Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Your First Lemlist Campaign

If your cold outreach is getting ignored, your reply rates are in the gutter, and your pipeline feels like a ghost town — the problem probably isn't your offer. It's your tool. And your setup.

Lemlist is one of the most powerful multichannel outreach platforms on the market in 2025. It combines cold email, LinkedIn automation, personalized images/videos, AI-powered sequences, and deep analytics — all in one place. But like any powerful tool, it rewards those who set it up correctly from day one.

This guide is your complete, no-fluff walkthrough for setting up your very first Lemlist campaign. Whether you're a sales rep, founder, freelancer, or agency owner, this will walk you through every step — from account creation to your first reply hitting your inbox.

Ready? Let's build something that actually gets responses.

Why Lemlist Is Worth Your Attention (and Money)

Before we dive into the setup, let's be clear about what you're working with.

Lemlist isn't just another email automation tool. It's a full-stack outreach system that lets you:

• Send hyper-personalized cold emails with custom variables, images, and even video thumbnails
• Automate LinkedIn connection requests, messages, and profile visits
• Build multi-step sequences that adapt based on how leads interact
• Warm up your email domain automatically with lemwarm
• Access a built-in lead database and email finder/verifier
• Track every open, click, reply, and conversion in real time

Companies using Lemlist have scaled their outbound pipeline from near zero to 35%+ of total revenue. It's not magic — it's a well-configured system.

👉 Start Your 14-Day Free Trial on Lemlist Here

Step 1: Create Your Lemlist Account

This is the obvious starting point, but the decisions you make here set the tone for everything.

Head to Lemlist and sign up for your free 14-day trial — no credit card required. Click here to start, and you'll land on the dashboard within minutes.

During signup, you'll be asked to:

• Enter your name and email (your login email — this doesn't have to be your sending email)
• Choose your use case (sales outreach, agency, recruiting, etc.)
• Connect your sending email address

That last point deserves its own section.

Step 2: Connect Your Email Sending Account

This is the single most important technical step. Get this right, and everything downstream works. Get it wrong, and your emails land in spam before a human ever reads them.

How to connect your email:

• Click your name in the bottom-left corner of the dashboard
• Go to Settings → Email Provider
• Choose your provider: Gmail/Google Workspace, Outlook, or custom SMTP
• Follow the OAuth authentication prompts (for Gmail/Outlook) or enter your SMTP credentials

Pro tips for your sending email setup:

• Do NOT use your primary business domain (e.g., yourcompany.com) for cold outreach
• Use a subdomain or separate domain (e.g., mail.yourcompany.com or yourcompany.io) to protect your main domain's reputation
• Set up a professional signature in Lemlist under Settings → Signature to make your emails look legitimate and polished
• Make sure your sending address looks human: john@yourcompany.io, not info@ or contact@

Step 3: Configure Your DNS Records (Non-Negotiable)

Most beginners skip this step. That's exactly why their emails go to spam.

DNS records — specifically SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — are authentication protocols that tell email providers your emails are legitimate. Without them, even the best-written email will get filtered.

Proper DNS settings improve deliverability and help build your sender reputation. Here's what you need:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Tells receiving servers which IPs are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to your emails to verify they haven't been tampered with
• DMARC: Tells receiving servers what to do if SPF or DKIM checks fail

Lemlist walks you through setting these up in the Technical Setup section. You'll also want to set up a Custom Tracking Domain (CTD) so that click-tracking links are on your domain, not Lemlist's — which significantly boosts deliverability.

Give your DNS changes 24–48 hours to propagate before launching any campaigns.

Step 4: Warm Up Your Email Account with Lemwarm

Here's a cold truth: if you've just created a new email address and immediately start sending 100 cold emails a day, you will get blacklisted.

Email service providers look at sending patterns. A new account blasting hundreds of emails per day looks like spam — because that's usually what it is.

Before sending your first email campaign, it's important to warm up your email account. This process takes about 3 to 5 weeks, depending on the condition of your email provider and domain. Once the warm-up period is complete, start sending emails gradually and increase your email volume slowly until you reach the recommended limit of 100 emails per day. 

Lemlist has a built-in tool called lemwarm that automates this process. It:

• Sends emails back and forth between a network of real inboxes
• Auto-opens and replies to these warm-up emails
• Monitors your deliverability score in real time
• Alerts you to any reputation issues before they become critical

How to activate lemwarm:

• Go to the Warm Up tab in your dashboard
• Connect the email address you want to warm up
• Set your daily warm-up volume (start at 5–10 emails/day)
• Let it run — do not skip this step if you're serious about results

Patience here pays off massively. A properly warmed domain delivers emails to the inbox consistently. A cold domain burns out fast.

