Support / Campaigns / Creating a campaign
Campaigns

Creating a campaign

5 min read Setup

A campaign is the container that holds your target audience, outreach sequence, and settings. Before Kai can research or write anything, a campaign needs to exist. This guide walks through creating one from scratch.

Before you start

You need two things in place before creating a campaign:

  • A Lemlist sequence built and ready, with at least one email step. Kai pulls its structure from Lemlist, so the sequence must exist first. See Connecting tokens in Lemlist for how that works.
  • Your Lemlist Campaign ID. You find this in Lemlist under campaign settings. It looks like cam_XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxQDk.
API connections first. If you have not connected Lemlist and Claude yet, start with API connections. A campaign will not run without them.

Campaign types

Kai has three campaign types. Choose the one that matches your outreach motion before you create anything. The type cannot be changed after creation.

Seasonal
A defined list of contacts, run as a one-time push or short campaign window. The standard starting point. You upload a CSV or pull from a Lemlist source campaign, Kai researches and writes for each contact, you approve, and it executes.
ABM
One target account per campaign. Kai enriches the account, discovers contacts in the right roles, and runs a wave approach: one senior contact first, then two below the line. Best for strategic accounts where you want deep, coordinated coverage.
24/7
Always-on sourcing against an ICP brief. Kai finds contacts automatically every four hours, queues them for approval, and keeps outreach running continuously. A saturation gate (default: 50 pending approvals) pauses sourcing when the queue is full.

Creating a Seasonal campaign

Seasonal is the right starting point for most teams. Here is the full creation flow.

1
Open the Campaigns sidebar

In the left navigation, click Campaigns to expand it, then click Seasonal. If no campaigns exist yet, you will see an empty state with a button to create the first one.

2
Click "New campaign"

This opens the campaign creation form. Give the campaign a name that tells you what it covers. The vertical, list source, or campaign window works well. For example: Media and Publishing Q3 2026.

3
Set the vertical

Select the vertical this campaign targets. This tells Kai which industry context to use when writing outreach. Kai uses vertical-specific proof points, terminology, and angles, so getting this right matters for copy quality.

4
Enter the Lemlist Campaign ID

Paste the ID of the Lemlist campaign this outreach will run through. The ID lives in Lemlist under your campaign settings and starts with cam_. This is what Kai uses to push approved contacts into the right sequence.

New campaign Seasonal
Campaign name
Vertical
Media & Publishing
Lemlist Campaign ID
The new campaign form. Name, vertical, and Lemlist Campaign ID are the three required fields.
5
Pull the latest steps

After saving, open the campaign settings panel and click Pull latest steps. Kai reads your Lemlist sequence structure and maps a token to every step. The current sequence appears below the button, and the injection token panel shows exactly what to paste into each Lemlist step.

Lemlist Sequence
Current sequence (9 steps)
Day 1LinkedInConnection request
Day 2EmailEmail 1
Day 3CallCall step
Day 4EmailEmail 2
Day 7LinkedInMessage 1
Day 9EmailEmail 3
Day 13EmailEmail 4
Injection tokens -- paste into Lemlist
{{kai_linkedin_note}}
{{kai_email1_subject}}
{{kai_email1_body}}
After pulling steps, Kai shows the full sequence structure and generates a token for every step. Use the Copy buttons to paste tokens into Lemlist.
Changed your Lemlist sequence? If you add, remove, or reorder steps in Lemlist after a campaign is running, come back to the campaign settings and hit Pull latest steps again. Kai's token map needs to match the live sequence or the push will fail.

What happens next

With the campaign created and steps pulled, the next task is placing the tokens in your Lemlist sequence steps, then uploading contacts and running the pipeline. Kai will research each contact, write a personalised sequence, and queue everything for your review in Approvals before anything reaches a real inbox.

ABM and 24/7 campaigns

ABM

You enter the target company's name and website, and Kai enriches the account automatically using Firecrawl and Lemlist's company data. After enrichment, Kai surfaces contacts it found in the right roles for you to approve or reject before anything is written.

24/7

Instead of a contact list, you provide an ICP brief describing the companies and roles you want Kai to find. Kai sources new contacts on a four-hour cycle and queues them for approval. A saturation gate prevents the queue from getting ahead of your review capacity. You can pause, resume, or trigger an immediate source run from the campaign view.