sales-skills/sales-mailshake

Mailshake Platform Help

Help the user with Mailshake platform questions — from campaign setup and Lead Catcher through recipient management, deliverability settings, API, and integrations.

Step 1 — Gather context

If references/learnings.md exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.

Ask the user:

1. What area of Mailshake do you need help with?

   • A) Campaigns — creating, managing, or optimizing email campaigns (for strategy, hand off: /sales-cadence {your question})
   • B) Recipients — importing, managing, CSV formatting
   • C) Lead Catcher — capturing and managing leads from replies
   • D) Deliverability — sender settings, warmup, domain auth (for cross-platform, hand off: /sales-deliverability {your question})
   • E) Analytics — campaign performance, open/reply/click rates
   • F) Webhooks & API — automation, push events, API access
   • G) Senders & Team — connected accounts, team management
   • H) Integrations — Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zapier, Slack
   • I) Admin — billing, plan features, account settings
   • J) Something else — describe it

2. What's your role?

   • A) Sales rep / AE / BDR
   • B) Sales manager / team lead
   • C) RevOps / Sales Ops
   • D) Admin / IT
   • E) Founder / solo seller
   • F) Other

3. What are you trying to accomplish? (describe your specific goal or question)

If the user's request already provides most of this context, skip directly to the relevant step. Lead with your best-effort answer using reasonable assumptions (stated explicitly), then ask only the most critical 1-2 clarifying questions at the end — don't gate your response behind gathering complete context.

Note: If the user needs a specialized skill, route them there with a brief explanation of why that skill is a better fit.

Step 2 — Route or answer directly

If the request maps to a specialized skill, route:

• List building / prospecting → /sales-prospect-list
• Contact enrichment / data hygiene → /sales-enrich
• Cadence strategy / sequence design → /sales-cadence
• Cross-platform deliverability → /sales-deliverability
• Tool integration architecture → /sales-integration

Otherwise, answer directly from platform knowledge using the reference below.

Step 3 — Mailshake platform reference

Provide module-by-module guidance based on the user's area:

Campaigns

• What it is: A campaign in Mailshake is a multi-step email sequence — an initial message plus follow-ups sent automatically on a schedule
• Key concepts: Campaign = sequence, messages = steps, follow-up types (time-based drip, reply-based, click-based on-click message)
• Campaign statuses: draft, active, paused, ended
• A/B testing: Available on higher plans — test subject lines and body content across variants
• Best practices: Keep initial emails under 125 words, personalize with merge fields ({{first}}, {{company}}), test one variable at a time

Recipients

• What it is: The contacts enrolled in a campaign — imported via CSV, API, or manual entry
• Required fields: Only emailAddress is mandatory. Everything else is optional but recommended.
• Recommended fields: first, last, company, title — these map to merge fields {{first}}, {{last}}, {{company}}, {{title}}
• Custom merge fields: Any additional CSV column becomes a custom merge field automatically
• Recipient statuses: active, paused, bounced, unsubscribed, completed
• CSV import tips: UTF-8 encoding, first row = headers, one email per row, verify emails before import (Mailshake does not verify on upload)

Lead Catcher

• What it is: Built-in lead management that automatically captures replies as leads for follow-up
• Lead statuses: open (needs action), won/closed (converted), ignored (not a lead), lost (dead)
• Key features: Auto-assign leads to team members, filter by status/campaign/assignee, view full conversation thread
• Lead Catcher vs CRM: Lead Catcher manages the email conversation thread — your CRM manages the deal. Push qualified leads to CRM via integration or API.
• Best practices: Check Lead Catcher daily, respond within 1 hour for best conversion, use status labels consistently

Deliverability Basics

• Sender accounts: Connect Gmail, Outlook/O365, or SMTP. Each sender has a daily sending limit.
• Sending limits: Varies by plan and email provider. Gmail caps at ~400-500/day, O365 at ~1,000/day. Mailshake enforces plan limits on top of provider limits.
• Domain auth: Configure SPF/DKIM/DMARC for your sending domain. Use a custom tracking domain for link tracking.
• Warmup: For new mailboxes, start with 20-30 emails/day and increase by 10-20 per week. See /sales-deliverability for a full warmup framework.
• Sender rotation: Distribute sends across multiple sender accounts to protect reputation

Analytics

• Built-in dashboards: Campaign-level and account-level performance metrics
• Key metrics: Sent, opens, clicks, replies, bounces, unsubscribes, Lead Catcher leads
• Team analytics: Compare performance across team members and campaigns
• Best practices: Monitor bounce rate weekly (<3% target), track positive reply rate not just opens

Senders & Team

• Senders: Connected email accounts used for sending. Each has its own daily limit and reputation.
• Team: Members can be assigned campaigns and leads. Roles control access.
• Sender management: Settings > Senders to connect, configure from-name, set daily limits

Mailshake data model

Core entities — understand these to navigate the UI and work with the API:

| Entity | What it represents | Key relationships | |---|---|---| | Campaign | A multi-step email sequence | Has Messages (steps), has Recipients | | Recipient | A contact enrolled in a campaign | Belongs to a Campaign, has Activity | | Lead | A reply captured by Lead Catcher | Belongs to a Campaign, linked to a Recipient | | Message | A step in a campaign (initial or follow-up) | Belongs to a Campaign | | Sender | A connected email account | Used by Campaigns | | Team Member | A user on the account | Can own Campaigns and Leads |

API & Integrations

For detailed API documentation including all endpoints, authentication, rate limits, and webhook event payloads, always consult references/mailshake-api-reference.md. Point the user to this file for the full endpoint catalog, request/response schemas, and rate limit details. Any API question should include a pointer to this reference file.

