Getting the Most Out of SimpleSend

Everything you need to write briefs that produce great cold emails, from first principles to the advanced levers power users pull. SimpleSend researches every contact and writes the whole sequence in your voice: one complete multi-step sequence per contact, written from scratch and QA-checked. You approve a sample before anything drafts at scale. Then pick a path: send it from SimpleSend, from warmed mailboxes on domains registered in your name, or export a CSV to Smartlead, Instantly, Apollo, HubSpot or a Gmail mail merge. Nothing sends until you launch it.

What is SimpleSend?

The key difference from a template-and-token approach: every subject line and every email body is drafted uniquely per contact. There are no {{first_name}} slots filled in at the end. The AI drafts each email knowing who the recipient is, what their company does, and what recent signal (if any) it found about them.

Per-contact pipeline

For each contact, SimpleSend runs the full sequence through this chain:

1. 0Fit check (optional)Off unless you turn it on in the brief. A quick check before research skips a contact only when its company clearly doesn't fit your ICP. Skipped contacts cost nothing, and you can draft them anyway. See Description & ICP.
2. 1EnrichReads and summarizes the company homepage. For LinkedIn campaigns, it also reads the person's profile and recent activity. Results are cached for 30 days.
3. 2ResearchRuns your research targets: searches across job postings, news, LinkedIn activity and the company's own site for contact-specific signals, or a read of the CSV column you pointed a target at.
4. 3Draft each stepThe model you picked writes each email. Each step gets its own value prop and its own finding when there is one, and the starting value prop and template vary from contact to contact.
5. 4Fact-check & QAAn AI check confirms that no claim about the recipient was invented. Deterministic rules check length, banned phrases, the CTA link and formatting.
6. 5PolishIf anything fails, a final editing pass fixes it without adding new facts. Anything that still needs a look is flagged for review before you send or export.

How it works: the 6-step flow

Every campaign starts from New campaign, where you pick Email, LinkedIn DMs or Talk tracks. An email campaign then walks you through six screens:

The brief

The brief is the single most important thing you control. Every field maps directly into the AI's prompt. Knowing what each field does lets you write briefs that actually move output quality.

Company description & ICP

Description: one paragraph. Goes into the research planner as industry context and into the drafting model as your company description. The planner uses it to decide where to look for contact signals; if your description mentions "SaaS revenue operations," the planner knows to check job boards for RevOps hires and LinkedIn for GTM content.

ICP: 2 lines max. Goes into the research planner as recipient context and into the drafting model to ground the "light research flavor" sentence when no specific finding is available. Include signals the planner can search on: stack names, company size/stage, hiring patterns, GTM motion.

Under the ICP is an opt-in check: Skip contacts whose company clearly doesn't fit this ICP. It's off by default, so every contact gets drafted. When it's on, a quick check before research looks at the company only (job titles never cause a skip), skips a contact only when the company is confidently a mismatch, and never skips more than half the list. Skipped contacts cost nothing, and Draft these anyway drafts them once the batch finishes.

Value props ⭐

The most leverage-heavy field in the entire brief. Up to 3 value props, one per line. SimpleSend rotates them across the steps of each sequence, and each contact starts on a different one: one contact's intro might open on prop #2, the next contact's on prop #3. Each email is built around its assigned prop and told not to reuse props from earlier steps. Break-up steps skip prop assignment entirely.

If you give only one value prop for a four-step sequence, all four emails must pitch the same angle. The AI is told to "find a fresh angle," but with nothing new to work with, drafts become repetitive and thin. Three distinct, specific props give each email in the sequence a unique hook.

Writing high-leverage value props

Think in terms of specific outcomes, not category features. The drafter is given one prop and told to build the entire email around it, so the prop needs to be a complete story seed, not a label.

One outcome per line. The parser strips numbered prefixes like 1. or 2), so those are fine to include. The system splits on line breaks, bullets, and semicolons, so each line becomes exactly one prop. Don't combine multiple outcomes on the same line.

