A cadence is the sequence of touches a salesperson works through to reach a prospect. The mechanics, including rhythm, channel mix, persistence, exit state, are durable. The strategy - who you enroll, when, and how personalized each touch is - has shifted in the past five years. This article covers both, and how to set up your own cadence in Close.
The foundational rhythm
The underlying shape of a cadence is durable. These principles describe structure rather than channel weighting or message style, which is why they've held up:
8 to 12 touches over 14 to 21 days for cold leads. 5 to 7 touches over 7 to 10 days for warm leads.
Alternate channels. Stacking the same channel reads as automated.
Personalize touch 1, template the rest. The first message references something specific to the prospect.
Persistence beats one perfect attempt. Most reps quit at touch 2; replies often come at touch 5 or 7.
End with a real break-up email. Often the highest-replying message in the cadence.
Define an exit state. What happens to non-responders when the cadence ends.
Signal-based enrollment
Triggering cadences on real events outperforms blind time-based enrollment, because the timing reason is real for the buyer rather than just the seller.
Time-based adds prospects to a fixed-day cadence on day 1, regardless of what's happening on the prospect's side.
Signal-based triggers the cadence when something happens on the prospect's side: a job change, a funding round, a hiring signal, a technographic shift, an intent signal, a website visit.
Most teams run both in parallel, with a baseline time-based cadence for cold lists where no signals are available, and higher-priority signal-based cadences layered on top.
In Close, a Workflow can enroll leads automatically when a lead status changes, a custom field updates, or an external signal arrives via webhook. Pair the Workflow with a Smart View that surfaces the trigger ("leads where job_title changed in the last 7 days") so reps qualify before the cadence fires.
Multi-threading at the account level
For mid-market and enterprise accounts, contact multiple stakeholders rather than relying on one to drive consensus internally. A single-threaded cadence leaves most of the buying committee unaware that the conversation is happening.
For multi-threading, enroll several Contacts at the same Lead in the same Workflow and each Contact gets the same sequence independently. For role-differentiated cadences (a lower-frequency sequence for a senior decision-maker, a higher-touch operational sequence for the day-to-day champion), build separate Workflows and enroll the right Contacts in each.
Single-contact cadences still make sense for SMB or product-led companies where the buying decision happens with one person.
AI-assisted research
The gap between generic and personalized touch 1 has widened. Published case studies from Outreach, Salesloft, and Apollo show personalized openers outperforming generic templates by 2 to 4 times on response rate. Specific, contextual openers cut through; generic ones get ignored. The cost of personalized research used to be the bottleneck, and AI-assisted enrichment compresses that cost.
In Close, Enrichment fills in custom fields on a Lead or Contact record using AI-generated data from the web: company description, size, industry, LinkedIn URL, GTM motion, marketing team size, and any other field you define. Reps run it from the lead record before touch 1; admins can run it in bulk on a Smart View before launching a Workflow.
Invest the personalization effort in touch 1 and the break-up email. Templates remain the right call for touches 2 and onward. The goal isn't to personalize every message, it's to make the high-leverage messages count.
Channel weighting in today's market
Channel mix is the area where the older conventions are most visibly aging.
Phone connect rates have declined. Per-dial connect rates at roughly 1 to 2 percent today, down from 5 to 6 percent a decade ago. Phone still has the highest conversion per connected conversation, but the cost-per-connect has risen. The implication: weight calls lower than the call-heavy patterns that were standard a decade ago, and use voicemail drops to make the lower-yield call days more efficient.
Email deliverability has tightened. Google and Yahoo's February 2024 sender requirements raised the bar on authentication, complaint rates, and sender reputation. High-volume cold email from a single sender is more likely to land in spam than three years ago. The strategic implication is to spread volume across senders (automated senders help here) and keep complaint rates low through careful list quality.
Async and text-based channels connect better with younger buyer cohorts. Under-35 buyers tend to respond more to SMS, LinkedIn messages, and asynchronous outreach at meaningfully higher rates than to cold phone calls. SMS as a serious cadence step, and not an afterthought, earns its place in cadences targeting younger leads.
The shift isn't "stop calling." Phone calls still convert at the highest rate per connected conversation. The shift is: weight channels by current connect rates rather than conventions from a decade ago, and invest in the channels where younger buyers respond.
