How does a campaign work on Waalaxy?

16 minutes

When we started working on Waalaxy (which at the time was called “Prospectin 2.0” and then “Revenant” and then “Igwaan” and finally adopted the sweet name Waalaxy but you probably don’t care).

I remember the day we said with the developers: “Everything is campaign”. 👊 Because this is actually, the basis of Waalaxy. The rocket engine.

And like an engine, there are different technical bricks and design choices that are made…

In short, not everything is necessarily obvious. 😅

So welcome to this HUGE campaigns FAQ.

Ready to see what’s under the hood? Then here we go. 🚀

What is a Waalaxy campaign?

On Waalaxy a campaign is one or more actions on a list of prospects. It works as follows:

• I import a list of prospects from LinkedIn or a CSV file (learn more about imports),

• I choose the sequence template that fits my needs and my subscription plan

• I configure the timeframes and content of the messages I want to send
• I start my campaign. 😄

To learn more about launching a campaign, watch our demo. 🚨 Next, the actions will be queued (learn more about the queue), and run following delays and quotas. In this article, we differentiate between a sequence or template, which corresponds to the sequence of actions that will be executed, and a campaign, which corresponds to the execution of a sequence. In other words, the combination of leads and a sequence of actions.

What are the possible actions in a Waalaxy campaign?

To date, Waalaxy allows you to:

• To prospect on LinkedIn,
• find pro emails from your prospects (learn more about email search).
• export to your CRM or any other Zapier compatible tool (learn more about CRM integration with Waalaxy).
• send emails.

So here are the types of actions and their associated icon on Waalaxy in more detail:

Visit a profile on LinkedIn

Will simulate a visit to your prospect’s LinkedIn profile, automatically. Your prospect will be able to see your profile in the list of the last people who visited their profile. They will also sometimes be notified that you visited their profile. You can visit up to 110 profiles per day. 😄

Follow a LinkedIn profile (or follow)

This action will automatically follow your prospect on LinkedIn . As a result, their content is likely to arrive in your news feed.

This step is generally used because most users are notified that you are following them. Being a fairly uncommon practice, especially if they don’t post regularly on LinkedIn, they will often visit your profile themselves in return or follow you back. If your profile arouses their curiosity, they are likely to add you directly. As a result, between 5-10% of followed prospects send an invitation request in return. 👽

Likewise, if your prospects follow you back, your content is likely to appear in their news feed. A good way to make yourself visible and “feed” your prospects. You can follow up to 100 profiles per day.

Send an invitation request on Linkedin (or connection)

This step automatically sends an invitation to your prospect on LinkedIn. This is a required step if you want to send messages afterwards, as you cannot send a message to someone who you are not connected to on LinkedIn. This invitation may or may not be accompanied by a personalized note.

However, we have shown that an invitation without a note gets 10% more acceptance than an invitation with a note. Waalaxy allows you to easily send 1,000 invitations per week as opposed to 100 for most tools on the market. However, these high volumes are only possible when not adding a note, although it is possible to reach them with an invitation note.

🚨 Learn more about the LinkedIn invitation limit 🚨

You can send up to 200 invitations per day. 😜

Send a message on LinkedIn

This step allows you to send a message on LinkedIn to people you are connected with (and only to those people). You can send up to 120 messages per day. 😎

Find an email (or “email finder” , or “enrichment”)

Waalaxy allows you to automatically find up to 500 GPDR compliant pro emails at no extra cost (Business only), thanks to a DropContact integration. This step, called “email finder”, will send to the Dropcontact API the prospect’s information and they will return an email. About 1 in 2 emails are found. This can vary from one nationality to another and from one type of prospect to another.

👉 Learn more about enrichment. 👈

It is possible to find more than 500 emails per month by purchasing extra credits.

Send an email

This step allows you to send an email to the prospect. This step is only possible if your prospect has a known email. This can be an email retrieved from LinkedIn, in case you are connected with the person or an email found through the Email Finder step. In case both emails are in our possession, the sending on the professional email (email found by Dropcontact) will be preferred.

The number of emails sent is capped at 500 per day. 😜

CRM synchronization (or Zapier or “webhook”)

This step allows you to send a prospect’s data to an external tool, via Zapier or Integromat in order, for example, to feed a CRM. This step can be present in the sequences containing the word “Zapier version” or on all sequences, by defining a “Response objective”.

This “response objective” consists in sending data to a Zapier Webhook as soon as a prospect responds in the campaign.

