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Salesloft Cadences: Building Effective Sales Sequences
Salesloft cadences are the backbone of structured, repeatable outreach. Whether you are running cold prospecting, nurturing warm leads, or re-engaging closed-lost opportunities, a well-built cadence determines how consistently your team reaches prospects -- and how often those prospects respond.
But "set up a cadence" is deceptively simple advice. The difference between a cadence that books meetings and one that burns through your list comes down to structure, timing, channel mix, and personalization. In this guide we will break down cadence types inside Salesloft, walk through setup step by step, share proven best practices, and answer the most common questions sales teams ask when they are getting started.
What Is a Salesloft Cadence?
A cadence in Salesloft is a predefined sequence of touchpoints -- emails, phone calls, LinkedIn interactions, and other tasks -- organized on a timeline. Each step fires on a specific day and tells the rep exactly what to do and when to do it. The platform then tracks opens, clicks, replies, and call outcomes so you can measure performance at every stage.
Think of a cadence as your outreach playbook automated. Instead of relying on individual reps to remember follow-ups or improvise timing, cadences enforce a disciplined rhythm across the entire team.
Types of Salesloft Cadences
Salesloft supports several cadence categories, each suited to a different stage of the buyer journey. Understanding these types before you start building prevents the common mistake of forcing every prospect through the same generic workflow.
Prospecting Cadences (Outbound)
These are your cold outreach sequences aimed at net-new prospects who have not interacted with your brand. Prospecting cadences are typically the longest (10-16 touches over 3-4 weeks) and the most multi-channel. They lean heavily on email but weave in calls and LinkedIn touchpoints to maximize surface area.
The key challenge with prospecting cadences is earning attention from someone who does not know you. This is where AI-driven email personalization makes a measurable difference -- generic templates get ignored, while messages that reference a prospect's specific situation break through.
Inbound Lead Cadences
When a prospect downloads a whitepaper, requests a demo, or fills out a contact form, they enter an inbound cadence. These sequences are shorter and more aggressive on timing (speed-to-lead matters) but warmer in tone since the prospect has already raised their hand. A typical inbound cadence runs 5-8 touches over 10-14 days with immediate phone calls in the first step.
Nurture Cadences
Not every prospect is ready to buy today. Nurture cadences maintain a low-pressure relationship over weeks or months, sharing relevant content and checking in periodically. These sequences are lighter -- perhaps one touch per week -- and prioritize value delivery over conversion pressure.
Re-Engagement Cadences
For closed-lost deals, churned customers, or prospects who went dark mid-funnel, re-engagement cadences provide a structured way to reopen the conversation. They tend to be short (4-6 touches) and lead with a compelling reason to reconnect: a product update, a relevant case study, or a trigger event in the prospect's world.
Event or Campaign-Based Cadences
Tied to a specific initiative -- a webinar follow-up, a trade show, a product launch -- these cadences have a built-in expiration date and a shared context that simplifies messaging.
| Cadence Type | Typical Length | Touches | Primary Channels | Tone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prospecting (Outbound) | 21-28 days | 10-16 | Email, Phone, LinkedIn | Curiosity-driven, direct |
| Inbound Lead | 10-14 days | 5-8 | Phone, Email | Warm, responsive |
| Nurture | 30-90 days | 6-12 | Educational, low-pressure | |
| Re-Engagement | 14-21 days | 4-6 | Email, Phone | Value-first, timely |
| Event/Campaign | 7-14 days | 3-5 | Contextual, urgent |
How to Build a Cadence in Salesloft: Step by Step
Setting up a cadence is straightforward once you understand the moving parts. Here is the process from start to finish.
Define Your Goal and Audience
Before touching Salesloft, clarify who this cadence targets and what outcome you want. A cadence aimed at VP-level buyers at enterprise companies will look very different from one targeting startup founders. Document the persona, the value proposition you will lead with, and the desired next step (demo booked, call scheduled, reply received).
Create a New Cadence
In Salesloft, navigate to Cadences in the left sidebar and click Create Cadence. Choose whether to start from scratch or use one of Salesloft's templates. Give it a clear, descriptive name that includes the persona and intent -- for example, "Outbound - VP Sales - Q1 Product Launch." Assign it to the appropriate team or keep it personal.
Map Out Your Step Sequence
Add each step to the cadence by selecting the day, channel (email, phone, LinkedIn, or other), and action type (automated send vs. manual task). For emails, choose between automated sends and manual emails that let the rep personalize before sending. A common pattern for a 14-day prospecting cadence might look like this:
- Day 1: Personalized email + LinkedIn connection request
- Day 2: Phone call
- Day 4: Follow-up email (shorter, different angle)
- Day 7: Phone call + voicemail drop
- Day 9: Email with value asset (case study, report)
- Day 11: LinkedIn message or comment on their post
- Day 14: Breakup email
For more advanced multi-step patterns, see our deep dive on sequence design patterns for AI-personalized outreach.
