Changelog

Every Monday, we ship new updates and improvements to FirstQuadrant.

May 6, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's Qualification interface

Qualification

In February, we released the feature preview of a new feature called AI prospecting. Today, we're excited to announce that AI prospecting is now called Qualification, and is now available to all customers. Qualification is a new feature that uses LLMs to help you find relevant leads that match your ICP. After you select an audience using traditional filters (e.g., Founders of Series A startups in the Marketing industry headquartered in San Francisco), you can ask custom questions like "Is this company remote work-friendly?" or "Is this company funded by Y Combinator?" and your prospects will be filtered to match your criteria. You can also add custom rules for qualification based negative responses, enrichment status, work or personal emails, and more.

Fixes & improvements

  • Add support for duplicating existing campaigns.
  • Updated replies to referral emails to specifically mention previous exchange.
  • Made database queries faster by adding additional indices.
  • Redesigning "Schedule" when creating and updating campaigns to use number of emails instead of first contacts.
  • Added custom headers to all emails sent by FirstQuadrant for better tracking and debugging.
  • Fixed a bug where syncing emails from mailboxes was sometimes delayed.
  • Fixed a bug where the HTML content of a forwarded email was not correctly displayed.
  • Fixed a bug where an email was sometimes synced more than once.
  • Fixed a bug where a provided Apollo ID was not used when matching contacts in uploaded CSV audiences.
  • Fixed a bug where replies were processed before completing an email sync, causing a race condition.

April 29, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's creativity slider

Creativity slider

Our customers have been asking for a way to control the creativity of their campaigns, i.e., how much the content of the emails can deviate from the sequence template. When setting up the campaign, you can now drag a slider to adjust the creativity level from "Precise" to "Creative". The more creative the campaign, the more the content will deviate from the sequence template. You can try different creativity levels to see what works best for your message.

Additionally, we're working on a large update that adds several features to support inbound campaigns, and we have shipped some of these under feature preview. This update includes a new context panel in the right sidebar on the Qualification preview page, and support for qualification based on whether a contact is using a free email provider such as Yahoo! or Gmail. We'll share more details next week!

Fixes & improvements

  • We now show urgent notifications in the navbar to ensure that you don't miss important updates.
  • Add a new classification for incoming emails, Automated, that detects emails sent by automated systems.
  • Updated concurrency queues for faster email generation when a campaign is created.
  • Add indices for all foreign keys to make database queries faster.
  • Added missing classification label for Forwarded emails in the Todo view.
  • Allow starting campaigns while contacts are still being prospected.
  • Updated the minimum qualified-to-excluded ratio from 10% to 5%.
  • Fixed a bug where BCC was not correctly set when sending emails.
  • Migrated our underlying database to a new upstream provider for higher reliability.
  • Hide deliverability interfaces such as warming status in Settings -> Mailboxes.
  • Migrated the logic for injecting open tracking pixel to work across more email clients.
  • We now run all campaigns more frequently in the background to ensure that they are up-to-date.

April 22, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's unsubscribe settings

Unsubscribe links

In this release, we've added support for unsubscribe links in emails. When unsubscribe links are enabled and you send an email, we'll automatically add the link to the email's footer. If a contact clicks the unsubscribe link, we'll automatically unsubscribe them from the campaign. You can enable unsubscribe links for each campaign or globally in the settings. You can also customize the text of the unsubscribe link in the settings.

Additionally, we're working on a large update that adds several features to support inbound campaigns, and we have shipped some of these under feature preview. This update includes support for enrichments and data transformers in Integrate-type audiences. We'll share more details next week!

Fixes & improvements

  • Add conditional "and" between qualification rules.
  • Add notifications for exhausted campaigns in Slack Connect channels.
  • Add enriched fields support for Integrate-type audiences.
  • Add integration data transformers to modify data before creating contacts.
  • Replies no longer include jargon like "I hope this email finds you well".
  • Add support for suppressing contacts with full names or nicknames.
  • Block any existing contacts when a new suppression list is created.
  • Removed ICP settings from Audience when creating a campaign.
  • Introduce randomness when selecting contacts from an audience.
  • Update the state of "Create campaign" button when a campaign is being created.
  • Redesign "Send now" button to make it less prominent.
  • Rename Budget to Schedule when creating a campaign.
  • Rename Training to Sequence and Block to Unsubscribe in campaigns.
  • Rename Enriched fields to Enrichments and Offering fields to Context in Sequence.
  • Added X-FirstQuadrant-... headers when sending emails to better sync emails.
  • Sort actions on the Todo page by last interaction date with the contact.
  • Support adding custom maximum number of emails per mailbox per day.

April 15, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's actions page with three actions selected

Bulk actions

We're excited to ship one of our most requested features: bulk actions! In all views, you can now select multiple rows and perform actions on them in bulk. For example, you can approve multiple replies in Todo, enable multiple mailboxes in Settings, or pause multiple running campaigns in Campaigns. We hope this feature will save you time and make it easier to manage your workflows. Let us know what you think!