Step 5: Build Your Lead List

No campaign without leads. But not just any leads — the right leads.

Lemlist gives you several ways to build your lead list:

Option A: Use Lemlist's Built-In Lead Database

• Access millions of B2B contacts directly inside the platform
• Filter by job title, company size, industry, location, and more
• Verify emails before importing them into your campaign

Option B: Import a CSV File

• Export leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo, Hunter.io, or your CRM
• Format your CSV with columns for: First Name, Last Name, Email, Company, LinkedIn URL (required for AI campaigns), and any custom variables you want to use
• Upload directly into your campaign

Option C: Use the Chrome Extension

• Install the Lemlist Chrome extension
• With just a few clicks, you can export data from LinkedIn, whether it's a single profile or an entire search result — no more manual data entry or juggling between tabs. 
• Push contacts directly into a Lemlist campaign in real time

Best practices for your lead list:

• Always verify email addresses before importing (Lemlist has a built-in verifier)
• Remove duplicates, bounced emails, and unsubscribes
• Segment your list — don't put different personas into the same campaign
• Aim for quality over quantity: 200 highly targeted leads > 2,000 random contacts

Step 6: Create Your First Campaign

Now the fun begins.

Click Create New Campaign from the left sidebar or dashboard. You'll be presented with three options for how to build it:

Option 1: AI Campaign Lemlist's AI generates a personalized sequence automatically based on your leads' LinkedIn profiles and your goal. Fast and beginner-friendly — but not editable after creation. Best for quick tests.

Option 2: Manual Campaign Full control over every step, delay, and condition. This is the recommended option for anyone serious about their outreach. You decide exactly what gets sent, when, and to whom.

Option 3: Start from a Template Access community templates designed for success by the lemlist community — each template includes a title, description, sequence type, campaign stats showing how well it's performed for other users, and a sequence preview. Great for getting started quickly with a proven framework.

For most users, Manual or Template is the way to go.

Step 7: Name Your Campaign Strategically

This sounds trivial. It isn't.

Good campaign naming saves you hours of confusion when you're running 10+ campaigns simultaneously.

Use names that describe the goal or audience, such as "SaaS Cold Outreach – Q1 2025" or "Re-engagement – Inactive Leads." Avoid vague names like "Campaign 1" or "Test." 

A solid naming convention looks like: [Persona] — [Offer/Goal] — [Date/Quarter]

Example: "E-commerce Founders — Demo Request — Feb 2025"

Step 8: Build Your Outreach Sequence

This is where strategy meets execution. Your sequence is the series of touchpoints your leads will experience — and it determines whether they reply or ignore you.

A high-converting sequence structure:

• Step 1 (Day 0): First cold email — personalized, short, value-driven
• Step 2 (Day 2): LinkedIn profile visit — subtle, human touchpoint
• Step 3 (Day 4): LinkedIn connection request — with a short personalized note
• Step 4 (Day 6): Follow-up email — add a new angle or insight
• Step 5 (Day 9): LinkedIn message (if connected) — direct and conversational
• Step 6 (Day 12): Final "breakup" email — low pressure, last chance

Key sequence settings to configure:

• Set delays between steps — the minimum delay is 1 day. Use longer delays for colder outreach and shorter delays for warmer leads. 
• Add conditions based on lead behavior: if a prospect opens your email but doesn't reply, they go down a different branch than someone who never opened it
• Use the Sender dropdown to assign each step to a specific inbox (useful for inbox rotation and higher deliverability)

Writing your emails — what actually works in 2025:

• Keep your first email under 100 words
• Start with a hyper-personalized first line (mention their company, recent news, LinkedIn post, etc.)
• Lead with value — what's in it for them, not your product pitch
• One clear CTA per email — not three options
• Use Lemlist's custom variables like {{firstName}}, {{companyName}}, {{customLine}} to personalize at scale
• Subject lines should feel like a colleague's email, not a marketing blast

Step 9: Add Personalization That Actually Impresses

This is Lemlist's secret weapon — and the feature that separates it from every generic email tool.

Beyond text variables, Lemlist lets you add:

• Personalized images: Automatically insert a lead's LinkedIn profile photo or company logo into a custom image template (great for grabbing attention)
• Personalized video thumbnails: Use a screenshot of their website with a play button overlay to dramatically increase click-through rates
• Dynamic text blocks: Show different content to different leads based on their industry, role, or company size
• AI-generated icebreakers: Lemlist's AI can auto-generate personalized opening lines based on each lead's LinkedIn profile

These features alone justify the subscription cost. When a prospect sees their own name or website embedded in your outreach, it doesn't feel like a mass email — it feels personal.

