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What to Check Before Contacting Outreach Support

Emilee S.
Updated

Overview

Outreach support is always happy to help you with any questions you might have. In order to solve your problem quickly, there are a few steps you can follow to get you up and running prior to submitting a support request.

Tip: Use the Table of Contents on this page to navigate quickly among the sections.

Calls

If you are experiencing issues making calls, the best first step is to ensure your settings are configured correctly. To do this, go to your settings page in Outreach, then click into Voice.

Unable to Make Calls

  • Make sure you have an Outreach number or local dial in your voice settings.
  • Check to make sure the correct outbound calling settings are selected. VoIP is going to dial through your browser, while bridge will call through a secondary desk or cell phone.
  • If you’re using bridge, make sure that your secondary phone’s number is entered here.

No Sound or Poor Call Quality

  • Check if your headset is reactive by listening to music or other sounds on your computer through your headset.
  • Allow microphone permissions in your browser for Outreach. Check if your microphone is reactive on your headset in your voice settings.
  • If possible, try to connect via ethernet. If ethernet is unavailable, make sure you are on the correct wifi network.

Content Creation - Templates and Email Compose

While composing new content in Outreach, it’s possible that you’re unknowingly testing the limits of our email compose feature. Most of these limits are in place for the safety of your email deliverability and some of these are just nice things to know. Keep in mind, feedback on the content of your emails should be directed to your internal content team.

Formatting

  • You can easily change the font, size, and style of your email’s text. Once you are in the email compose window, you can click on the A button at the bottom left-hand side of the compose window to find these settings.

Images

  • Outreach has a 5MB size limit for all images in emails. Your template will fail to save if it exceeds this limit.
  • To attach an image, click on the image icon in the email compose window.
  • You may attach larger images to emails as attachments by clicking on the paperclip icon in the compose window.

Remove Formatting

  • If you are copying and pasting text from another document into the compose window, you will want to remove formatting from the text you copied and modify the formatting using the Outreach compose window. This will make sure your formatting is consistent between the copied text and any new text.
  • If you notice non-uniform text in an existing template, you can remove formatting by clicking into the A button at the bottom left-hand side of the compose window and clicking the “Remove Formatting” button.

Deliverability

Let's face the facts: email is still the primary form of professional communication. Unfortunately, legitimate, consultative sellers aren't the only ones who know that. Bad actors are out there scamming, phishing, and spamming thousands of unsuspecting email users. As a result, companies, internet service providers, and regulators have created safeguards to protect you.

We created a comprehensive guide filled with best practices to ensure your emails end up where they belong—in your prospects' inboxes. Download the guide to learn more about what you can do to protect your deliverability.

Bounced Emails

  • Emails can bounce for plenty of reasons. The best way to see why a particular email bounced is by reading the bounced message in your own inbox. This is going to provide you with a bounce code which you can easily type into your favorite search engine to gain more context around the bounce reason.
  • Outreach categorizes bounces into different buckets, which can be reviewed here.

Branded URLs

  • When you send an email with a link that ties to your company domain, it feels more like the email came right from your inbox, written with care, than from an automated list. And when you use your own URL, your email is less likely to be flagged by spam filters because you are in control of your domain reputation.
  • This is configured by your Outreach Admin and your IT team. They will need to follow the steps in this article to get your Branded URL set up.
  • Once this is initially configured, you typically don’t need to worry about it again.

Spam Filters

  • Every email provider is going to have different sets of rules and regulations about spam. We have compiled a list of best practices to help you stay out of these spam filters and get your emails into your prospects’ inboxes.

Failed Emails

It’s a good idea to check your outbox regularly, since mailings can fail for several reasons. You’ll know that you have a failed email when you see a failure notification on the outbox. Here are a few common reasons emails fail to send and how to remedy them. After you’ve fixed the issue, you can retry the failed email.