Write Your Messaging
Draft the email templates and call scripts for each step. Every email should have a clear, single ask. Vary your angles across the sequence -- do not just repeat the same pitch with "just checking in" follow-ups. Use Salesloft's dynamic tags to insert prospect-specific fields like name, company, and title, and consider layering in deeper personalization with tools like Octave that generate genuinely tailored opening lines based on prospect research.
Configure Cadence Settings
Set your cadence-level preferences: sending window (business hours in the prospect's timezone), bounce and out-of-office handling, and threading behavior (whether follow-up emails appear as replies to the first message). Enable A/B testing on key steps if you want to test subject lines or messaging angles.
Add Prospects and Launch
Import your prospect list from your CRM or add people manually. Double-check that your data hygiene is solid -- incorrect email addresses tank deliverability and skew your metrics. Once prospects are loaded, activate the cadence and monitor the first few days closely for issues.
Salesloft Cadence Best Practices
Building a cadence is the easy part. Building one that actually converts requires attention to the details that most teams skip.
1. Mix Channels Deliberately
Email-only cadences plateau fast. Adding phone calls increases reply rates by giving prospects a different way to engage, and LinkedIn touches build familiarity before your email even lands. The most effective cadences use at least three channels. Studies consistently show that multi-channel sequences outperform single-channel ones by 2-3x on connection rates.
2. Front-Load Your Best Effort
Steps one through three get the most attention. Do not waste them on generic introductions. Your first email should demonstrate that you understand the prospect's world. Your first call should reference something specific. If your opening touches are weak, prospects mentally categorize you as spam and ignore everything that follows.
3. Vary Your Angles, Not Just Your Timing
Each step should introduce a different reason to engage. Step one might lead with a pain point. Step three shares a relevant case study. Step five offers a specific insight about their industry. If every email says "I'd love to show you a demo," you are not giving the prospect new information to evaluate. For inspiration on structuring varied messaging angles, check out frameworks for sequence design patterns that keep prospects engaged across multiple touches.
4. Personalize Beyond First Name
Dynamic fields like {{first_name}} and {{company}} are table stakes. They do not count as personalization in 2026. Real personalization references something the prospect has done, said, or experienced -- a recent funding round, a job change, a LinkedIn post, a company initiative mentioned in their earnings call. This is where AI personalization tools earn their keep. Platforms like Octave automate the research and generate personalized messaging at scale, so reps do not have to choose between quality and volume.
5. Respect the Breakup
Every cadence needs a final step that gracefully closes the loop. The breakup email should not be passive-aggressive ("Since I haven't heard from you..."). Instead, restate your value briefly and leave the door open. Many reps report that their breakup emails get the highest reply rates -- the scarcity of "last attempt" framing genuinely works.
6. Use A/B Testing on High-Impact Steps
Salesloft supports A/B testing on email steps. Use it on step one (the highest-volume step) to test subject lines, opening lines, and CTAs. Do not test everything at once -- isolate one variable per test. Run tests until you have at least 100 sends per variant before drawing conclusions.
7. Monitor and Iterate Weekly
Review cadence analytics every week. Look at step-level metrics, not just cadence-level averages. If step four has a 0% reply rate, the problem is not the cadence -- it is that specific email. Swap it out. Top-performing teams treat cadences as living playbooks, not set-and-forget automations.
Common Cadence Mistakes to Avoid
Even experienced sales teams fall into these traps when building Salesloft cadences.
Too Many Touches in Too Few Days
Aggressive cadences that fire three emails in three days feel like spam. Prospects do not just ignore them -- they report them or unsubscribe. Give at least one to two business days between email touches and longer gaps (three to four days) in the later stages when urgency decreases.
Identical Messaging Across Personas
A single cadence for all prospects is a symptom of lazy segmentation. A CFO cares about ROI and risk. A sales director cares about quota attainment and rep productivity. Build persona-specific cadences even if the underlying product pitch is the same. The effort compounds over time as your conversion data reveals what resonates with each audience.
Ignoring Call Steps
Many reps skip the phone steps in a cadence and only execute the emails. This defeats the purpose of a multi-channel approach. If your team consistently skips call steps, either your cadence design is unrealistic (too many calls) or your team needs coaching on phone confidence. Either way, address it -- do not just let it slide.
No Exit Criteria
Prospects should automatically exit a cadence when they reply, book a meeting, or are marked as disqualified. Without clear exit rules, you risk sending a pitch email to someone who already said yes yesterday. Salesloft handles reply-based exits natively, but make sure your team also removes prospects manually when conversations happen outside tracked channels.