A worked cadence example
A 9-touch, 17-day cold cadence that reflects current channel weighting:
Day | Channel | Notes |
|---|---|---|
1 | Personalized opener, utilizing Enrich | |
2 | Connection request or personalized comment | |
4 | Call + voicemail drop | First call attempt |
6 | SMS | Short, specific, asks one question |
9 | Templated, value-led, references a relevant case study | |
11 | Call | No voicemail. Let the missed call register |
13 | Escalation touch | |
15 | Call + voicemail | Last-attempt framing |
17 | Final break-up email |
This cadence has fewer call days than a comparable 2015-era cadence, more space for async channels, and an email-first opener rather than a call-first opener. Adjust based on your lead; if you're selling to a phone-heavy buyer lead (older buyers, certain industries), weight calls higher.
Best times to engage
For B2B outbound, the strongest call windows are Tuesday through Thursday, 8 to 10 AM and 4 to 5 PM in the prospect's local time zone. Mornings before meetings start and late afternoons before people log off are the highest connect-rate windows. Mondays and Fridays connect less reliably. SMS is most-read within 90 seconds of receipt regardless of time of day, which makes it useful as a first-response channel when timing matters.
What good looks like
Reply rates of 1 to 3 percent on cold outbound are normal for B2B. 5 percent or higher is good and usually reflects strong targeting and a personalized first touch, and not a clever template. Below 1 percent, the cadence isn't the problem; the prospect list or the first-touch message is.
Building the cadence in Close
Use Workflows as the cadence engine. Each touch is a Workflow step: email steps, call task steps, and SMS steps in whatever order matches your cadence. For signal-based enrollment, set the Workflow trigger to a lead status or custom field change. For step-by-step instructions on building the Workflow itself, see Creating a multi-channel sales workflow in Close.
Templates for repeatable touches. Save the templated emails so reps don't rewrite them each cycle. Leave the first email step as a draft template that reps fill in per-prospect for true personalization.
Power Dialer for the call-heavy days. When a Workflow surfaces 30 call tasks on the same day, the Power Dialer helps speed through calls. This can be utilized from the Workflow menu.
Voicemail drops keep messaging consistent across hundreds of calls and free the rep's attention for the next dial. Especially relevant given current connect rates: if 98 of 100 dials don't reach the prospect, the voicemail drop is the touchpoint that actually lands.
Voicemail drops are available on the Growth & Enterprise plans.
Head to Settings > Plan to upgrade your plan to take advantage of this feature.
Automated senders rotate sender identities so cold outbound at scale doesn't all originate from a single inbox. Helps with deliverability under the post-2024 sender-requirements landscape.
A Smart View for "who's at step N today." Filter to leads in your workflow at a given step and due today, so reps can work the call days in batch instead of hunting through individual leads. For signal-based cadences, build smart views that surface the trigger events themselves.
Multi-thread per account. Use Lead records to hold multiple Contacts per company. Structure Workflows to target specific contact roles.
Define the exit state. Route non-responders to a nurture status, mark them as bad fit, or hand them to a different Workflow.
Workflow reporting to A/B test variants. Run two cadences in parallel (same target list, different day spacing or first-email copy) and compare reply rates in the Sent Email Report after 60 days. Make decisions on data, not anecdote.
Common cadence mistakes
Stacking the same channel. Three emails in a row reads as automated. Alternate.
No break-up email. The final "I'll stop following up" message is one of the highest-replying messages in any cadence. Skip it and you leave replies on the table.
Stopping after two attempts. Most reps quit after touch 2. A prospect who didn't reply at touch 1 often replies at touch 5 or 7.
Same cadence for cold and warm. Warm leads need fewer touches with faster pacing. A 21-day cadence on a content-form lead is too slow.
Single-threading a multi-stakeholder account. Mid-market and enterprise deals usually require contact with several stakeholders. Single-contact cadences leave most of the buying committee uncontacted.
Generic templates at touch 1. With buyers seeing more outreach than ever, generic openers get ignored. Invest research time in touch 1.
High-volume identical email from one sender. Post-2024 deliverability changes punish this pattern. Spread across senders, keep complaint rates low, watch sender reputation.
No exit state. Leaving leads at "step 10 complete" with no follow-up rule means they rot in the workflow forever.