Disabled Mailbox

Missing Variables

  • If you see an email fail due to a missing variable, you will want to first find out which variable caused the email to fail. To check this, you can click into the failed email and see what is in between the curly brackets.
  • If it was an auto email, fix the unpopulated variable issue on the Prospect profile, then retry the Prospect in a sequence
  • If it was a manual email:
    • Fix the unpopulated variable issue on the Prospect profile, then retry the Prospect in the sequence
    • This can also happen with comment variables within manual email steps in the task flow. In this case, fix the unpopulated variable issue in the email compose window, then manually send the email.

Prospect Opted Out

  • If a prospect is opted out of email communication, you will not be able to contact them and the email will fail. This is intentional and the failed email should not be retried.

Mailings

A substantial portion of your Outreach communication will likely be through email. That being said, it’s helpful to know where to locate different items in your Outbox and understand how to interpret the results of sent mailings.

Draft Folder

  • If you saved an email for later, you can find it in your Outbox under the drafts section.
  • If you don’t see an email you were previously working on in your drafts folder, you may have forgotten to save your draft.

Open/Click Tracking

  • Emails sent through Outreach have the ability to include open and click tracking. Open tracking is enabled by default. Click tracking is disabled by default, but can be enabled if you choose to include a link in your emails.
  • Not seeing any open/click notifications on your emails? As long as Outreach shows that the email sent, the receiving mail server did accept the message. However, it is possible that your email landed in your prospect’s spam folder, instead of the inbox. Try working with your content team to create more personalized emails to get your prospects opening your emails! Variables are a great way to do this in bulk.
  • Seeing an unusual number of clicks on an email? Make sure you didn't copy and paste text into sequences, templates, snippets, or one-off emails.

Meetings

If you’re noticing strange behavior with event syncing between Outreach and your calendar, it might be time to refresh your calendar’s connection to Outreach. Keep in mind that the calendar sync is not immediate. It can take up to an hour to see meetings sync from your Calendar to Outreach, since we’re looking at events that have occurred a year in the past and looking forward for events coming in the next year.

Reestablish the connection to your calendar

Opportunities

If you aren’t seeing a prospect’s activity post to an opportunity in Salesforce, there are a few things you can check.

Assigning a prospect to an opportunity

  • If a contact role is assigned to the opportunity in both Salesforce and in Outreach, then the prospect’s activity should be showing up on the opportunity in Salesforce.
  • If you don’t see a contact role assigned to the Outreach opportunity (but there is a contact role in Salesforce), you can remedy by manually syncing the record from the Opportunity overview, making sure to include associated contacts.

Syncing the opportunity to Salesforce

Outreach Everywhere

The Outreach Everywhere Chrome Extension is a great way to execute your Outreach tasks while navigating to sites other than Outreach (Salesforce, LinkedIn, etc.). If you are having trouble using the Outreach Everywhere extension, please try the following steps to troubleshoot your issue.

General Troubleshooting

  • Make sure you’re using Google Chrome.
  • Make sure Chrome is up-to-date.
  • Make sure you have Outreach Everywhere installed in Chrome and you’re using the current extension. 

Lead/Contact profile isn’t showing up automatically during task execution

Tasks aren’t launching through Outreach Everywhere  

Extension isn't showing in the inbox

  • Make sure your mailbox is set up to send and sync in Outreach. We need to have permission to do both for the extension to appear in your inbox. You can disable and enable the send/sync toggles to ensure the mailbox is still connected correctly.

Lead, Contact, or Account records are not populating in Outreach Everywhere when opened in your CRM

  • Verify that you are not using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. Outreach does not support Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. Your IT team should be able to confirm whether or not your organization uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. You can also verify this yourself by checking the URL for your CRM for an extra mcas.ms domain suffix (e.g., instead of salesforce.com, the URL displays as force.com.mcas.ms instead). If your organization is using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, it will need to be disabled for your CRM in order for Outreach Everywhere to work consistently. 

Password Resets

Can’t remember your password? Don’t worry! Here are your options.

