How to re-engage old leads in Sure Send without spamming your database

If hundreds or thousands of old leads are sitting untouched in your Sure Send account, the simplest way to re-engage them is to bulk apply an email-only re-engagement automation and let Sure Send pace the enrollment for you.

A recent update added a send rate to the apply automation bulk action. You pick 10 an hour, 30 an hour, 50 a day or 100 a day, and Sure Send staggers the rollout across your selected contacts. A large database gets worked through gradually, with no daily batching on your part.

Email is the right channel for this group. Contacts who don't remember you or where you got their information are likely to mark a surprise text as spam, while an email gives them room to respond on their own time.

Watch the video

The video walks through the full process inside a live Sure Send account, from filtering your contacts by stage and age to choosing a send rate and confirming that the automation is scheduled.

Why old leads pile up in the first place

The question our team at Kee Technology hears constantly is some version of "I have this big stack of leads and I don't know what to do with them." They might be leads from a portal you stopped paying for, contacts imported from an old CRM, or people who came in years ago and never heard from you again.

The recommendation has always been to apply an automation that tries to re-engage them. Getting that done used to be a project of its own. You tagged contacts, built a smart list that excluded the tag, pulled a set number of people each day, applied the automation to that batch and came back the next day to do it again. It worked, and it also left extra smart lists in accounts and required someone to remember the routine every day until the list was empty.

That multi-step process is the reason so many databases stay untouched. If a system isn't being used, the system failed, not the person.

If your old leads have been waiting because the cleanup felt like too much to take on, our team can set up the re-engagement automation and the filters with you. Book a discovery call.

What is the send rate setting in Sure Send?

Sure Send lets you apply an automation to a group of contacts from the bulk actions menu. The send rate is a new option inside that same screen. After you choose the automation, you choose how fast Sure Send enrolls your selected contacts into it.

The 4 options are 10 an hour, 30 an hour, 50 a day and 100 a day. Once you apply it, Sure Send confirms that the automation is scheduled for the contacts you selected and handles the staggering from there.

In practice, that means the pacing you used to manage with tags and smart lists now lives in a single dropdown.

A stack of leads you didn't know what to do with becomes a single bulk action, at a pace you choose.

Which send rate should you choose for your database?

Base the rate on how many contacts you're re-engaging. The examples from the video give a practical starting point.

The timing column is simple math on the rate you pick, so you can estimate your own database the same way. 100 a day is the fastest daily option, and for very large lists it keeps enrollment moving without flooding inboxes all at once.

Why should old leads get email instead of text?

Someone who hasn't heard from you in a long time may not remember you, your brand or where you got their number. A text from an unfamiliar number is the fastest way to get marked as spam, and spam reports can hurt the deliverability of the messages you send after it.

An email re-engagement sequence is lower pressure. The contact can read it, ignore it or reply when the timing is right for them, and anyone who responds shows you exactly who is worth a call.

For accounts built by KTS, this is why the stale automation exists as separate email and text versions. When you bulk apply to old leads, choose KTS Stale, the email version, and leave the text version alone.

If your account wasn't set up by our team, the same principle applies to whatever re-engagement automation you use. Apply an email-only version to old contacts.

How to bulk apply an automation with a send rate in Sure Send

Before you start, make sure the automation you want is enabled in your account, since it won't appear in the apply automation search until it is.

• Open All People. Start from your full contact list.

• Filter to the contacts you want to re-engage. Filter by stage (for example, Lead) and by days since created. The demo used greater than 14 days to pull a sample, and for a true stale list you might use 6 months or a year.

• Select the full group. The first click selects the contacts visible on the page (25 in the demo). Use the option to select all contacts in the filter so the whole group is included.

• Open bulk actions and choose apply automation.

• Search for your email re-engagement automation. In KTS-built accounts, that's KTS Stale, not the text version.

• Choose a send rate based on the size of the group, using the table above as a guide.

• Apply the automation and confirm the scheduled message, which shows the automation and the number of contacts it's scheduled for.

After that, Sure Send enrolls contacts at the rate you picked and there's no daily batch to pull.

If your stages aren't set up to filter old leads cleanly, or you don't have an email-only re-engagement automation yet, our team builds both as part of a Sure Send setup. [BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL]

How this works for agents, teams and brokerages

For individual real estate agents

If you're a solo agent with a few hundred old leads you meant to get back to, 50 a day works well. At that rate, a list of 300 is fully enrolled in about a week, and you can spend your time on the people who reply instead of on list management.

For real estate teams

On a team, a single person can filter by stage and age, pick a rate and start the re-engagement in a single pass, instead of someone on the team owning a daily routine of pulling and applying the next batch.

For brokerages

If your brokerage database runs into the thousands, the 50 and 100 a day options let you work through a large group steadily without building and maintaining extra smart lists in the account. The account stays cleaner, and the process is simple enough to repeat any time a new wave of old contacts builds up.

Common mistakes when re-engaging old leads

• Starting a text drip on contacts who don't remember you. This includes picking the text version of a stale automation by accident. Keep old leads on email.

• Choosing a send rate without looking at the size of the group. 10 an hour suits a small test group, while a list of several hundred or several thousand fits better at 50 or 100 a day.

• Rebuilding the old tag and smart list workaround. The send rate now handles the pacing inside the bulk action, so there's no need to recreate the manual batching routine.

Key takeaways

• Old leads in Sure Send can be re-engaged with a single bulk action by applying an email-only re-engagement automation to a filtered group.

• The send rate setting (10 an hour, 30 an hour, 50 a day or 100 a day) staggers enrollment, so you choose the pace based on the size of your database.

• Email keeps the outreach low pressure and reduces the risk of spam complaints that come from texting contacts who have forgotten you.

If you want a second set of eyes on your filters, your re-engagement automation and your send rate before you apply anything, our team can walk through it with you. Book a discovery call.

Frequently asked questions

Can I apply an automation to a group of contacts at once in Sure Send?

Yes. From All People, filter to the contacts you want, select the full group, open bulk actions and choose apply automation. The send rate option then lets you control how quickly those contacts are enrolled.

What send rate options does Sure Send offer for bulk automations?

There are 4 options, 10 contacts an hour, 30 an hour, 50 a day and 100 a day. The hourly options work for small groups you want enrolled the same day, and the daily options suit larger databases you want to work through over days or weeks.

How long will it take to re-engage my whole database?

Divide the number of contacts by your daily rate. 300 contacts at 50 a day takes about 6 days, and 2,000 contacts takes about 20 days at 100 a day or about 40 days at 50 a day. Hourly rates move much faster and fit smaller groups.

Should I text old leads to re-engage them?

For contacts you haven't spoken with in a long time, start with email. People who don't remember you or where you got their information are more likely to mark a text as spam, and an email sequence gives them a way to re-engage without feeling put on the spot.

How old should a lead be before I treat it as stale?

There's no single cutoff, and the filter is flexible. The demo used days since created greater than 14 days to pull a sample, and for a stale re-engagement list, 6 months or a year is a more typical starting point. Combine the age filter with a stage filter so you're only pulling true leads.

Do I still need a smart list to batch my old leads?

Not for pacing. The previous approach relied on tagging contacts and building a smart list that excluded the tag so you could apply the automation to a set number each day. The send rate setting now handles that staggering inside the bulk action.

Get your old leads working again

Your database already holds people who reached out to you at some point. A paced, email-only re-engagement automation gives each of them a reason to reply, and the send rate setting means a single bulk action covers the whole list.

If you'd like our team to look at your Sure Send setup and map out the re-engagement for your database, book a discovery call.