We're continuing to work on a large update that adds several features to support inbound campaigns, and we have shipped some of these under feature preview. This update includes support for adding custom contacts to audiences that are not available through our database of contacts, even if they use personal email addresses. We'll share more details next week!

Fixes & improvements

  • Added support for forwarding specific classifications to users.
  • We now create a note for custom data provided in integration audiences.
  • Fixed a bug where deleting a first contact message did not delete its follow-ups.
  • Fixed a bug where email headers were not correctly synced.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes there was a delay in creating actions when starting a new campaign.
  • Added support for personal email addresses in integration audiences.

April 8, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's data export page

Data export

We've added a new feature that allows you to export all your data from FirstQuadrant. You can now export all your data in CSV format, including companies, contacts, campaigns, emails, clicks, opens, identifiers, and more. Using this feature, you can easily back up your data, or use it for further analysis in other tools, for example creating custom reports in Google Sheets. To export your data, go to the Settings -> Data export.

We're continuing to work on a big update that adds several features to support inbound campaigns shortly, and we already shipped some of these under feature preview. This update includes the finalized schema for adding contacts to campaigns and a new and improved API for the same. We'll share more details next week!

Fixes & improvements

  • Optimized database queries for much faster analytics.
  • Show app version and last updated at in Help & support.
  • Add API for integrations for campaign audiences.
  • Add option for filtering 200-500 headcount companies during prospecting.
  • Fixed an error that prevented syncing email headers.
  • Fixed an error during email classification.

April 1, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's create campaign page selecting mailboxes

Campaign mailboxes

We're happy to add the ability to select specific mailboxes for each campaign. This way, you can have multiple campaigns with different sets of mailboxes, and each campaign will only send emails from one of the selected mailboxes. A good use case could be to use your primary mailbox for managing low-volume, high-intent leads while using outbound-specific mailboxes on scale.

We're working on a big update that adds several features to support inbound campaigns next week, and we already shipped some of these under feature preview. This update includes the ability to add contacts to campaigns via email forwarding, Zapier, and API. We're still finalizing the API schema, and we'll share more details next week.

Fixes & improvements

  • We now sync all email headers to FirstQuadrant.
  • Added Zapier app for adding contacts to campaigns under feature preview.
  • Added email forwarding for adding contacts to campaigns under feature preview.
  • Added API for adding contacts to campaigns under feature preview.

March 25, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's conversations view

Redesigned conversations

We're happy to launch a redesigned conversations view in FirstQuadrant. This new layout is designed to make viewing the conversation history and upcoming messages easier and more intuitive, and to make approving and sending messages more efficient. We've added a new floating action bar at the bottom that allows you to quickly approve the current action, regenerate messages, delete threads, and snooze todos. When you open a contact page, we now scroll to the most relevant message and use a dotted timeline to show you theoretically upcoming messages such as follow-ups.

Fixes & improvements

  • Add support for excluding industry when creating or updating an audience.
  • Add support for regenerating emails after updating training in a campaign.
  • Add suppression lists for company domains and names.
  • Added Qualification as a separate step in the campaign creation process if enabled in feature preview.
  • You can now edit the default qualification criteria if Qualification is enabled in feature preview.
  • When sending an email, the mailbox's name is now included in the From header.
  • Updated inbound email classification to make it more accurate.
  • Fixed a bug in the calculation of the click-to-open rate in Analytics.
  • Updated running campaigns logic to only stop generating first contacts when all mailboxes are used up.
  • Added filtering todos by campaign contact status and engagements such as opens and clicks.
  • Fix a bug where time tooltips were showing the incorrect time.
  • We no longer show engagement events in the timeline when an email is opened.
  • Removed selecting the campaign type (inbound, outbound, or nurturing) when creating a campaign.
  • Added support for renaming a campaign.
  • Fixed a bug where some links were not replaced with the tracking link in sent emails.
  • We no longer include automated replaces like out-of-office in the reply rate in Analytics.
  • You can now forward any emails from FirstQuadrant to yourself.
  • When you pause a campaign, we now show you options to unschedule emails.
  • Improved the quality of generating brand nicknames from legal company names.
  • Improved the quality of replies when links to schedule meetings are added.

March 18, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's todo view showing classifications

Filter by reply classifications

In the Actions -> Todo view, you can now view the reply classifications for each todo. You can now also filter the view by reply classification and team member, along with campaign and priority. This will help you to better manage your todos and prioritize your work, for example approving high-value replies first and turning on Autopilot for low-value replies.