Tone & length

Tone: choose Casual, Formal, Witty, Blunt or Warm. Tone shapes the opener style and phrasing cadence. Some formatting rules override tone regardless of your choice: sentence case is always enforced, and em dashes are never allowed. Casual means conversational but not all-lowercase. Blunt means no preamble: get to the point immediately.

Length has three options:

CTA & CTA link

The CTA is the action you want the reader to take, e.g. "15-min intro call," "grab 20 minutes," "see a 3-min demo." If you add a link, the CTA text carries it through drafting and QA. Leave the link blank and the CTA renders as plain text, which suits a reply-based ask.

CTA placement

A brief control decides where the CTA lands in the body. It applies to every step in the sequence.

Per-step CTA overrides

Open any step in the sequence builder to set its own Call to action: Campaign CTA (the default: use the brief's CTA), Custom (this step gets its own text and link; a blank link means no link, not the campaign link), or No CTA (the step ends on the content). Break-up steps and LinkedIn connection notes never carry a CTA, whatever you pick.

Signature

Add a signature in the brief as plain text, rich text, HTML or an image. It replaces the [Your name] placeholder in every draft, so the previews and the CSV show the finished email, and the export uses the right form of it for the link format you pick.

• Exporting to a sender that adds its own signature (Smartlead, Instantly, Gmail)? Leave the brief's signature blank, or you'll sign twice.
• Sending from SimpleSend? Each mailbox's own signature, set on the Mailboxes page, is used instead, so every email is signed by the mailbox that sent it. Every sending mailbox needs one (a step from a mailbox without a signature won't send), and your business mailing address goes underneath.

Voice samples

Optional, but recommended. Paste 1–3 real cold emails you've sent before. The drafting model uses these to mirror your cadence, opener style, sign-off, and idiosyncrasies. When samples are present, SimpleSend skips its built-in templates so your own rhythm leads.

• Paste real sent emails: subject line, body, and signature included
• Include emails of similar length and step type to what you're generating (short intros if you want short intros)
• Include your actual voice tics: hedge words, how you sign off, your typical opener
• Don't paste email templates with merge tags. Paste real, sent emails
• Don't paste emails that are much longer or shorter than your target length (the model picks up on cadence)

Research targets: what to look for ⭐

This is what makes SimpleSend emails feel hand-written rather than AI-generated. In the brief's What to look for & how to play it section, each research target is a directive SimpleSend runs for every company before drafting. Each target has two parts:

Each target also has a Source. Research the web is the default. A column reads one of your CSV columns instead, such as notes from your CRM or a link worth reading. Both reads the column when it's filled and researches the web when it isn't.

Findings are scarce on purpose. The drafter uses 0–2 per email, and when research turns up nothing solid for a contact, it falls back to your value props and the company context instead of inventing a reason to reach out.

Branches in How to play it

How to play it can hold branches: "if the finding shows X, pitch A; if it shows Y, pitch B." The research planner captures them, and the drafter follows whichever branch the actual finding supports. When nothing matches, it falls back to your value props.

Writing high-quality research targets

The single most common mistake: a vague Look for with nothing in How to play it. Look for tells research where to dig; How to play it is what shapes the email. Give every target that matters both.

Recommended research targets by use case

Findings are dated where the source allows, and older ones are played down. You can bias research toward fresh signals by writing time windows into Look for (job postings from the last 60 days, announcements from the last 90 days).

Email templates ⭐

Paste your own email body copy into the brief's Email templates field and the drafter will keep the fixed text close to verbatim, filling in only the parts you flag with [square-bracket directives]. This is the most direct lever you have over the exact wording. Great for founders and senior AEs whose voice is the pitch.

Hey [first name], [comment on their recent sales hires in one sentence].

It seems like ramp-time is a priority right now. We help RevOps teams
cut new-rep ramp from 90 days to 45 by [reference the closest value prop
in one specific sentence].

