What is cold email outreach in Tantra

Overview

Cold email outreach is one of Tantra's two outreach engines. It sends multi-step email sequences from your own Gmail mailboxes, one step at a time, with a delay between steps. Each recipient moves through the sequence on their own schedule until they reply, unsubscribe, bounce, or finish every step.

The other engine sends Google Calendar invitations. For a side-by-side comparison, see Calendar campaigns vs cold email.

How it works

A cold email campaign is a sequence of steps plus the audience, senders, and limits you attach to it.

A sequence is an ordered list of steps. Step 1 is sent first. Later steps wait a set number of days and can send as replies on the same email thread.
Senders are the Gmail-capable mailboxes you connected. Tantra sends as those mailboxes through a Google Workspace service account, so there is no separate password or per-mailbox sign-in. See How Tantra sends as your mailboxes.
An enrollment is one contact's journey through the sequence. Each contact you add becomes an enrollment with its own current step and next send time.
Limits control how fast you send. Each mailbox has a daily and hourly cap, and a sending window that defines the days and hours sending is allowed.

Sending is not instant. A scheduler checks for due enrollments about once a minute, confirms the sending window is open, reserves quota on the mailbox, then sends the step. Outside your window, or once a cap is reached, the step waits.

What makes it different from a mail merge

Tantra is built for deliverability, not blast sending.

Per-mailbox limits are enforced. Each mailbox reserves quota before every send, so you cannot exceed its daily or hourly cap.
Replies stop the sequence. When a recipient replies, their enrollment stops so they do not receive the next step.
Suppression is checked before every send. Unsubscribes, hard bounces, and your do-not-contact list are re-checked at send time.
Personalization is optional and per step. A step can use a fixed template or rewrite itself per recipient with AI.
Clicks are tracked, opens are not. Tantra never embeds tracking pixels. See Why Tantra does not track email opens.

Campaign statuses

A cold email campaign moves through these statuses:

Status	Meaning
`draft`	Created but not started. No contacts are enrolled yet.
`scheduled`	Set to start at a future date and time. Contacts enroll when that time arrives.
`active`	Running. Contacts are enrolled and steps send on schedule.
`paused`	Stopped by you. Enrollments are frozen and no steps send.
`completed`	Every enrollment has finished the sequence or ended.
`archived`	Closed out and hidden from the active list.

Before you start

To run a cold email campaign you need:

At least one Gmail-capable sender connected and showing as connected. See Add and verify your senders.
At least one contact list with recipients. See Manage contacts and lists.
Optionally, a saved template to reuse copy across steps.

What happens next

Once you have a sender and a list, build your first sequence. The builder walks you through naming, audience, senders, steps, scheduling, and a final review. See Build an email sequence.

FAQ

Does Tantra send from a shared Tantra address? No. It sends as your own connected mailboxes, so replies land in your own inbox.

Can a contact get the same step twice? No. Each send is de-duplicated per step, so a retry after a crash advances the enrollment instead of resending.

What happens when someone replies? Their enrollment stops and they do not receive later steps. You read the reply in the inbox.

Can I personalize every email? Yes, per step. A step can stay on a fixed template or use AI to rewrite the copy for each recipient. See Sequence steps, delays, and personalization modes.

How many emails can one mailbox send per day? By default 50 per day and 25 per hour, and never more than Google's Workspace ceiling. See Sending windows and daily limits.

Does Tantra track opens? No, by design. Only clicks and replies are measured.

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