Fixes & improvements

  • Add new webhook event for enrichedFieldValue.errored to be notified when we are unable to enrich a field.
  • Added support for editing existing enriched fields.
  • Fixed a bug when pressing on "Send now" would not work when an email was already scheduled.
  • Fixed a bug where "Send now" was not working when autopilot was enabled for outbound sequences.
  • Fixed a bug where BCC and forwarder addresses were not correctly working in certain cases.
  • Fixed a bug where certain analytics were incorrectly displayed.
  • Fixed a bug where filtering todos by campaigns was not working for replies.
  • Fixed a bug where follow-ups to "Maybe later" replies were incorrectly scheduled.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes links in the email body were converted to plain text.
  • Increased open tracking to 20% of all sent emails when enabled for quicker reporting.
  • Refactored filtering for headcounts from 1k to 10k into two separate ranges, 1k to 5k and 5k to 10k.
  • Support for adding additional contacts to imported CSV audiences by uploading a new file.
  • Updated interface for regenerating emails.
  • Updated scheduling to send approved emails immediately rather than after 30 minutes.
  • Updated sorting imported audience rows by most recently updated.
  • We now schedule autopilot replies immediately after creating them.
  • Add notes under feature preview.

March 11, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's mailboxes import page

Bulk import mailboxes

Last week, we shipped first-party support for additional email providers such as Yahoo!, iCloud, AOL Mail, Zoho, Fastmail, and others, and now you can bulk import mailboxes from any provider using a CSV file. We also made it easier to import mailboxes from popular providers by adding new one-click import buttons in Settings -> Mailboxes -> Connect mailboxes.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added fuzzy editing commands to editor, such as "Shorten", "Lengthen", "Rewrite", and "Fix mistakes".
  • We now autofill audience filters based on your ICP when creating a new campaign.
  • Added a new feature to suggest an ICP based on your offering details.
  • Fixed a bug where emails added to CC were not used to determine mentioned persons in forwarded or referral emails.
  • Fixed a bug with domain redirects not working properly.
  • We now send actionable reply notifications to all customers' Slack Connect channels.
  • Fixed a bug where different mailboxes may be used when sending follow-ups to the same contact.
  • Updated background scheduled to only schedule emails from enabled mailboxes.
  • All job titles and other tags are now available when creating an audience.
  • Fixed an error where the initial form state in some cases was not being set correctly.

March 4, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's mailboxes page

Additional email providers

With first-party support for additional email providers such as Yahoo!, iCloud, AOL Mail, Zoho, Fastmail, and others, you can now connect almost any email account to FirstQuadrant for sending outbound emails. Additionally, you can connect any custom mailbox using SMTP and IMAP. This will enable you to use FirstQuadrant regardless of your email provider, which was previously limited to only Google Workspace.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added a feature to send a test email from each mailbox to verify the connection.
  • Updated scheduling approved emails more frequently in the background.
  • Fixed a bug where the refresh token was not updated after reconnecting a mailbox.
  • Updated screenshot for analytics on homepage.
  • Changed paths to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages.
  • Updated interface for conversations to show which mailbox was used to send an email.
  • Updated detection for sent emails to improve accuracy.

February 26, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's AI prospecting feature

AI prospecting (preview)

AI prospecting is a new feature that uses artificial intelligence to help you find relevant leads that match your ICP. After you select an audience using traditional filters (e.g., Founders of Series A startups in the Marketing industry headquartered in San Francisco), you can ask custom questions like "Is this company remote work-friendly?" or "Is this company funded by Y Combinator?" and your prospects will be filtered to match your criteria.

AI prospecting is currently in preview; if you'd like to try them out, go to Settings -> Feature preview and enable "AI prospecting". Then, you will see new AI prospecting features when you create or edit a campaign under "Audience".

Fixes & improvements

  • Allow selecting text in preview emails during the training process.
  • Improved enriched fields performance by using multiple web search queries to find the best match.
  • Fixed an error where added domains did not correctly add DMARC records.
  • Fixed a bug where out-of-office referrals did not correctly refer to the new recipient in follow-ups.
  • Fixed a bug where sometime variables replaced in training templates included quotation marks.
  • Updated email reply parsing library for better support of different email clients.
  • Updated suppression lists to support email addresses and LinkedIn profile URLs.
  • Updated background processed to schedule generated messages more frequently to improve performance.
  • Updated the logic to mark running campaigns as "Exhausted" only after all messages are sent.
  • Updated training message previews in running campaigns to use previously prospected contacts.

February 19, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's sender reputation scores

Sender reputation scores

As part of our extensive built-in email deliverability features, FirstQuadrant uses industry-leading email warming to keep your emails out of spam and increase your sending reputation. We now show you the real-time sender reputation score to help you understand how warm each of your mailboxes is. Your reputation score is calculated by FirstQuadrant based on what percent of your emails are delivered to the inbox and how many are marked as spam, as FirstQuadrant automatically sends emails to several email addresses to monitor the delivery of these emails to the inbox.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added a new view, Replies, for viewing and managing all replies to outbound emails.
  • Added a new Settings -> Audit log view for viewing all activity of a team.
  • Improved loading state UI for generating training previews.
  • Editing existing audiences is now supported and smartly updates the audience data.
  • Fixed a bug where referred contacts sometimes considered senders themselves.
  • Automatically approve relevant all todos when autopilot is enabled for a campaign.
  • Updated email scheduling daily limits to use the sender's timezone instead of UTC.
  • The new training flow is now the default for all customers.
  • Fixed an error where campaigns were prematurely marked as exhausted after prospecting was completed.