Worth a 15-min chat this week?

How directives work

• Fixed text is preserved almost verbatim. The drafter is instructed not to rewrite it.
• [bracket directives] are instructions the drafter replaces with personalized, research-grounded prose. Each directive typically expands to 1–2 sentences.
• Slot: each template is tagged Intro, Value, Follow-up or Break-up and only rotates into sequence steps of that type.
• Per-step pin: open a step in the sequence builder and pick a template under Template to lock that step to it, overriding rotation.
• Built-in templates step aside: when one of your templates applies to a step, SimpleSend doesn't add a built-in one on top.

Sequence design

How to structure your step sequence for maximum impact, and what each step type actually instructs the AI to do. A sequence can have up to 10 steps.

When you send from SimpleSend, Follow-up and Break-up steps go out as replies in the same thread, so the recipient sees one conversation.

Recommended sequence shapes

Standard 4-step (most common): Day 1 Intro → Day 3 Value → Day 7 Follow-up → Day 14 Break-up. With three value props, each of the first three steps argues a different one.

3-step lightweight: Day 1 Intro → Day 4 Follow-up → Day 10 Break-up.

The builder also flags shapes that tend to drift: back-to-back Follow-up steps (make one a Value step so the tone doesn't slide into a wind-down) and a Break-up that isn't the last step.

The Fine-tune field

Each step has an optional Fine-tune field. Whatever you put there is passed to the drafter as a literal instruction. Use it to override default template behavior for specific steps:

Step 3 · Follow-up
Fine-tune: Open with the job posting finding if there is one. If not,
lead with the CFO surprise-at-board-meetings angle.

Fine-tune is a power-user lever. When you're tuning high-stakes campaigns, use it to inject step-specific logic the default type rules don't cover.

Built-in templates

SimpleSend has 14 built-in email templates. You don't choose them directly: each step type draws from its own pool, and the starting point varies per contact, so a 100-contact batch doesn't read structurally identical. They step aside when you paste voice samples or when one of your own email templates applies to the step. Here's what's available and when each shines.

Models & credits

You pick one writing model per campaign: Standard, Premium or Enhance. The choice trades output quality against credits per email. Fact-checking, QA and the polish pass are free on every model.

Every paid plan includes all three models. The free trial (375 credits) includes Standard and Premium.

What a campaign costs

Credits pay for research and drafting. One credit is one cent.

For scale: Individual includes 4,000 credits a month and Pro 14,000, and top-up packs never expire. If you connect your own Claude through the SimpleSend connector and let it write the drafts, those drafts use no draft credits; research still does.

Send or export

When the batch finishes, the last screen offers two paths. Nothing sends until you launch it.

Before you launch, set your business mailing address (Sequences → Settings) and a signature on each sending mailbox (Mailboxes); nothing sends without them. A pre-flight check then holds addresses that shouldn't be emailed (invalid, role addresses, catch-alls, suppressed or duplicates) and leads already live in a teammate's sequence. Either way, send cold email from dedicated, authenticated domains, never your main one, and warm them first. That's true whether you send from SimpleSend, Smartlead or Instantly.

Refine

Fix drafts after the batch without starting over. Open the list from Records → Lists and refine a single subject or body, a whole email, or a selection of rows at once. Type an instruction ("shorter," "more casual," "stronger CTA," "different angle," "fix greeting") or leave it empty to redraft from scratch. Each refined email costs the same as a draft on the model you pick, and runs across many contacts keep going in the background.

Saved briefs

Once a brief produces strong samples, save it from the Saved campaign briefs box in the brief sidebar. Next time, load it, swap the value props and research targets for the new audience, and keep everything else: description, tone, CTA, signature, templates and sequence. Your saved briefs also live in Records → Briefs, where you can file them in folders, share them with your team, or start a new campaign from one.

