Reviewing and sending emails
Edit drafts, send now or schedule, how the send window and daily limits work, follow-ups, replies, bounces and opt-outs.
Nothing is sent until you say so, either one email at a time or by turning on autosend for a project. On the project's Emails tab, Ready to send is where drafts wait for you, Scheduled is where they wait for their send time, and Sent is where sent emails and replies end up. The project's Overview tells you when there's something to send.
#The views you'll use most
| View | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Ready to send | Drafts waiting for your decision |
| Scheduled | Emails you scheduled, soonest first, each with the day and time it goes out |
| Sent | Sent, replied and linked leads, newest first |
#Reviewing a draft
Click a lead to open its emails. For each one you can edit the subject and the body, and pick a send time for the first email. Click Save to keep your edits.
Read the first email as if you were the recipient:
- Does the first line prove a human looked at their page? If not, rewrite it.
- Is the suggestion something they'd actually want?
- Is it short? Most good outreach emails are under 120 words.
Then choose:
- Send now sends the first email straight away, from your address. Follow-ups still go out on their own schedule.
- Schedule gives it the next free time in your send window. Picked a time yourself? The button reads Schedule at this time. Changed your mind? Unschedule puts it back in Ready to send.
- Rewrite drafts a fresh version, and Skip drops the lead.
For leads that only have a contact form, paste the draft into their form yourself, then click Mark sent (via form).
Edit, don't rewrite
The drafts are a starting point. Changing one sentence to something only you would say ("I used your list when I was learning Rust") does more than polishing the whole thing.
#Scheduling in bulk
Tick several drafts (or Select all) and click Schedule selected…. Choose:
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Starting | The first day to use. Leave it blank to start at the next opening (today, if there's time left in your window). |
| Space them | Spread over the day (the default) spaces a full day's emails across your send window. You can also pick a fixed gap from 3 to 30 minutes. |
| Up to, a send day | How many first emails a day, at most your sending pace (raise that on the project's Setup tab). A day that already has that many is skipped. |
Larvabot gives every email an exact time, top of the list first, on the project's send days inside your send window, after anything already scheduled. It then tells you what it did, for example Scheduled 12 emails: 5 on Mon 12 Oct (14:26–15:06), 7 on Tue 13 Oct (07:00–07:30).
In Scheduled, select emails to Reschedule selected… (they get new times with the same options) or Unschedule them.
#Seeing what goes out each day
The Ready to send and Scheduled views show the next ten send days. Each day shows how many first emails are sent or scheduled against your daily pace, plus any follow-ups expected that day (FU). A full day turns amber. Use it to decide how many drafts to schedule.
Every time is in your timezone, shown above the days. Set it in Settings → Sending (SMTP). If you haven't set one, Larvabot offers your browser's timezone in one click.
#When approved emails are sent
Larvabot checks for due emails every 5 minutes. A scheduled first email goes out at its time, give or take those few minutes, as long as the project is active and SMTP is connected. Your daily pace is a hard limit, and if emails pile up (say your SMTP was down), they go out a couple at a time, never in a burst. An email held back because the day's pace ran out moves to the next free time after everything already scheduled, so the times you see stay true. Scheduling already kept the time on one of the project's send days, inside your send window and within your daily pace. Once it's sent, the lead moves to Sent with the time it went out.
Emails scheduled before exact times existed have no time. They go out at the next opening: on a send day inside your send window, within the daily limit. Select them and Reschedule to give them times.
Use Send due now to send whatever is due immediately, and Check inbox now to look for replies without waiting.
If you see Connect SMTP to send instead, add your SMTP account in Settings first. Brevo setup
#Autosend
Pressing Schedule for every draft gets old once a project is running well. Turn on autosend under the project's Setup → Autosend (the Enable autosend link on the Emails tab takes you there) and Larvabot schedules each new draft as soon as it's written. You don't have to press anything.
Autosend only changes who presses Schedule. Every other limit still applies:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Sending pace | At most this many new emails a day, lowered by warm-up while it's on |
| Send on | The days emails may go out, Monday to Friday unless you pick others. These also apply to emails you schedule yourself |
| Send window | The hours, from Settings → Sending (SMTP) |
| Fit of at least | Only drafts scored at or above this (75 by default, 60 at the lowest) |
It also only picks drafts with an email address that passed the MX check. Contact-form leads always stay with you.
Each autosent email gets the next free slot, never sooner than an hour after it's scheduled, so it sits in Scheduled with its time and you can read, edit, reschedule or Unschedule it first. An email you unschedule stays in Ready to send for you to send by hand; autosend won't pick it up again. Turning autosend on also schedules the drafts already waiting that pass.
It stops itself when bounces climb
Autosend needs your inbox connected over IMAP, because that's where bounce notices arrive. If 5% or more of the people a project emailed in the last 30 days bounce (the Stop sending verdict), autosend turns itself off, and Setup and the Emails tab say why. Lower your pace and check your contacts before you turn it back on.
#Follow-ups
Follow-ups are sent automatically, threaded under the first email:
- Follow-up 1 at least 4 days after the first email
- Follow-up 2 at least 5 days after follow-up 1
They only go out while the lead is still Sent. A reply, a bounce or skipping the lead stops them. Daily limits don't apply to follow-ups, since they're replies to a conversation you already started.
#Replies, bounces and opt-outs
With an IMAP inbox connected, Larvabot reads recent mail every few minutes:
| It sees | It does |
|---|---|
| A reply from the lead | Moves the lead to Replied and stops follow-ups |
| A bounce | Skips the lead, so nothing else is sent to that address |
| A reply saying "no" | Counts as a reply: follow-ups stop, and you can read it in your inbox |
Replies stay in your inbox. Larvabot never answers for you.
Without IMAP, follow-ups can't stop on reply
If you don't connect an inbox, Larvabot can't see replies, so someone who answered might still get a follow-up. Connect IMAP before approving anything, or delete the follow-ups from each draft.
#Backlinks
Once a day, Larvabot rereads the pages of leads you've emailed. If one now links to your site, the lead moves to Linked and it's counted as a backlink won on the Reports tab.