👽 Learn more about how to implement a Zapier integration 👽

The so-called “native” integration with a CRM, which consists of avoiding going through a third-party tool such as Zapier or Integromat, is scheduled for September 2021 for the most popular tools (Hubspot, SalesForce, Zoho, PipeDrive…).

Do you plan to integrate other channels?

Just as you need to master each channel independently before doing multi-channel prospecting, we are making the choice to develop the best tool on the market to prospect on LinkedIn and by email before attacking any other channel. So the answer is yes, but not straight away. We are waiting to take a step back from our users, in order to fully understand the needs and implications of multi-channel prospecting.

The different conditions and final steps in a sequence 👇

In order to ensure that prospects fulfill the conditions necessary for the execution of a given step, or simply to check their progress in the campaign, there are different “conditions” steps.

Delay

The delay is a time to wait, either between two steps or before validating a condition. It can therefore appear as a separate “Delay” step or in association with another condition such as “Not connected & Delay 15 days”. In the first case, the prospect will go to the next step as soon as the deadline has passed. In the second case, they will go to the next step as soon as the delay is exceeded IF the condition has been fulfilled. 😜

Connected or Not Connected

Means that you or not connected with the prospect on LinkedIn. You cannot send an invitation to a prospect you are connected with or send a message to someone you are not connected with on LinkedIn.

Has an email or does not have an email

This condition is always present before sending an email. “Has an email” means either a LinkedIn email (if you are connected with the person) or a professional email (found with an Email finder step for example).

Has seen/has not seen

This step is only available after a message on LinkedIn. If the prospect has seen the previous message, then they will go into the “Seen” stage and vice versa.

If all of your prospects seem to be moving to the “Not Seen” stage, check that you have enabled this setting on LinkedIn

 

Did not respond

This step consists of verifying that the prospect has not responded before moving on to the next step. It makes the reading of the sequences easier, knowing that a prospect who responds, regardless of the step, is automatically taken out of the campaign and considered as a “Success”.

End steps: Success, Failure & End 👽

These steps automatically exit the prospect. Failure is often there to signal that the prospect got to the end of the campaign without responding, or their email wasn’t received before an email step, or they didn’t accept the invitation request.

The success step is rarely stipulated in the sequences, but any prospect who responds is considered a success. This difference between success and failure is intended to improve campaign statistics in the long run.

The “End” step is usually used to remove a lead that does not meet the campaign entry criteria. For example, in a campaign that starts with an invite request, all the leads already connected will go directly to the End step. 👩🚀

When more advanced analytics become available, these leads will not be considered as either Failed or Successful, so as not to bias the analysis.

What is the significance of the different prospect statuses in the campaign?

In campaigns, your prospects can be in different statuses depending on their progress in the campaign:

• Entry: you have just launched your campaign, the actions are queuing, the action should be created soon

• Running: the prospect did not finish the campaign. He can be in the queue or waiting for a condition. You have to check the step to understand where it is exactly.

• Paused: you have paused the prospect, no action will be sent and he will not go to the next step until you relaunch him

• Exited: the prospect responded to your connection request, your message, or your email or you exited him manually

• Finished: the prospect has reached an “endpoint” step or a “failed” step in the sequence

• Error: There are several possibilities for prospects to go to error status:

  • The prospect no longer exists on LinkedIn or has blocked you

  • The invitation note exceeds 300 characters after integration of the variable

  • Too many prospects sent to the campaign at once creating server latency

  • Double click on the launch in the campaign

  • Other various and varied error

How does the sequence of actions in a Waalaxy campaign work?

Elementary question my dear Watson. 🤓 The value proposition behind the systematic use of “campaigns” is to automatic link two actions performed on a prospect.

(So you can ping-pong while showing your boss amazing results)

If you don’t have a ping pong table, show your boss incredible results from your campaigns first, then ask for a ping pong table) 😇

So, reading a sequence is going to be from left to right. Actions are executed on the prospects if they meet the condition(s).

⚠️⚠️A delay is not an exact time between two actions, but the time between the execution of the first action and the queuing of the other. Thus, the delay can vary widely depending on the number of actions in your queue and your quotas.⚠️⚠️

Example of how it works

Let’s take an example to illustrate how a campaign with the Wall-E template works: The prospect enters the campaign and will be visited. Then we’ll wait a day. Once the delay is over, we’ll see if he’s already connected with us. If not, an “Invitation” action will be queued. If yes, a “Message” action will be queued.

