confirm, the campaign goes live, and the first emails go out on the schedule you set.
From the moment you signed up to the moment you launched, the realistic timeline is 15 to 30 minutes if your mailbox is already warmed, or a few weeks if you had to warm a brand new mailbox from scratch. Most of that warming time is in the background. You are not staring at the screen.
A few useful prompts for the days after launch.
The assistant looks at the live data, gives you the answer, and either does the action or walks you to it.
Yes, especially if the mailbox is new or has not been used for cold outreach before. Smartlead has warmup built in. Turn it on the day you connect the mailbox and let it run for at least 4 weeks before any serious sending volume. The assistant will check warmup status and tell you when you are clear.
If your mailbox is freshly warmed (4 to 6 weeks), you can usually send 20 to 50 a day to start. The assistant will recommend a number based on your specific mailbox age and warmup health, so you do not have to guess.
Ask the assistant to find leads inside Smartlead using Smart Prospect. You give it the filters in plain English, like "agency owners in the US at companies with 5 to 50 employees", and it returns matches. Unlocking emails uses credits, so the assistant tells you the cost before you commit.
Yes, you describe the offer and the audience and it writes the sequence with personalisation variables already in place. You review, edit if you want, then launch.
Type something like "My emails are landing in spam, what is going on" and the assistant runs a fresh diagnostic against your live account. It checks the same things as before, plus your current sending volume, content for spam trigger words, and warmup health. It tells you the actual cause for your specific setup, not a generic checklist.
Yes, SmartAssistant is included in every Smartlead plan at no extra cost. The moment you sign up, the chat panel is there.
If you are already on Smartlead, open the chat panel and try the prompts above on your own first campaign. If you are not, you can sign up free and have your first campaign live by lunch.
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Founder, StackOptimise
Smartlead's combination of automation, unlimited inboxes, and easy campaign management has completely transformed how we run cold email campaigns.
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Founder, Cold Email Hackers
We have about 15 companies and we use Smartlead for all of them.
Founder, DutchSave Media
One of the things I love about using Smartlead is the deliverability feature. If they landed in the bounce or spam folders, we could resolve this quickly.
Co-Founder, Growth Today
I want to continue to use Smartlead to make operations more seamless - the plan is to bring more clients here and build more SOPs.
Founder, FueltoFly
Smartlead listens to the agencies and customers and builds according to what people want, that has really made things easier for us.
Founder, OutboundSync
We build an infrastructure product, and OutboundSync communicates with Smartlead itself. I love the webhook and API. They're really well done and keep getting better.
Founder, Axoleads
With SmartDelivery, you can put all of that in the hands of the tool. It ensures your emails land in inboxes, and by running a simple test, you can see if you're hitting the mark.
Founder, Claygen
Deliverability is the cornerstone of cold email outreach. You could have the best email copy in the world, but if no one is seeing it, it's useless. I really love the feature where you can actually give client accesses to your clients.
Co-Founder, Cymate
I do not want to switch to another software. Pick a solution you trust, stick with it, and keep refining your copy.
CMO, Avalanche Capital
Managing large volumes of emails through multiple inboxes used to be a logistical nightmare. With Smartlead, the process is seamless. We book thousands of discovery calls through cold emails. These campaigns are generating leads at a scale we never thought possible.
Founder, Growth Engine X
We came for the unlimited inboxes, and we stayed for the API. 1.5M cold emails/month, 7,767+ inboxes managed.
Head of Community & Ecosystem, TxtCart
You cannot replace having 10,000 touches with potential clients. When you have that much distribution and reach, you really start to see incredible results. The simplicity of Smartlead made all the difference. It doesn't require you to be a technical wizard.
Founder, Hyperke
Smartlead has been a game-changer for us. It increased our appointment volume, improved ease of use, and offered valuable features. 80% increase in appointments/month, peak of 276 appointments in a single month.
Founder, Kinetyca
Smartlead has been our cold email backbone from day one. The platform evolves constantly, keeping pace with how deliverability and personalization need to work today. 21% overall reply rate, $175K in 4 months for multiple B2B clients.
Founder, Reachflow
Smartlead is centered around deliverability and constantly evolving. Their API is not like any other platform. Smartlead covers all our needs. The focus on core features like deliverability and API integration is unmatched.
CEO, Halfwarm
Our approach to crafting conversational emails led to reply rates that many of my peers thought were unattainable.
Co-Founder, letstrike
We've grown on zero capital, zero marketing, purely cold emailing - and that's the story we love to tell. The best approach is no approach if you can't handle domain meltdown. The second best is something like Smartlead that's built from the ground up for deliverability at scale.
Founder, Fenixtal
Smartlead's white-labeling and automation let us punch above our weight. The 12M euros sales potential? That's what happens when you combine human creativity with Smartlead's precision.
Co-Founder, Digital Creativs
Nine out of 10. Ninety percent of our clients are on Smartlead unless they come in with an existing setup. That's the default.
Co-Founder, BuildingReach
At the end of the day, you have to take a bet on one tool or another. It was a no-brainer taking that bet on Smartlead. We had to even turn down the volume of our marketing campaigns - Smartlead was capable of driving more volume than our sales team was able to fulfill.
Founder & MD, Prospectiv
Since starting the business in January of this year, we've already generated $200K in sales exclusively from cold email. Smartlead has been central to our operations and has exceeded our expectations.
Founder, Growthlynk
There's so much stuff built on top of it. I would be dead if I had to rebuild it with another tool. I can manage hundreds of senders easily. I can send hundreds of thousands of emails.
Founder, Corebits
The platform's HubSpot integration, real-time Slack updates, and advanced campaign customization have been game changers for our business and our clients'.
Founder, Apex Ascension
From day one, we've never used anything else.
