outbound
A Cadence, Not a Barrage
Most outbound sequences fail at the second touch, where the sender repeats themselves. Spacing and variation matter more than the number of attempts.
A cadence is a planned sequence of attempts to reach somebody. Most of them are a single message sent five times with the dates changed, which is not a sequence. It is a demonstration of persistence, and the recipient reads it as one.
The structural rule
Each touch should contain something the previous one did not.
That is the whole discipline, and it rules out the most common pattern in outbound: "just following up on my last email", which contains no information, asks the recipient to do the work of remembering, and signals that the sender has nothing further to say.
What counts as new.
New information. Something relevant that has happened: a change in their market, a result from a comparable customer, a seasonal deadline.
A different question. The first touch asked for a meeting. The second can ask whether this is even the right person, which is a far easier question to answer and frequently gets a reply that routes you correctly.
A different channel. Email, then a call, then a message. The same content in a different medium is genuinely different, because the chance it reaches a person who is paying attention is independent across channels.
A different, smaller ask. Dropping from "half an hour next week" to "is this worth a conversation at all, yes or no" lowers the cost of replying, and a no is a useful outcome that ends the sequence cleanly.
Spacing
Too close reads as pressure. Too far and the thread has no continuity.
A shape that works for business-to-business field services: day one, day three, day eight, day fifteen, day thirty. Front-loaded while there is context, widening as the probability drops.
Two spacing rules worth enforcing in the tool rather than in a person's discipline.
Never more than one touch per channel per day, across all sequences. The failure here is structural: a prospect in two campaigns gets two of everything, and from their side that is one company contacting them twice.
Nothing on the day of or the day after a reply. A reply should pause the sequence immediately, including an out-of-office, which is a reply that means "not now" rather than "never".
Know when to stop
A cadence with no end is a subscription the recipient did not take out.
Define the end before you start: five touches, or six, and then out. If somebody has not responded to five varied attempts across two channels, further attempts do not convert, they just lower the odds of ever being welcome.
The courteous and effective close is a message that says this is the last one and the door is open. It generates more replies than any touch except the first, because it removes the obligation to respond and makes it easy to be honest.
The rules that attach to calls
The email rules are covered elsewhere. The call leg of a cadence has its own, and they are stricter.
The Telemarketing Sales Rule at 16 CFR part 310 governs telemarketing calls, including the national Do Not Call registry, the hours during which calls may be made, the disclosures required promptly at the start of a call, and record-keeping obligations.
Two practical consequences for an outbound team.
The registry has to be checked, and compliance is not a one-off: numbers are added continuously, so the check is a process rather than a purchase. The rule also requires an internal do-not-call list, which is the one businesses forget: a person who asks you not to call again must be recorded by you and honoured independently of any national list.
Calls to businesses and calls to consumers are treated differently, and the line is not always where people assume, particularly for sole traders whose business number is their mobile.
What to record
Per prospect: every touch, its channel, its date, and what happened. Not for reporting. For three operational reasons.
A colleague picking up the account can see what has already been said, which prevents the duplicate approach that reads as chaos.
A request to stop is a fact with a date on it, which is the whole defence if it is ever questioned.
And the sequence can be measured. Which touch produces replies, which channel produces them, and at what point the returns go to zero are all knowable from this record, and from nothing else.
Almost every outbound team has an opinion about the ideal number of touches. Almost none has the data, and the data is five fields.