In-App Password

SSO (Okta, OneLogin, Salesforce, SAML IdP)

  • Your SSO provider will assign your Outreach password through the SSO application. If you are having trouble signing into Outreach and you use SSO, make sure you’re signed into your SSO platform first.

Permissions

If you find that you’re unable to complete an action in Outreach, it’s possible that your governance permissions have been denied for that action. You can check the available governance profile settings to see if the action you’re trying to complete is a deniable permission before contacting support. Below are some commonly denied permissions.

Unable to edit a prospect profile / account / templates / sequence

  • First, check the ownership of whatever it is that you’re trying to modify. You’ll likely only be able to edit things you own yourself, unless you are an admin user.

Unable to view a prospect profile / account / email history / sequence

Prospects

Prospects are your individual leads and contacts within Outreach. It’s important to understand the history of each prospect before adding them to a sequence. You can always check a prospect’s previous history by clicking into the prospect profile and navigating to the activity feed.

Prospect Overview

Prospect Stuck in a Paused State

  • Is your prospect stuck in a paused state no matter how many times you try to activate them? If so, you should take a look at the sequence overview to check the step your prospect is in. It’s likely that all of the templates for that step are disabled, forcing the prospect to stay paused. Enable the template you’d like to use, and the prospect will resume!

Stages

  • Prospect stages are created by your admin and typically reflect the lead/contact statuses you see in Salesforce.
  • Prospect stages are automatically updated by sequence rulesets, depending on the prospect’s behavior in the sequence. Stages can also be changed manually.

Unable to save edits on a prospect profile

  • Check to make sure you’re satisfying all prospect validations before saving the record.
  • It’s also possible that you don’t have the necessary profile permissions to edit the record.

Salesforce Sync Issues

If you’re noticing that prospects or accounts aren’t syncing to Salesforce as you might expect, there are a few things you can try before contacting Support.

If all records aren’t updating...

If specific records aren’t updating...

  • Check the prospect's activity feed to see if there is an error message explaining why the record did not update correctly. If the error messaging isn’t clear to you, feel free to send a request into Outreach support through the support portal. Be sure to include the error messaging and prospect information in your request.
  • Check to see if the prospect is mapped to the correct record by going to the prospect’s profile, then clicking on the Salesforce button. This will take you to the corresponding lead/contact record in Salesforce.
  • Don’t see the Salesforce button at all? This means that the prospect is not mapped to Salesforce. You can find the corresponding object to create a mapping between the two records by following the steps outlined in this article.
  • Attempt a manual push to Salesforce and be sure to not select “force update,” as this could overwrite information in Salesforce.
    • If it does update, great! This means there was something previously preventing the update, but since it is now working, it doesn’t require any further action at this time.
    • If it doesn’t update, read the error messaging to see if there are any validations preventing Outreach from updating the record in Salesforce. If the error messaging isn’t clear to you, feel free to send a request into Outreach support through the support portal. Be sure to include the error messaging and prospect information in your request.

Sending Limits

Outreach abides by the sending limits provided by 3rd party email providers. The maximum limit is hard-coded and not something Outreach can change. There are a few things to note about the sending limits in Outreach, which can be located on your 360 page under the Emails section.

Daily Send Limits

  • The maximum daily send limit is 1,000 emails per 24 hours. This limit may be adjusted to a smaller number by your admin user to help protect your domain against being marked as spam.
  • The daily send limit is on a rolling 24 hours. This means that if you only send 10 emails for the day on Monday all at 8am, your daily send limit will reset to 0 on Tuesday at 8am.

Weekly Send Limits

  • The maximum weekly send limit is 5,000 emails per 24 hours. This limit may never be met if your daily send limit is less than 1,000 per day.
  • The weekly send limit is on a rolling weekly limit. This means that if you only send 10 emails for the week on Monday all at 8am, your weekly send limit will reset to 0 on Monday of next week at 8am.
  • This limit is set by Outreach per license and cannot be adjusted. If you require more than 5,000 emails per week we recommend buying additional licenses so you can send emails from an alternate email address.

