Q: How long does finding leads take?

<p>Building an audience runs in the background. <strong>Expect up to about 20 minutes</strong>, and longer for large or unusual segments.</p> <p>It keeps running if you close the tab, switch pages, or leave and come back later.</p> <h2 id="whatishappening">What is happening</h2> <ol> <li>Companies matching your brief are sourced</li> <li>Each is scored against the brief, with reasoning recorded</li> <li>People in the roles you asked for are identified</li> <li>Contact addresses are found</li> </ol> <h2 id="messagesyouwillsee">Messages you will see</h2> <p><strong>"Still finding leads. This can take up to 20 minutes…"</strong> — normal. Leave it.</p> <p><strong>"Search started. It keeps running in the background."</strong> — normal.</p> <p><strong>Anything about receipts being reconciled</strong> — a safety interlock, not a fault. Wait rather than starting another search.</p> <h2 id="whentoworry">When to worry</h2> <p>Worth reporting if:</p> <ul> <li>There has been no movement for well over 30 minutes</li> <li>An error message appeared — quote the exact wording</li> <li>It repeatedly fails on the same campaign</li> </ul> <p>In that case, see <a href="#">My campaign didn't finish</a>. Do not retry the build — tell us the campaign name instead.</p>

Question 1

Signing in and resetting your password

Accepted Answer

Signing in

Use the email you signed up with.

Being signed out unexpectedly

Your session expired. Sign in again and you will be returned to the page you were on — you should not lose your place.

Forgotten password

Use the reset link on the sign-in page. A reset email goes to your registered address.

If it does not arrive within a few minutes:

Check your spam folder
Confirm you are using the address you signed up with
If it is still missing, contact support — a reset email that never arrives is a real issue worth reporting rather than retrying repeatedly

A page won't load

Refresh first — a stale session is the most common cause. If it persists, tell support what page you were on and roughly when. Errors are logged on our side, so a rough description and a time is usually enough for us to find it.

Deleting your account

Contact support. Account closure and deletion are handled directly by a person. You can request an export for 30 days after termination; after that, workspace data may be deleted or anonymized within a reasonable period. Suppression records are kept so opted-out people are not contacted again.

Question 2

What's free before you choose a plan

Accepted Answer

Before choosing a plan you can build 2 campaigns, end to end and free.

Free

Sourcing companies against your brief
Scoring them, with the reasoning shown
The audience preview
Writing the campaign copy

Paid

Contact verification, which runs when you approve
Sending

Verification is the first step that spends real per-contact money, so the boundary sits at approval. Everything above it is free because seeing a real audience and real copy is the only honest way to judge whether this works for you.

What you see on the free tier

The audience preview is real, but only the first few email addresses are shown in full — the rest are masked. Everything else is visible: company, role, why it matched.

What counts as one of the two

Only creating a new campaign and building it counts.

These do not count:

Starter campaigns suggested during onboarding that you never built
Rebuilding the audience or rewriting the copy on a campaign you already have
A build that failed to finish

So iterate as much as you like on a campaign you have already started.

When you choose a plan

Everything you built is kept. Verification and sending unlock, and the campaign goes out exactly as you reviewed it. Nothing needs rebuilding.

Question 3

Why do I have campaigns I didn't create?

Accepted Answer

After you complete your company profile, Unilead suggests campaign ideas based on it — different audiences, each with an angle. If you selected several, they are saved as drafts.

They will show with the status drafting.

They are a shortlist, not campaigns

Selecting them does not build anything. No audience has been sourced, no copy written, nothing sent. They sit there as a menu of ideas until you open one and build it.

They do not use your free campaigns

Only a campaign you have actually built counts against the two free ones. If you see five drafts and have built none, all your free campaigns are intact.

`drafting` does not mean failed

It means not started. If a campaign you did build has stopped partway, that looks different and is covered in My campaign didn't finish.

What to do with them

Open the one that looks most promising and build it. Delete the rest, or leave them — they cost nothing sitting there.

Question 4

My campaign didn't finish

Accepted Answer

If a campaign stopped partway — the lead search did not finish, the copy did not generate, or it looks frozen on one stage — nothing is lost and you do not need to do anything.

Your audience, your copy, and your edits are all still there. A build that did not complete does not consume one of your free campaigns and is not charged twice.

What to do

Tell us the campaign name and roughly when you started it. Someone on the Unilead side resumes it from the back end and it carries on from where it stopped. You will see it move on its own — there is no button for you to press.

What not to do

Do not retry the build. Starting a second search while the first is still settling can duplicate your audience. The product blocks most of this deliberately — which is why you may see messages like "Lead provider start is being safely reconciled; do not open a second preview yet" — but the reliable move is to leave it and tell us.

Do not delete and rebuild. That loses your reviewed audience and your copy edits, and it does not give you a fresh free campaign.

Why this happens

Builds are long-running background jobs. A step can time out, or an upstream provider can be slow. The system is deliberately built so a half-finished build parks safely rather than producing a bad campaign — which is exactly why the safe resume is on our side rather than yours.

Things that look stuck but aren't

"Still finding leads" — normal for up to about 20 minutes, longer f

Question 5

How long does finding leads take?

Accepted Answer

Building an audience runs in the background. Expect up to about 20 minutes, and longer for large or unusual segments.

It keeps running if you close the tab, switch pages, or leave and come back later.

What is happening

Companies matching your brief are sourced
Each is scored against the brief, with reasoning recorded
People in the roles you asked for are identified
Contact addresses are found

Messages you will see

"Still finding leads. This can take up to 20 minutes…" — normal. Leave it.

"Search started. It keeps running in the background." — normal.

Anything about receipts being reconciled — a safety interlock, not a fault. Wait rather than starting another search.

When to worry

Worth reporting if:

There has been no movement for well over 30 minutes
An error message appeared — quote the exact wording
It repeatedly fails on the same campaign

In that case, see My campaign didn't finish. Do not retry the build — tell us the campaign name instead.

Question 6

Writing cold email that gets replies

Accepted Answer

The copy engine handles the structure. These are the judgement calls worth making yourself.

One idea per email

An email that makes two asks makes neither. Pick the single most relevant thing and cut the rest.

Make the ask small

"Book 30 minutes" from a total stranger converts far worse than a question they can answer in one line. A reply is easier to give than a meeting — and a reply starts the conversation anyway.

Specific beats clever

A real number about their industry outperforms a pun every time. Cleverness reads as marketing; specificity reads as someone who did the work.

Follow-ups must add something

"Just bumping this" is worse than no follow-up. Each one should bring a new angle, a different proof point, or a smaller ask.

Read it out loud

If you would not say it to someone at a conference, do not send it. This catches most of what is wrong with cold email.

Do not re-add claims the engine removed

If a claim was refused for being unverifiable, editing it back in defeats the guardrail — and the first reply will test it.

Judge it properly

Give a campaign a full sequence over a couple of weeks before deciding. Reply data on the first morning is noise.

Frequently Read Articles

Browse All Categories