Six touches, three channels, one cadence.

Most outbound sequences are an email, a wait, another email, a wait, and a call if anyone is feeling brave. Ours starts with the call, and every touch after it refers to the one before, so by the fifth the prospect has heard the same person, in the same voice, say the same specific thing about their company four different ways. That is what a cadence is: not frequency, but continuity.

This is the sequence we start a new market on. It changes as the data comes back - a market that answers the phone runs differently from one that answers email - but the shape is the shape.

The six touches

1. Day 0, call. The first attempt.

   Tuesday to Thursday, ten to eleven or two to three. No voicemail; a first-attempt voicemail from a stranger is deleted, and it spends the introduction. The rep has the research in front of them and one reason this company is on the board.

2. Day 1, email. Personal, short, in the rep’s own words.

   It names why they rang. Not a template with a first name dropped in: the opening line is the signal that put the company on the board, the same research the rep read before dialling. Short enough to read on a phone in one go, one ask, nothing to open.

3. Day 3, call. A different time of day.

   The attempt that matters most. The email has landed, so the name is faintly familiar, and a different hour catches a different diary. A voicemail here is fine, and it references the email.

4. Day 8, call. Third attempt, voicemail this time.

   Thirty seconds, referencing the email, with one sentence of why. The point is not that they call back; it is that the next email is opened.

5. Day 13, email. A proof point.

   The shape of a client who looked like them and what happened. Never a price, never a deck. One paragraph, one ask.

6. Day 20, call. The last touch, written properly.

   If they do not pick up, a voicemail that says, plainly, that this is the last time they will hear from us unless they want to. A surprising share of replies come from it. People answer endings.

LinkedIn runs alongside rather than as a numbered touch: a connection after the first call, a short note after the proof point, nothing that reads as a sequence. Then ninety days of rest, and the company goes round again with a new reason if the board still says so.

Why the later touches carry the replies

The first touch introduces. The second and third make the name familiar. The fourth and fifth are where the prospect has a moment, has the context, and answers. That is the whole argument for running a sequence to the end: a lot of outbound is stopped at touch two, which is the exact point at which it has done the expensive part and none of the productive part.

It is also why nobody is chased twice in a day and nobody is forgotten in week three. The sequence holds the timetable so the rep does not have to; the rep holds the conversation.

Deliverability is part of the cadence

The email touches only work if they arrive. A warmed domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set, low volume paced through the day, and inbox rate watched per mailbox per week. Send a thousand templated emails from a new domain on a Monday and the sequence is over before the second touch, whatever it says.

What changes by market

The phone-to-email ratio, the hours, the gap between touches, whether LinkedIn leads or follows. A market of practice managers answers between surgeries; a market of IT directors answers email at seven in the morning. The first version is a starting point; the second version, a week later, is built from what actually got answered. That is what the platform is for.