February 12, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's forwarding settings

CRM forwarding

We've been thinking about how to make it easier for you to manage your FirstQuadrant leads in your existing CRM. As a first step, we've added the ability to forward all emails to your CRM. This is an easy way to keep your CRM up to date with the latest information about all your prospects. FirstQuadrant now lets you add BCC email addresses which are added to all outgoing emails, and forwarding addresses where all incoming emails are forwarded. You can add these addresses in Settings -> Campaigns, and you can add as many addresses as you like.

Fixes & improvements

  • Made the training process faster by prospecting more contacts in the background.
  • Added a view to check the status of each row in a CSV import.
  • Added checks to ensure that role-based emails are not reached out to in campaigns.
  • Added support for automatically marking running campaigns as "Exhaused" when no more contacts are available.
  • Renamed "Start campaign" to "Update campaign" when changing settings of a running campaign.
  • Campaigns with a reply goal no longer mark contacts as "won" when a negative, error, or out-of-office reply is received.
  • We no longer outreach referred contacts in out-of-office or forwarded replies if they are already in a campaign.
  • When a "More information requested" reply is regenerated, we now ask the mentioned questions again.
  • Fixed a bug where follow-ups sometimes addressed incorrect people when a new person was referred in an out-of-office reply.
  • Fixed a bug where you might sometimes see a message not sent from your account in a thread when multiple campaigns outreach the same contact.
  • Fixed an error where one of the bar charts in the Analytics page was not displayed correctly.

February 5, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's forwarded flow

Forwarded and out-of-office referrals

FirstQuadrant automatically handles replies for you, be it positive replies nudging the conversation towards scheduling a call, negative replies to unsubscribe leads, or answering frequently asked questions. Today, we're taking it a step further by introducing referred contacts from forwarded and out-of-office responses. When a prospect is out of office and refers to someone else, or if they mention another colleague who we should talk to, FirstQuadrant will automatically add the referred contact a new sequence and continue the conversation.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added support for parsing and displaying calendar invitatio and update emails.
  • Prospecting for a larger number of leads in a new campaign is now much faster.
  • Added an option for not generating a response when a negative reply is received.
  • Fixed a bug where multiple actions would be displayed on the "Todo" view for the same contact.
  • Fixed a bug where messages would stay under "Scheduling" for much longer than expected.
  • Added support for manually marking contacts as won, lost, or open when they are in multiple campaigns.
  • Added legal notice to the footer of the website.
  • Fixed a bug where the delay after starting a campaign and generating the first email was too long.
  • We no longer mark contacts as lost after an errored response when they previously replied to a message.
  • Updated audio on the homepage for opening and closing the waiting list form.

January 29, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's updated homepage section

Updated landing pages

Last week, we launched the new FirstQuadrant: An all-in-one AI sales platform that turns B2B sales into a fully scalable and fully autonomous system. As part of this announcement, we also updated our landing pages to reflect the new product, including a new section about holistic tooling, updated features, and an entirely new About page.

Fixes & improvements

  • Redesigned homepage sections and about page.
  • Added background music and audio interactions to all landing pages.
  • Updated mobile navigation to be more consistent with desktop navigation.
  • Updated waiting list with referrals for jumping the queue.
  • Added Request-ID header to all API responses for easier debugging and support.

January 24, 2024

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's analytics view on mobile

Introducing the new FirstQuadrant

For the past few months, we've been redesigning FirstQudrant from the ground up, and today, we're proud to announce the new FirstQuadrant: An all-in-one AI sales platform that turns B2B sales into a fully scalable and fully autonomous system.

The new FirstQuadrant encompasses a complete suite of AI tools for inbound, outbound, and nurturing sales, ensuring a unified approach to relationship management. FirstQuadrant handles everything — from sourcing leads or integrating with your CRM, enriching contacts, to converting sales. It operates autonomously yet allows for full control over the tone and content of messages; you can choose full autonomy or manually approve every message.

We're rolling out the redesigned campaign creation experience along with our new AI platform to all users over the next few days, and we'll be sharing more details about upcoming features in the coming weeks.