Sequences

Sequences are the powerhouse of Outreach. If they aren’t behaving how you expect them to, it can be frustrating. Here are some common questions and how we suggest you handle each scenario.

Automatic Stage Updates

  • If you notice a prospect’s stage change and you didn’t manually update it, don’t worry! It was likely the automatic stage updates in the sequence ruleset. The ruleset will automatically update your prospect’s stage whenever some action takes place within the sequence.

Emails are sending at odd times

  • Were emails sent to a few prospects at 3am? Don’t worry! Look at the prospect’s time zone. It was most likely sent at a normal time for them. This is why the use of sequence schedules is essential to getting emails sent to your prospects at an appropriate time.

Missing Variables

  • If your prospect fails in a sequence due to a missing variable, you will want to make sure the field is populated on your prospect who failed. You can check to see which variable is used within the sequence template, populate that variable for the failed prospect, then retry the prospect in the sequence.

Prospects not activating in the sequence

  • Before making a decision on how to handle this situation, you should understand why prospects pend in a sequence.
  • If you don’t think you can handle any more manual tasks in your day or you’re close to your daily/weekly send limits, rest assured that your prospects will automatically activate if you have that feature enabled in your sequence ruleset.
  • If you can handle more tasks per day and you’re not close to your email sending limits, you can manually activate pending prospects.

Sequence Throttle

Unable to add prospects to a sequence

  • If your prospects are not added to a sequence after an attempt to sequence them, you will likely see error messaging explaining why they were not added to the sequence.
  • You can also check the sequence ruleset safety settings to see the requirements to add prospects to that specific sequence.

Slowness or unusual behavior in the platform

If you’re like the rest of us, you probably haven’t restarted your computer or closed your web browser in a while. Your browser tends to hold onto information, and over time it can cause problems with the different applications you may use.

Try Checking Your Computer’s Environment

  • Make sure you’re using Google Chrome. Outreach is not supported by Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer.
  • Check that your Outreach Everywhere chrome extension is up-to-date.
  • Make sure your Google Chrome browser is up-to-date.
  • Clear your browser’s cache and cookies. It's always a good idea to clear out the cache, or browser history, and clear cookies on a regular basis.

Time Zones

Time zones are set on the prospect level and may sync directly from Salesforce. Time zones affect both meetings and sequence schedules.

Emails are sending at odd times

  • Were emails sent to a few prospects at 3am? Don’t worry! Look at the prospect’s time zone. It was most likely sent at a normal time for them. This is why the use of sequence schedules is essential to getting emails sent to your prospects at an appropriate time.

Triggers

Triggers are used to help save time on manual effort by automating common actions in Outreach. Triggers can affect prospects, accounts, opportunities, tasks, and more, depending on a set of conditions defined by your admin. If you notice triggers making changes to your prospects, your admin user will be able to help you identify the reason why a trigger fired.

Auto-Sequencing Triggers

  • If you’re wondering how your prospects are getting added to sequences when you did not put them there, take a peek at their activity history to see if they were sequenced by a trigger. This is a common workflow to help get your prospects into sequence faster.

Trigger Misfires

  • It’s common to think that a trigger has misfired on a prospect in Outreach, if it does not currently fit the trigger’s criteria. However, it’s important to look at the state the prospect was in before the trigger fired. Odds are, it wasn’t a misfire! If you still think it was, you may provide the support team with an example prospect and the trigger’s name so we can investigate for you.

Additional Resources: 

What to Check Before Contacting Outreach Support

Signing in to the Outreach Support Portal for the First Time

How to Submit a Technical Support Request

How to Manage Technical Support Request Tickets

Outreach Support Customer Guidelines

How To Request a Seat Add Through the Support Portal

Outreach University - Admin Specialist Badge

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