Saved briefs are shaped by channel. The picker shows briefs from the same channel first, and loading an email brief into a talk-track campaign keeps the business half (company, ICP, value props, CTA) and drops the sequence, templates and signature.

LinkedIn DMs

LinkedIn DM campaigns use a different pipeline. You choose it when you start a campaign (New campaign → LinkedIn DMs), and the CSV needs only a linkedin_url column. Key differences:

• No subject line, except on InMail steps.
• No email signature.
• No markdown links: [text](url) doesn't render on LinkedIn, so write URLs out. The connection note never carries a link.
• Fact-check still runs on every message. Only the polish pass is skipped: DMs are short enough that a sentence that fails the check is simply removed.
• No built-in templates: DMs use their own prompts.
• Person-level research: SimpleSend reads each person's profile and recent posts on top of your research targets, for 2 credits per contact.
• The sequence opens with a connection note (≤300 characters, no link, no CTA) or an InMail. InMail gets a subject line and a longer, email-style body that lands without a connection. Pick one entry point, not both.

To send, add the LinkedIn Outreach add-on ($80/mo). Messages go from your own LinkedIn account, connected on the LinkedIn page through our LinkedIn automation partner (listed in our Privacy Policy), and SimpleSend paces them for you: 25 invites a day by default, quiet hours from 10pm to 7am, and 3 days between messages. Sending spends your LinkedIn actions, not credits, and replies land in the LinkedIn inbox in the app.

Talk tracks & playbooks

Cold calls get the same research. Turn on Cold-call talk tracks in the brief, or start a Talk tracks campaign that drafts no emails at all, and every contact gets a call card: why call now, date-stamped hooks, a suggested opener, discovery questions, talking points, likely objections and the next step. A card reuses the research the emails already paid for and costs the same as one draft on your model (2, 4 or 8 credits).

A playbook from your Talk Tracks library decides how calls open, what gets researched as a hook, what you ask and what you never say. Pick one in the brief, or SimpleSend uses the playbook you marked as default.

The SimpleSend Chrome extension shows the card in a side panel next to the contact in HubSpot and Salesforce Lightning, and can be switched on for Zoho CRM and HighLevel (both in beta), dialers like Nooks, Orum, Kixie and PhoneBurner, or any other web-based CRM (in beta: map the page once for your team). It never runs on linkedin.com, webmail or sign-in pages.

Hard rules baked into every draft

These rules are non-negotiable: enforced at the drafting model level and re-checked deterministically after drafting. You can't override them via brief fields, and they'll be corrected in the polish pass if the drafter violates them.

• No fabricated facts about the recipient. If no finding is available for a claim, the AI falls back to generic value props. Claims that fail fact-check are deleted and rewritten.
• No "I hope this finds you well" or "I came across your profile." These openers are on the forbidden list and will be linted out.
• No em dashes or en dashes, ever. They're stripped after drafting as well. Use commas or rewrite.
• Subject in sentence case, 5–8 words. Never Title Case, never all-lowercase. Proper nouns are capitalized; nothing else is.
• One named third-party person max per email. If a finding names someone (e.g., a new hire), they can't be named again in a later step.
• Company name copied exactly from the contact row. Close misspellings are corrected before export.
• One value prop per email. The drafter does not repeat the same prop used in a prior step as the main pitch.
• Each email's opener uses a different angle from prior steps in the sequence.
• Persona-aware emphasis. The recipient's title maps to a persona bucket (decision maker / finance / IR / ops / technical / marketing / sales) and biases which angle the drafter emphasizes: no new facts, just where the weight lands.
• Off-ICP contacts are skipped only if you ask. With the ICP check on, confident company mismatches are skipped before any research spend, never more than half the list, and you can draft them anyway.

Quick-reference checklist

Use this before running any campaign. If you can check every box, you're set up for strong output.