September 11, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's analytics view on mobile

Quality of life improvements

For the past two weeks, we've been focusing on the little things. We've added a many tiny new features and squashed some bugs, and will continue to do so in the coming weeks as we prepare for a major new feature release in October:

  • Added a new loading interface during email scheduling.
  • Added a new loading interface during the time leads are being fetched in a new audience.
  • Added more clear copy for conversations that will be marked as lost in the future.
  • Added UI placeholders for leads whose names or headlines are unknown.
  • Fixed a bug where a missing subject line would show a missing call-to-action error.
  • Fixed a bug where an autorefresh process would overwrite a user's changes when editing a message.
  • Fixed a bug where multiple responses were generated to incoming emails at certain times.
  • We've made the goal link call-to-action optional during the training process.
  • You can now see archived campaigns in the "Campaigns" view.

September 4, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's settings page

Quality of life improvements

For the next few weeks, we'll be focusing on improving the quality of life for our users by adding some small, most-requested features and squashing bugs. This week, we've made a few improvements to the AI training process, and we've also made it easier to manage your team's users.

  • Fixed a bug where using keyboard navigation for submitting forms would not be disabled during loading.
  • Fixed spacing in the context panel when not all data is available.
  • Performance improvements in standardizing company names (e.g., removing "Inc." and "LLC").
  • We no longer create goal events for conversations that are deleted.
  • We now allow you to delete the only message in a conversation thread.
  • We now delete the relevant AI training data whenever a generated message is deleted.
  • We now send a welcome email to new users who are invited to a team.
  • We now show the specific line numbers when an uploaded CSV file has errors.
  • We now unschedule any future messages after a reply is received.
  • We now use your team's timezone as fallback if a lead's timezone is unknown.

August 28, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's enriched fields feature

Enriched fields are available

A few months ago, we launched Enriched fields in preview. After a lot of feedback, testing, and optimization, we're happy to announce that Enriched fields are now available to all customers in general availability. With enriched fields, you can add custom fields that you can add for organization during campaign training or email approval that are automatically updated with information from around the web in real time. You can add up to ten enriched fields in the context panel.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added an easy way to enable and disable mailboxes in Settings
  • Added a shortcut in the context panel to add an organization to Exclude lists
  • Added a message in the brief time a message is being scheduled
  • We've added faster timezone detection using a new optimized method
  • Fixed a keyboard shortcut error was deleting messages conflicted with removing text
  • Fixed the timeline colors in dark theme
  • Fixed a bug where a random delay was added even when "Send now" was requested
  • Fixed a UI bug where there was horizontal scrolling when an email address was too long
  • Fixed a spacing UI bug in Safari on the landing page

August 21, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's LinkedIn work history feature

LinkedIn work history

With intelligent leads sourcing, FirstQuadrant finds the right leads based on your ICP and automatically adds them to your audience, showing you the most relevant information about them including a link to their LinkedIn profile. Today, we're adding their work history directly to the context panel, so you can see where they've worked and what they've done in the past, and FirstQuadrant uses this information to write more relevant messages to them.

Fixes & improvements

  • You can now create, remove, or reschedule follow-ups directly from the todo view.
  • We've added additional randomness to the timing when sending emails to make them look more natural.
  • We've switched to a new method for email open tracking, providing higher deliverability.
  • FirstQuadrant now uses a greater number of messages to learn from, which should improve the quality of the messages it writes.
  • Customers can now only sign up for the waiting list once.
  • We've switched to a new service to detect languages of web pages, which should be more accurate.
  • We've updated our authentication system to use short-lived tokens for increased security.
  • Fixed a bug where we previously didn't update available lead count after a subscription was changed.
  • Fixed a bug where the previous/next navigation was unavailable in the todo view.

August 14, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's smart scheduling feature

Smart scheduling

In the past week, we've made a ton of under-the-hood deliverability improvements to ensure your outbound emails end up in the right place. One of the biggest changes we've made is to how we schedule your emails — with smart scheduling, we'll now send your emails at the best time for each recipient and prioritize emails that are more likely to get a response. For example, we schedule emails weeks in advance for campaigns set to "Autopilot" and yet re-prioritize newly approved replies, follow-ups, and other emails that need to be sent immediately. FirstQuadrant always sends emails in the working hours of the recipient's timezone, and we'll now also take into account the warming status of your email account when scheduling emails.

Fixes & improvements

  • We now automatically disable mailboxes that have been disconnected from your email provider and prompt you to reconnect them.
  • Fixed a bug where the autogenerated response to an "information requested" reply did not have all the requested context.
  • Made improvements to the homepage, including adding customer logos.
  • We now prioritize leads already in an audience when creating new messages before finding new leads to add to that audience.
  • Fixed a bug where the same email could be sent multiple times to the same recipient.

August 7, 2023

Screenshot of filters in FirstQuadrant

Filters

We've added a humble, yet an extremely powerful new feature to FirstQuadrant: filters. You can add filters to almost all views to find exactly what you're looking for. For example, you can filter conversations by campaign, team member, or mailbox; campaign by running status; or audit log events by type. You can also filter lost conversations by reason, for example whether a prospect responded negatively, did not respond, the message bounced, or so on.