Measuring Cadence Performance
Salesloft provides robust analytics for cadence performance. The metrics that matter most depend on your cadence type, but here are the universal ones to track.
| Metric | What It Tells You | Benchmark (Outbound) |
|---|---|---|
| Open Rate | Subject line effectiveness (less reliable due to privacy features) | 40-60% |
| Reply Rate | Overall cadence resonance and targeting accuracy | 5-12% |
| Positive Reply Rate | Messaging quality and prospect-market fit | 2-5% |
| Meetings Booked | Ultimate cadence effectiveness | 1-3% of prospects entered |
| Bounce Rate | Data quality and list hygiene | <3% |
| Opt-Out Rate | Messaging relevance and frequency appropriateness | <1% |
Look at these metrics at the step level, not just the cadence level. If step one has a 10% reply rate but step five has 0.5%, that tells you something specific about the later messaging. Also compare across cadences serving different personas or verticals -- the variance often reveals which segments are most receptive to outreach, which informs your broader sales engagement strategy.
Enhancing Salesloft Cadences with AI
Salesloft provides the infrastructure for sequencing, but the quality of what goes into each step -- the actual words your prospects read -- determines whether the cadence works. This is where AI tools have changed the game for outbound teams.
The most impactful integration point is email personalization. Instead of reps spending 5-10 minutes researching each prospect before writing a custom opener, AI tools can analyze a prospect's LinkedIn activity, company news, tech stack, and recent initiatives, then generate a relevant, specific opening line in seconds. When layered into Salesloft cadences, this means reps can run high-volume sequences without sacrificing the personalization that drives replies.
Octave is purpose-built for this use case -- it plugs into your sequencing workflow and generates personalized email content based on deep prospect research, so every touch in your cadence feels hand-written even at scale. Teams using AI-assisted personalization alongside Salesloft typically see reply rates increase by 2-3x compared to template-only approaches.
Beyond personalization, AI can help with cadence optimization by analyzing which messaging angles, subject lines, and step structures perform best for specific personas. For a broader look at how AI fits into the outbound stack, see our roundup of AI email personalization tools for cold outreach.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many steps should a Salesloft cadence have?
It depends on the cadence type. Outbound prospecting cadences typically perform best with 10-14 steps over 3-4 weeks. Inbound cadences can be shorter at 5-8 steps. The key is having enough touches to establish familiarity without crossing into annoyance. If your data shows that 90% of positive replies come in the first seven steps, there is diminishing value in extending to twenty.
Should I use automated or manual email steps?
Use automated sends for follow-up emails where the content is standard and does not require personalization. Use manual email steps for your first touch and any step where you want the rep to review and customize before sending. A hybrid approach balances efficiency with quality -- typically automated for steps three onward after the critical first impression is made manually.
How many prospects can I add to a single cadence?
Salesloft does not impose a hard limit on prospects per cadence, but deliverability should be your constraint. Sending hundreds of emails per day from a single mailbox triggers spam filters. Most teams cap daily sends at 50-100 per mailbox and use multiple sending accounts or rotate mailboxes to scale volume safely.
Can I run a prospect through multiple cadences simultaneously?
Salesloft allows it, but it is risky. Overlapping cadences can result in the same prospect receiving multiple emails on the same day from the same company, which looks sloppy and damages your brand. Use Salesloft's cadence priority settings and exclusion rules to prevent overlap, or enforce a policy of one active cadence per prospect.
What is the best day and time to send cadence emails?
Tuesday through Thursday mornings (8-10 AM in the prospect's local timezone) consistently show the highest open and reply rates across most B2B segments. However, this varies by persona and industry. Test different send windows using Salesloft's analytics and let your own data guide your timing decisions rather than relying on generic benchmarks.
How do I handle prospects who open but never reply?
Frequent opens with no reply usually signal interest paired with insufficient motivation to act. Try changing your CTA from a big ask (30-minute demo) to a small ask (quick question, share a resource). Also consider adding a phone step immediately after an opened email -- Salesloft's live feed shows opens in real time, making timely call follow-ups possible.
Building Cadences That Actually Convert
Salesloft gives your team the structure and automation to run outreach at scale. But the cadence itself is just the container. What fills it -- the targeting, the messaging, the personalization, the channel mix -- is what separates teams that book meetings from teams that burn through lists.
Start with a clear audience and goal. Build multi-channel sequences with varied messaging angles. Personalize beyond dynamic fields. Test relentlessly. And treat every cadence as a hypothesis to be validated, not a finished product.
If you want to take your Salesloft cadences further with AI-powered personalization that makes every touch feel genuinely relevant, explore how Octave can help. We help outbound teams turn solid cadence structures into high-converting outreach by making real personalization possible at real volume.