As soon as the invitation request is detected as accepted (we check every 120 minutes), the 1 day delay is started. Once the delay is over, the Message action will be queued. 😄

As soon as this action has been executed, the prospect will remain in the campaign for another 5 days. If after 5 days they haven’t responded, they will be marked as failed and removed from the campaign.

If they respond within 5 days, they will exit the campaign and be considered a success. A prospect who responds after 5 days will not be updated because they have already exited the campaign. As a result they will be marked as a Failure.

How to start a Waalaxy campaign?

A campaign consists of 3 things:

• Leads,
• Sequence,
• The content of messages and emails (if the sequence contains these steps).

To start a Waalaxy campaign, you can start from a list of prospects directly, by selecting the prospects in question, or directly from the Campaigns page.

Option 1: Start a campaign from the prospect list.

Link from the prospect list

⚠️ You cannot import leads from two different lists into a campaign. You need to select a list, then select the leads, in order to import them into a campaign afterwards.

Option 2: Create a new campaign from the campaign page and import the leads afterwards

Link to the campaign page

What is auto-import and how does it work?

There are 3 ways to import leads into Waalaxy:

• an import from LinkedIn (profile page, search, list of your connections…).
• a CSV file containing LinkedIn URLs.
• automatic imports.

The principle of “auto-imports” is to automatically populate a campaign over time. Formerly called “triggers” on ProspectIn, this feature also allows you to make more original and particularly efficient segmentations. Thus, every 60 minutes (if your computer is on and one LinkedIn tab is open), Waalaxy will fetch the new prospects corresponding to the chosen auto-import. 😜

To learn more about auto-imports, read our article on this topic. 🚨

Does a prospect walk out of the campaign when they have responded?

Waalaxy aims to help you get in touch with your prospect, so as to spark interest. So, as soon as a prospect responds, they exit the campaign.

No one wants to respond and get a second unrelated bot message in the process, right? 😅

If you want to save time in managing your leads’ responses, use Piwaa instead.

What is Zapier sync and how does it work?

Zapier synchronization allows you to send a prospect’s data to an external tool, via Zapier or Integromat, in order to feed a CRM for example.

This step can be present in the sequences containing the word “Zapier version” or on all sequences, by defining a “Response Objective”. This “response objective” consists in sending data to a Zapier Webhook as soon as a prospect responds in a campaign.

🚨 Learn more about how to implement a Zapier integration 🚨

The so-called “native” integration with a CRM, which consists of avoiding going through a third-party tool such as Zapier or Integromat, is planned for September 2021 for the most popular tools (Hubspot, SalesForce, Zoho, PipeDrive…).

How to pause a Waalaxy campaign?

To pause a campaign, just go to the campaign page and click on the “Pause” button.

You will have to reload the page so that the status of the leads is updated in the interface. When a campaign is paused, all actions are removed from the queue and no leads move to a next step.

If the campaign is linked to an auto-import, this too continues to import leads into the campaign, but they remain at the front end.

They will only move forward when they are re-launched. 😊

On replay, if a lead was waiting for a deadline and/or condition and that deadline and/or condition is met, their action will be queued.

The other prospects will have their actions queued again, at the same place in the campaign (although the order of the queues may change slightly).

Pausing is not a trivial action, especially if it is done on hundreds of prospects. Abusing this button can lead to bugs. 😅

How do I pause, re-pause or output only certain leads?

If you want to pause, retry or exit only certain leads from the campaign, just select them and choose the desired option.

A lead in an “Error” or “Exit” state will not be resurrected. If you try to resurrect them, nothing will just happen 😅 To put a “Exit” or “Error” state lead back in a campaign, just follow the same procedure as adding leads to a current campaign.

How do I import leads into a campaign already in progress?

It is totally possible to add leads to a campaign already in progress. To do this, you just have to select a campaign, start from the list of prospects, select them and then click “Add to a campaign”

or click “Modify my campaign” => “Add prospects”

Why don’t my leads appear when I try to import them from my list into the campaign?

When you choose to add leads to a campaign from the “Add Leads” in the sequence viewer, it may happen that after you choose the list, your leads do not appear. This means they are already in another campaign. 👽

Can I have a lead in two campaigns?

A lead can only be in one campaign at a time. A lead in Pause is considered to still be in a campaign. Only a lead in “Exited” or “Exited” status is considered no longer in the campaign.

How can I see the performance of my campaign?

You can see the performance of your campaigns from the Dashboard page or in the “Dashboard” tab on each campaign.