Fixes & improvements

  • We've made creating campaigns much faster after training.
  • Updated the dark theme to be darker and more consistent across the app.
  • We now show a shorter name of organizations after removing any suffixes like "Inc." or "LLC".
  • Updated the timeline copy when a follow-up is being generated.
  • Updated the back button when training a new campaign to go back to the creating step.
  • Fixed some follow-up conversations that were showing up under "First contact" in the navigation.
  • Fixed an issue where reclassifying emails was not working.
  • Fixed a bug where generated messages sometimes had a "Subject:" prefix.
  • Fixed a bug where FirstQuadrant was previously unable to create a response to very long message threads.
  • Fixed a bug where follow-ups were sometimes generated too early.
  • Removed selecting existing contacts when creating a new audience.

July 31, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's analytics feature

Analytics

Today, we're releasing our most-requested feature — Analytics. On the new Analytics page, you can see real-time data about campaign performance, the conversion funnel, and detailed metrics. You can also find an overview of the top organizations and locations where your leads are coming from.

With conversion rate, cost per click, and cost per goal, you can now see exactly how your campaign is performing. We also show you your campaigns' open rate, reply rate, clickthrough rate, click-to-open rate, bounce rate, and more, in one place. You can filter by campaign and date range and compare metrics over time. We're excited to hear what you think!

Fixes & improvements

  • We now automatically approve messages in "Todo" when autopilot is enabled.
  • We've added a new interface for notification toasts.
  • We've updated all disabled buttons to instead use notifications for error messages.
  • Updated number of messages to number of leads when creating a campaign.
  • Fixed a bug where the "Approve" button was shown even after autopilot was enabled.
  • Fixed some bugs on the homepage.

July 24, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's autopilot feature

Autopilot is available

Last month, we introduced the preview of Autopilot, a feature to truly and fully automate outbound. After you have manually approved a minimum number of messages, Autopilot will take over and send messages on your behalf by automatically approving newly generated messages. Today, we're excited to announce that Autopilot is available to all users! You can your progress towards enabling autopilot by going to the "Campaigns" page or hovering over the campaign name in the UI.

Fixes & improvements

  • We've made improvements to the dark theme color scheme in some areas of the UI.
  • We've optimized exclude lists to be more performant.
  • Redesigned dropdown UI to be more consistent across the app.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes the same lead would be added to a campaign multiple times.

July 17, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's exclude lists feature

Exclude lists

We're happy to launch a new feature to help you exclude companies from your campaigns. You can now upload a list of domains to exclude from your campaigns when creating a new Exclude list; this is very useful if you want to exclude your current customers or companies that you don't want to reach out to. When creating an audience, you can specify all or specific exclude lists to consider when finding new leads. Head to Settings -> Exclude lists to upload your first list.

Fixes & improvements

  • We now redirect you to a filtered todo view after creating a new campaign.
  • Allowed selecting and copying previous emails and other content.
  • Renamed "Lead" to "Person" and "Account" to "Organization" for consistency.

July 10, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's custom domain tracking feature

Custom domain tracking

FirstQuadrant automatically provisions custom domains and mailboxes for outbound emails. With the new custom domain tracking feature, we will now use your custom domain to track opens and clicks. This will improve your deliverability and make your analytics more accurate. We've also added UTM tracking to redirects from your custom domain to your website, so you can additionally source traffic from FirstQuadrant.

Fixes & improvements

  • Improved classification of emails in the navigation bar.
  • Improved UI of all form fields across the app.
  • Fixed a bug where the light theme was applied, disregarding system preferences.
  • Make scheduling calls the default option when creating a new campaign.
  • Fixed a bug with importing CSVs with long column values.
  • Fixed a bug where the progress to autopilot could sometimes be incorrectly displayed.
  • Fixed a bug where boolean enriched fields showed the wrong value while updating.

July 3, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's CSV metadata import feature

Import CSV metadata

Since the past few months, you can import your own leads to FirstQuadrant using CSVs. Now you can also import additional metadata for each, such as their name, company, and more. This way, you can override the metadata that we automatically find from around the web or add metadata for leads that we couldn't find any for.

Fixes & improvements

  • We've increased the maximum length of an offering description from 1,000 to 5,000 characters.
  • Fixed a bug where the option to add personalized fields was visible even if the feature preview was not enabled.
  • We've made the domain in the context panel a link for easier access.
  • We now only copy the campaign schedules to other days from the first day of the week, not all days.
  • We now make a copy of the offering name and description when creating a campaign to prevent differences when editing the offering.

June 26, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's Calendly integration

Sync with Cal.com and Calendly

We're happy to ship our integration with Cal.com and Calendly — we previously allowed you to connect your Calendly account to automatically mark conversations as "won" when a meeting was booked, but now we're taking it a step further. With this new integration, each member of your team can sync both bookings and meeting links from their Cal.com and Calendly accounts to FirstQuadrant. In "Settings" -> "Scheduling links", you can select the default scheduling link for each team member. As always, you can also override the default scheduling link when creating a campaign.