Brief checklist

• Description is one concrete paragraph: deliverable + category words
• ICP includes searchable signals (stack, stage, hiring patterns)
• ICP check turned on only if you want off-fit companies skipped
• 3 distinct value props: specific outcomes with numbers or named pains
• Every prop is strong enough to open a sequence (each contact starts on a different one)
• CTA links somewhere light, or is left as a reply-based ask
• CTA placement chosen (or left on Drafter decides)
• Signature set, or left blank because your sending tool adds one
• Email templates added if you want the drafter to riff on your exact copy (directives are concrete, not vague)
• 1–3 real sent emails pasted as samples

Research target checklist

• 2–4 targets (not more)
• Look for names a concrete observable (not "growth signals")
• Look for includes a recent time window ("last 60 days")
• How to play it is filled in on every target that matters, and says which value prop to lead with
• Where useful, How to play it branches (if X → pitch A; if Y → pitch B)
• Targets that should read your own data point at a CSV column instead of the web

Sequence checklist

• Ends with a Break-up step
• No consecutive Intro steps
• 3 or 4 steps matches your 3 value props
• Length setting matches target recipient seniority
• Sample reviewed, with feedback notes, and approved before the full batch
• LinkedIn: chose connection note vs. InMail intentionally. Don't stack both as entry points

CSV checklist

• No blank first_name values
• Company website included where available (a website, domain or url column works)
• title column present (it shapes which angle gets the emphasis)
• No duplicate rows
• linkedin_url included where you have it, in email campaigns too: it gives research more to work with

Common mistakes

The issues most often seen in campaigns that underperform, and how to fix each one.

1. One value prop for a 4-step sequence

What happens: all four emails argue the same angle. The AI tries to find fresh approaches but runs out of ideas, so drafts become thin and repetitive.

Fix: write 3 distinct, specific outcome-based props before generating, and make each one strong enough to open the sequence.

2. Research targets with nothing in How to play it

What happens: research finds a signal but the drafter has no instruction for using it. Findings end up in emails as vague, non-specific references ("I noticed your company has been growing").

Fix: give every target that matters a How to play it: "if you find X, pitch Y by saying Z."

3. Pasting email templates as samples (not real emails)

What happens: the model mirrors the template style: generic, token-heavy, formal structure. Defeats the purpose of voice mirroring.

Fix: paste real, sent emails with your actual sign-off, opener habits, and phrasing quirks.

4. Long emails with one-liner value props

What happens: the model is asked to write 120–200 words but your value props are one-liners. It pads with generic content to hit the word count.

Fix: match prop specificity to target length. For 120–200-word emails, write props with context: who benefits, what outcome, what the before state was.

5. Rushing the sample

What happens: a brief issue that would be obvious in one email (a vague description, a weak prop, a tone mismatch) gets multiplied across hundreds of contacts.

Fix: the sample covers one contact's full sequence. Read every step, and leave feedback notes and re-draft until it sounds right before you approve. The notes steer every draft in the campaign.

6. Blank or incorrect company names in the CSV

What happens: the AI is given a blank or misspelled company name and uses it verbatim. SimpleSend auto-corrects close misspellings, but a blank company field produces "Hi [name], I noticed your company has been..." with no company name.

Fix: review and clean your CSV at the Review data step. Prioritize the company and first_name columns.

7. Vague directives in email templates

What happens: a template with [intro line] or [personalize this] produces generic filler because the drafter fills the directive literally as written. Templates are prompts inside a prompt: vague ask, vague output.

Fix: write directives with concrete instructions and a length hint, e.g. [comment on their new CRO hire in one sentence, tie to fresh-stack evaluation] or [reference the value prop closest to their stated priority in one sentence].

8. Expecting the ICP check to filter job titles

What happens: you turn on the ICP check to drop the wrong roles, but it judges companies only, so titles never cause a skip and the wrong people still get drafted.

Fix: filter titles before upload (or with Find Leads filters), and use the ICP check for companies that are clearly the wrong kind of organization.