Why does my lead appear twice in my campaign?

A lead placed in a campaign becomes a traveler. If they go to an Error state or are manually removed from the campaign and then reimported, they will make a second trip. It is then possible that this prospect appears twice in your campaign. But normally, on at least one of the two lines, you will see an “Error” or “Exited” (otherwise it is a bug). 😅

How do I know where my prospect is in the campaign?

At the moment, it’s not possible to filter or search for a lead in a campaign. (Promise we are working on a nicer visualization of the campaigns 👽). So as it stands, it’s difficult (but not impossible) to visualize the status of a lead in a campaign.

Their status will be indicated by the type of stage they are in and may be accompanied by an “hourglass” icon, indicating that they are waiting for a deadline or a condition to move forward.

What does “Waiting for a deadline” mean?

Waiting for a deadline means that the prospect has received the action and is waiting to move to the next step.

Why don’t my prospects take the next step?

There are several reasons why a prospect does not seem to be moving to the next step:

• They do not meet the necessary requirements,
• They are waiting for a deadline,
• They have responded (Successful), reached the end (Failed) or has been manually removed (Exited),
• the action is queued but not yet executed.

Waalaxy Sequence Selection & Editing

What is the best sequence for prospecting?

Currently there are more than 50 sequence templates. If there was one sequence that was better than the others, do you think we’d bother creating templates over and over? 😁

Obviously, each sequence depends on what you want to do, what you sell (or if you don’t sell anything, your use case), what channels you want to use…

In short, there isn’t a best sequence. If you don’t want to get too caught up in choosing your sequence, stick to the “Recommended” category which contains our selection of the 10 most useful templates. 💪

PS: promise we are working on a tool to help you find YOUR sequence in a few seconds.

Can I create or edit a Waalaxy sequence?

At the moment, it is not possible to create a sequence from scratch or even to remove/add steps. It is only possible to edit time frames and message contents. For some, it’s frustrating. Yes, I understand.

But our goal with Waalaxy is to make multi-channel automated prospecting accessible to everyone. But creating your own sequence requires an underlying understanding of how the different channels work.

Because, obviously, you don’t want to create a sequence that doesn’t work or sends anything to your prospects.

So every time we add a feature, we have to ask ourselves: “How many users is this feature going to serve and how often is it going to create bugs?”. As a reminder, Waalaxy was only released in May 2021. So we’re waiting to have some hindsight to fully understand the needs and issues, and develop a sequence editor that is simple and effective. Quite a challenge I assure you!

What if the sequence I want does not exist?

You can contact us at support to request your sequence. Please note that we receive a lot of requests and always with the aim of not serving too many users (by making it too difficult for our new customers to find a sequence), we select once a week the sequences that we consider the most useful and add them to the list. Bonus: you get to suggest the name of your sequence, if it is related to space. 😱

How do I edit the content of the notes, messages or emails of my campaign, after launching it?

To edit your content, go to the “Messages” tab

All future actions will be affected by the content modification.

How to add message content when creating my campaign?

If the step is marked with a red dot (message or email), it means that you have not yet added the content of the message or email you are going to send to the prospect. You can do it by clicking on it. If the dot is orange (invitation note), it means that you have not added any content but it is not mandatory. (As a reminder, an invitation without a note is 10x more likely to be accepted).

Waalaxy Subscriptions & Sequences

What sequences can I use during the trial period?

The trial period gives you access to the Business Plan, which includes all sequences. At the end of the trial period, your campaigns will be paused until you choose the right plan.

How do I know if a sequence is accessible with my subscription?

In the choice of sequences, there are 3 categories corresponding to the plans: PRO plan, ADVANCED plan, BUSINESS plan. The ADVANCED plan also allows you to access the PRO sequences. The BUSINESS plan allows you to access the ADVANCE and PRO sequences. 🚨 Learn more about subscriptions 🚨

What is the “response goal”?

This feature allows you to export to your CRM via Zapier a prospect’s data as soon as they respond to your sequence. In the future, it will be possible to define other actions (like tagging a lead for example).

What is the complexity of a sequence?

We have given a complexity score for each sequence from 1 to 3, allowing you to more easily find the sequence that corresponds to your level of mastery of the tool and of multi-channel prospecting.

Conclusion

If you did not find the answer to your question, feel free to contact us viathe chat. We’ll be sure to respond as soon as possible (and with a smile 😁). Don’t hesitate to ask us, if you have a question, others are probably asking it too! 👽