Fixes & improvements

  • You can now select which personalized fields to use for team members and offerings when creating a campaign.
  • Fixed a bug where single new lines in email body were converted to paragraphs.
  • Added tooltips to all places where we show relative time (e.g., 2 days ago).
  • Under the hood, FirstQuadrant now includes built-in spam testing for each mailbox.

June 19, 2023

Screenshot of a verified email address

Email deliverability checks

When you create an audience in FirstQuadrant, we find information about relevant leads for you, including their email addresses. These email addresses can sometimes be invalid or undeliverable, which can cause your emails to bounce. To help you avoid this, we've added additional and deliverability checks before adding a lead to any audience. Our improved system now includes checks for typos, spam traps, disposable email addresses, "catch all" domains, abuse complaints, and more, so you can be confident that your emails will be delivered to the right people.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added the most recent changelog updates within the "Help and support" menu in the app.
  • You can now save the campaign without starting it during the training step.
  • You can now discard campaigns from the training step.
  • Improved how we find avatars for leads from multiple sources.
  • Fixed a bug where you could select the existing classification when regenerating an email.
  • We now disable editing a training email when a campaign is being saved.
  • Fixed a bug where the generated subject line would sometimes include a prefix.
  • Fixed a UI bug where there was too much space between a company and its details in the context panel when enriched fields were enabled but no fields were configured.

June 12, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's autopilot feature

Autopilot (preview)

Today, we're launching Autopilot to truly and fully automate outbound. After you have manually approved a minimum number of messages, Autopilot will take over and send messages on your behalf by automatically approving newly generated messages. You can your progress towards enabling autopilot on the Campaigns page and enable it when you're ready!

Autopilot is currently in preview; if you'd like to try them out, go to Settings -> Feature preview and enable "Autopilot". Then, you will see the setting to enable Autopilot after clicking on a campaign when the AI is fully trained for each category of messages.

Fixes & improvements

  • Launched a new and improved interface for modifying campaign settings after a campaign has been created.
  • Added support for selecting the sending window for each day of the week when scheduling a campaign.
  • We've improved our detection of automated incoming replies, such as for bounced emails.
  • You can now manually generate responses to incoming replies when FirstQuadrant is unable to classify them.
  • Updated the app to only allow selecting and copying relevant text instead of UI elements.
  • Fixed a UI issue where the layout of the context panel scrolled when the main view had scrollable content.
  • Fixed a bug where generating a new lead during training would sometimes result in selecting a previous lead.

June 5, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's draft campaigns feature

Draft campaigns

We're excited to ship one of our most requested features: Draft campaigns. As soon as you start creating a campaign, it will automatically be saved as a draft, and each change will be saved as you go along. The "Create new campaign" button will be switched to "Edit draft campaign" so you can pick up where you left off, and finalize your campaign when you're ready.

Fixes & improvements

  • You can now select the campaign schedule with different hours for each day.
  • Redesigned the campaign creation flow with summaries for each step.
  • You can now view and edit the offering details when creating a campaign.
  • You can now create and update personalized fields for team members and offerings in Settings.
  • We've added instant deletes using optimistic UI to all views, so the app should feel a lot snappier.
  • Fixed a bug where you were unable to delete existing personalized fields for team members.
  • Fixed a bug where select "New audience" when creating a campaign would not work.

May 29, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's personalized fields feature

Personalized fields (preview)

To further improve email personalization, we're introducing personalized fields. Personalized fields allow you to add a personal touch to your emails by supplying additional context about each user or the offering in your campaign. This information is then used when generating emails, for example mentioning the fact that the user went to the same university as the recipient, that they previously worked at the same company, or that they're both members of the same community. For offerings, it could be for example relevant case studies.

You can add personalized fields when creating a campaign by clicking the "Add field" button after selecting team members or offerings. You can then name the field you want to add, and add info information you want to include. You can add as many personalized fields as you want, and FirstQuadrant will smartly use any relevant information in emails.

Personalized fields are currently in preview; if you'd like to try them out, go to Settings -> Feature preview and enable "Personalized fields".

Fixes & improvements

  • You can now edit and update the offering when creating a campaign.
  • Added a "notification dot" badge for new values of enriched fields.
  • Improved UI of reclassifying received emails to generate replies.
  • Added a new system for avatars which finds images for leads using several services like LinkedIn, Gravatar, and more.
  • Improved copy for actions in all confirmation alerts and dialogs.
  • Added additional checks to ensure audiences are not empty when creating campaigns.

May 22, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's enriched fields feature

Enriched fields (preview)

We're excited to announce the preview of enriched fields. Enriched fields are custom fields that you can add for accounts during campaign training or email approval that are automatically updated with information from around the web in real time. For example, you can add a custom field for "Profitable" and FirstQuadrant will automatically update that field with a "Yes" or "No" based on the latest information from their website, investor earnings reports, podcast interviews, web search results, news articles, and other sources. You can have enrichments for text, numbers, booleans, and select fields, with up to 10 enrichments per account in a campaign.

