S
SimuWave
Help Center
User Guide·Reference

Outbound Campaigns

What campaigns do

A campaign is an automated outbound dialer. Upload a list of phone numbers, configure what plays when the call is answered, and the platform dials through the list at your specified pace.

Common uses:

  • Appointment reminders
  • Voter outreach
  • Customer satisfaction surveys
  • Sales prospecting (with disclaimers — see below)
  • Emergency notifications

Auto-dialed calls are heavily regulated in the US. Two laws to know:

  • TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) — prohibits calling cell phones with auto-dialed marketing without prior express written consent
  • TSR (Telemarketing Sales Rule) — National Do Not Call (DNC) list compliance, calling time restrictions, identification requirements

Penalties: $500-$1,500 per violation per call. A 1,000-number list called illegally could cost $500,000-$1.5 million.

Use this feature only if:

  • You have prior express written consent from every recipient (for marketing/sales)
  • You're calling for legally exempt purposes (transactional, informational, political, charitable, etc.)
  • You've scrubbed your list against the federal DNC registry
  • You're calling within legal hours (8am-9pm in the recipient's time zone)
  • Your caller ID is set to a real, identifiable number

Talk to a lawyer before running marketing campaigns. This isn't optional.

Where campaigns live

Top nav → Campaigns. Sub-views:

  • Campaigns — list of campaigns
  • Contacts — saved contacts and groups
  • DNC — your private do-not-call list

Creating a campaign

Click New Campaign.

General

  • Name — what this campaign is
  • Channel Type — Voice or SMS (we'll focus on voice; SMS is similar)
  • Caller ID DID — which of your numbers shows on caller ID
  • Max Attempts — how many times to call a contact before giving up
  • Max Concurrent — how many calls running at once (impacts your bandwidth and how fast the campaign finishes)

Schedule (optional)

  • Run Now or Scheduled Start Time
  • Schedule Windows — only run during specific hours (e.g., 9am-12pm Mon-Fri). Recommended for compliance.
  • Time Zone — important for compliance; recipients in different zones get called within their local hours

Contacts

  • Contact Group(s) — select which groups to include. Combine multiple groups for larger campaigns.

Media

  • Audio prompts — what plays when a call is answered. Pick from Media Library. Multiple files play in sequence.
  • Survey — optional, capture caller responses

Call settings

  • Allow recalling — re-dial contacts who didn't answer
  • Skip recently answered — don't call contacts who've been called recently
  • Retry delay — minutes between attempts to the same contact

SMS (if SMS campaign)

  • Template — text message to send (with merge fields like {{first_name}})

Click Save.

Activating a campaign

Save the campaign as a draft, then click Start when ready. Status flips:

  • IDLE — created but not started
  • SCHEDULED — waiting for scheduled start time
  • RUNNING — actively dialing
  • PAUSED — manually paused; can resume
  • COMPLETED — finished (all contacts attempted up to max attempts)

Click Pause at any time to stop dialing immediately. Calls in progress finish; new ones don't start.

Monitoring a campaign

Click the campaign to open its detail view. The Live Monitor tab shows:

  • Calls queued
  • Calls in progress
  • Calls completed (answered)
  • Calls failed (busy/no-answer/declined)
  • Average call duration
  • Live updating

For longer campaigns, check the monitor periodically. Pause if you see weird patterns (every call failing, suspiciously fast completion, etc.).

Contact groups

Groups organize contacts. Create groups by purpose (e.g., "Newsletter Subscribers Q1", "Existing Customers", "Recent Prospects").

Importing contacts

Click Contacts → New Contact Group, name the group.

Then click Import. Upload a CSV with these columns:

  • phone (required)
  • first_name
  • last_name
  • email
  • company
  • notes

The platform deduplicates against existing contacts in the group (by phone number). Imports are typically 100-1000 rows per second; large lists (50k+) may take a minute.

Manually adding contacts

Click New Contact in a group. Fill the form. Save.

Removing contacts

Select with checkboxes, click Remove (from group, doesn't delete the contact entirely).

DNC (Do Not Call) list

Your private DNC list. Contacts on this list are excluded from every campaign you run.

Adding to DNC

  • Manually — Contacts → DNC → click Add → enter phone number + reason
  • CSV import — upload a CSV of phone numbers

Why use it

If a recipient asks "stop calling me," add them to your DNC immediately. TCPA requires honoring opt-out requests. Failure = fines.

Federal DNC

Beyond your private DNC, you should also subscribe to the federal DNC and scrub your lists against it. This isn't built into the platform — use a third-party scrubber (DNC.com, contactability.com, etc.) before importing contacts.

Survey campaigns

For voter outreach or customer satisfaction surveys, use the Survey feature:

  1. In the campaign's Media tab, add a Survey node
  2. Configure questions ("Press 1 for yes, 2 for no")
  3. Responses are recorded with each contact's call log

Review responses in the campaign's Results tab after completion.

Best practices for compliance

  • Pre-call consent: only auto-dial people who've explicitly opted in
  • Scrub against federal DNC before every campaign
  • Honor opt-outs immediately — add to your private DNC the moment someone asks
  • Identify yourself in the first 30 seconds of every call
  • Respect calling hours — 8am-9pm in the recipient's time zone
  • Provide opt-out — every call should give a clear way to be removed (key press, callback, etc.)
  • Keep records — when consent was obtained, when calls happened, when opt-outs were processed

Common pitfalls

  • Forgot to set caller ID — your campaign calls show no caller ID, recipients don't pick up, campaign fails
  • Set max concurrent too high — your service provider's carrier rate-limits you, campaign stalls
  • Wrong time zone — calls go out at 6am local time. Complaints flow in.
  • Reusing an old contact list — old lists drift; numbers change owners. You're calling people who never opted in. Re-validate periodically.
  • Not scrubbing DNC — fines.

When NOT to use campaigns

  • Cold outbound sales to unverified consumer cell numbers
  • Anything you wouldn't be comfortable defending in court

When in doubt, talk to a lawyer first.

← Previous
Fax
Next →
Users & Roles