Step 10: Import Your Leads into the Campaign

With your sequence built, it's time to load your leads.

• Go to the Leads tab inside your campaign
• Click Import Leads
• Choose your import method: CSV upload, Lemlist database, CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), or Chrome extension
• Map your CSV columns to Lemlist fields (first name, email, custom variables, etc.)
• Review your imported leads for accuracy before launching

Important: For AI campaigns, LinkedIn URL is a mandatory field when importing via CSV — the AI uses LinkedIn data to generate personalized sequences, so missing URLs will prevent proper campaign creation. 

For manual campaigns, LinkedIn URLs are optional but highly recommended if you're including LinkedIn steps.

Step 11: Configure Campaign Settings

Before you hit launch, run through these settings:

Sending Schedule: The default sending schedule is Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM in your time zone. You can edit this schedule at any time — changes apply even after the campaign is launched. 

Adjust this based on your audience's time zone, not yours.

Stop Conditions: Set rules to automatically stop messaging a lead if they:

• Reply to any email
• Book a meeting (via Calendly integration)
• Click an unsubscribe link
• Reach a certain engagement threshold

This protects your sender reputation and ensures you're not annoying people who've already responded.

Tracking: Enable open tracking, click tracking, and reply detection. These power your analytics dashboard and trigger your conditional sequence branches.

Tags: Add tags to your campaign to organize your outreach by persona, use case, or campaign type. This makes filtering and reporting much cleaner as you scale.

Unsubscribe Link: Always include one. It's legally required in many jurisdictions and it keeps your domain reputation clean.

Step 12: Launch Your Campaign

You've done the work. Now it's time to press go.

• Go to the Launch tab inside your campaign
• Review the Campaign Launch Recap: number of leads, sending schedule, stop conditions, time between leads
• Select which leads you want to include in the launch (or keep all)
• Click Launch campaign for X leads to start sending. 

Lemlist will begin sending according to your schedule, following its algorithms to protect your domain health and maximize deliverability. It spaces out sends intelligently — not all at once.

Pro tip: You can reverse the launch for leads that haven't started yet if you need to make corrections. This is a lifesaver if you catch a typo or broken link after launching.

Step 13: Monitor, Optimize, and Scale

Launching is not the finish line. It's the starting gun.

Head to the Analytics tab to track:

• Open Rate — aim for 40–60% for cold outreach
• Click Rate — 3–10% is strong for cold campaigns
• Reply Rate — 5–15% is excellent for cold email; above 15% means your targeting and copy are exceptional
• Bounce Rate — keep this below 2% to protect your domain
• Conversion Rate — how many leads ultimately book a meeting or take action

What to optimize based on data:

• Low open rate → fix your subject line and sender name
• High open rate, low reply rate → fix your email copy and CTA
• High bounce rate → clean your lead list and verify emails
• Low click rate → rethink your CTA placement or offer clarity

A/B test subject lines, first lines, CTAs, and send times. Lemlist makes split testing easy — use it constantly.

Is Lemlist Worth It? Here's the Bottom Line

If you're serious about outbound sales — whether you're a solo founder, a growing startup, or an established sales team — Lemlist is one of the best investments you can make in your pipeline.

It combines:

• Email + LinkedIn + call automation in one platform
• Industry-leading personalization features (images, videos, AI icebreakers)
• Built-in email warming and deliverability tools
• A rich template library with proven community results
• Real-time analytics and smart conditional sequences
• Integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zapier, and more

The setup takes 15–30 minutes for your first campaign. The results — consistent, measurable, scalable outbound — can transform your business.

👉 Click here to start your free 14-day Lemlist trial and launch your first campaign today.

No credit card required. No risk. Just results.

Quick-Start Checklist: Your First Lemlist Campaign

Here's everything in one place so you can check off each step:

• ✅ Create your Lemlist account and connect your sending email
• ✅ Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on your sending domain
• ✅ Configure a Custom Tracking Domain (CTD)
• ✅ Activate lemwarm and let it run for 3–5 weeks
• ✅ Build or import a verified, segmented lead list
• ✅ Create a new campaign (Manual or Template recommended)
• ✅ Name your campaign descriptively
• ✅ Build a 4–6 step multichannel sequence with delays and conditions
• ✅ Add personalization (variables, images, icebreakers)
• ✅ Import leads and map your custom fields
• ✅ Configure schedule, stop conditions, and tracking
• ✅ Review the launch recap and press launch
• ✅ Monitor analytics daily in the first week and optimize

The difference between cold outreach that works and cold outreach that gets ignored comes down to one thing: the system behind it. Lemlist gives you that system. All you have to do is use it.

👉Start building your outbound engine today → Get Lemlist Free for 14 Days