Quick reference: Base URL https://api.mailshake.com/2017-04-01. Auth: API key via apiKey parameter (query/body) or Authorization: Basic <base64 apiKey> header; OAuth 2.0 for third-party apps. Rate limits use a quota-units-per-hour model (per-operation cost, scaled by plan/seats) plus a separate monthly recipient-add cap — not a flat requests/minute limit. Key capabilities: campaign CRUD, recipient management, activity tracking, Lead Catcher management, push webhooks (which send a resource_url you fetch — no HMAC signing).

Native integrations

• CRM: Salesforce (push leads, sync activity), HubSpot (push leads, sync activity), Pipedrive (push leads)
• Automation: Zapier (triggers for opens, clicks, replies, new leads; actions for adding recipients)
• Communication: Slack (notifications for replies, leads)
• Enrichment: Voila Norbert, Hunter (email verification before import)

Step 4 — Actionable guidance

Based on the user's specific question:

1. Step-by-step instructions — numbered steps to accomplish their goal in Mailshake
2. Configuration recommendations — specific settings to change, with navigation paths
3. Common pitfalls — what can go wrong and how to avoid it
4. Verification — how to confirm the change worked
5. For API questions — always include a pointer: "For the full endpoint catalog, request/response schemas, and rate limits, see references/mailshake-api-reference.md."

Gotchas

• Don't confuse Lead Catcher with a CRM. Lead Catcher captures and tracks email replies — it's a triage tool, not a deal pipeline. Qualified leads should be pushed to Salesforce/HubSpot for pipeline management. Claude often treats Lead Catcher as a full CRM replacement.

• Don't use "sequence" when talking about Mailshake. Mailshake calls them "campaigns." Using "sequence" (Apollo/Salesloft terminology) confuses the user and the UI. Always say "campaign" for Mailshake.

• Don't assume deliverability is configured. New Mailshake accounts often have no SPF/DKIM/DMARC, no custom tracking domain, and no warmup plan. Always check domain auth status before troubleshooting send issues.

• Don't recommend features available only on higher plans without asking. A/B testing, team analytics, and some integrations are plan-gated. Ask about the user's plan before recommending these features.

• Don't assume Mailshake uses a simple requests/minute rate limit. It uses a quota-units-per-hour model — each operation costs different units (e.g. recipients/add costs 20 + N, push/create costs 100, activity/sent costs 1), and there's a separate monthly cap on recipients added via the API. Exceeding either returns a limit_reached / exceeds_monthly_recipients error. Limits scale with plan and user seats. Bulk operations must be batched and paced. Claude tends to generate tight loops without budgeting quota units.

• Self-improving: If you discover something not covered here, append it to references/learnings.md with today's date.

Step 5 — Related skills

• /sales-cadence — Design outbound cadence strategy (platform-agnostic, works with Mailshake campaigns)
• /sales-deliverability — Cross-platform email deliverability — SPF/DKIM/DMARC, warmup, inbox placement
• /sales-prospect-list — Build prospect lists to import into Mailshake
• /sales-enrich — Enrich contacts with emails/phones before importing
• /sales-integration — Connect Mailshake to other tools via webhooks, Zapier, or API
• /sales-apollo — Apollo.io platform help (if using Apollo instead of Mailshake)
• /sales-salesloft — Salesloft platform help (if using Salesloft instead of Mailshake)
• /sales-do — Not sure which skill to use? The router matches any sales objective to the right skill.

Examples

Example 1: Lead Catcher setup

User says: "How do I set up Lead Catcher in Mailshake?" Skill does:

1. Explains Lead Catcher's purpose — automatic lead capture from campaign replies
2. Walks through enabling Lead Catcher and configuring auto-assignment rules
3. Explains lead statuses (open, won/closed, ignored, lost) and when to use each
4. Clarifies the distinction between Lead Catcher and CRM pipeline management Result: User has Lead Catcher enabled with assignment rules and understands how to triage leads

Example 2: API recipient import

User says: "I want to use the Mailshake API to add 500 recipients to a campaign" Skill does:

1. Points to references/mailshake-api-reference.md for full API docs
2. Explains the /recipients/add endpoint — emailAddress required, fields for merge vars (accepts addresses, listOfEmails, or csvData; max 5,000 per campaign)
3. Warns about the quota-units-per-hour limit (/recipients/add costs 20 + N units) and the separate monthly recipient-add cap, and recommends batching/pacing
4. Shows how to check import status with /recipients/addStatus Result: User knows the endpoint, required fields, and how to batch large imports within the quota-unit and monthly-recipient limits

Troubleshooting

Low open rates

Symptom: Campaign open rates below 30% Cause: Missing domain authentication, poor sender reputation, or weak subject lines Solution: Verify SPF/DKIM/DMARC in your DNS. Set up a custom tracking domain. Check sender reputation. A/B test subject lines. See /sales-deliverability for a full diagnosis framework.

Emails bouncing

Symptom: Bounce rate above 3% Cause: Unverified email list or stale data Solution: Verify emails before import using a verification tool (NeverBounce, ZeroBounce). Remove hard bounces immediately. Mailshake does not verify on upload — this is your responsibility.

Lead Catcher not capturing replies

Symptom: Replies come in but don't appear in Lead Catcher Cause: Lead Catcher not enabled for the campaign, or reply detected as out-of-office/bounce Solution: Check campaign settings — Lead Catcher must be enabled per campaign. Auto-replies and OOO messages are filtered out by default. Check the Activity > Replies tab to confirm the reply was received.