Enriched fields are currently in preview; if you'd like to try them out, go to Settings -> Feature preview and enable "Enriched fields".

Feature preview

If you're interested in getting a sneak peek at what's coming down the pipeline, you'll be pleased to know that we've made it possible for you to access upcoming features before they're officially released to everyone. To enable this early access, simply navigate to the Settings menu and select the Feature Preview option. From there, you'll be able to get a glimpse of what's in store and start exploring the latest developments. This is a great way to stay ahead of the curve and get a head start on using new features before they become widely available.

Fixes & improvements

  • You can now edit to overwrite the lead's name and headline, and the account's name and description.
  • We now show you your goal link in sent emails so you can easily verify that the link is correct.
  • Fixed an error where some out-of-office emails with a third-person mentioned would parse the sender's email signature.
  • We now train a campaign using one of the campaign creator's mailboxes, if available.
  • Fixed an error where manually added leads to an audience do not include a website summary.
  • We now automatically archive your Slack Connect channel when you delete your team.
  • Fixed a big where leads with role-based email addresses were added to audiences.

May 15, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's training step

Single training step

We've made it much easier to create a new campaign by eliminating the email revision steps. Now, you can start a campaign in a single step by providing a training email and FirstQuadrant will understand the structure and messaging of your email and create a campaign for you. We're also working on additional ways to make it easier to create and edit campaigns, so stay tuned!

Fixes & improvements

  • We've added confirmation dialogs to all destructive actions, such as deleting a campaign.
  • Fixed a bug in tracking consequent opens and clicks in sent messages.
  • UI improvements to modals and buttons.
  • We now take both the job title and LinkedIn headline into consideration when generating messages.
  • We've updated the default scheduling time from 9 am to 5 pm to 8 am to 7 pm to increase the sending window.
  • Added link to FirstQuadrant Docs when selecting a custom goal in the campaign creation flow.
  • Added "Feature preview" to the settings page to allow teams to opt-in to upcoming features.

May 8, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's setting to select a goal link for each team member

Goal link per team member

You can now set a goal link for each team member, for example their own Calendly scheduling link, instead of using the same call-to-action throughout the campaign. You can configure the link for each team member by going to "Settings" -> "Scheduling links", which can be overwritten per campaign.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added full support for self-serve email warming by adding an App password.
  • Added Changelog to view new updates and improvements to FirstQuadrant.
  • For customers using Slack Connect, we now show a direct link to the Slack channel under "Help and support".
  • We've improved the click tracking accuracy by using a client-side redirect rather than a server-side one.
  • We now standardize company names by removing suffixes like "...LLC" and "...Real Estate Inc." when generating emails.
  • Fixed an error in the layout of incoming emails if they had a long paragraph in quotes.
  • Fixed a bug where existing emails were not unscheduled when archiving a campaign.
  • We now directly use an existing audience when connected if it's not used in another audience.
  • Improved interface of the "Goal" section of the campaign creation flow.

May 1, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's create new campaign page in dark mode

Dark theme (beta)

Today, we're launching FirstQuadrant in dark! This is a feature that's very helpful when burning the midnight oil, and we're excited to finally make it available. By default, we'll use your system theme, but you can also choose to always use the dark or light theme by going to "Settings" -> "Preferences" and selecting your preferred theme.

Select team members per campaign

You can now select which team members a campaign will be sent out as, and we'll only use the mailboxes connected to those team members when creating conversations. This is useful if you want to limit access to a campaign to a subset of your team or if each of your team members wants to set up their own campaign.

Mark conversations as lost after a delay when a sequence completes

We no longer mark conversations as lost immediately when a sequence completes. Instead, we'll wait for a delay, defaulting to one week, before marking the conversation as lost; this is useful if you want to give your prospects a chance to respond to your last message before marking the conversation as lost, and you can configure this by heading to "Settings" under "Mark conversations as lost".

Fixes & improvements

  • Added a setting to determine frequency of automated follow-ups for unresponded replies.
  • Fixed a bug where out-of-office emails with missing names after person enrichment.
  • We now only schedule a certain number of emails per week per mailbox, and postpone the rest to the next week.
  • Fixed a bug where editing a campaign's weekly budget would not work.
  • We now show a warming message when the goal link is missing in a first-contact message.
  • Added name truncation in the navbar.
  • Improved the UI of dialogs across the app.
  • We now allow you to connect a preexisting audience to a new campaign.
  • We automatically create new messages if you delete or snooze a message.
  • Moved account settings with team settings in a single view.

April 24, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's import CSV audiences page

Import CSV audiences

You can always find new leads within FirstQuadrant, but sometimes you want to import your own leads. You can now do this by uploading a CSV file with your leads. You can find this feature while creating a new campaign or by going to "Audiences" -> "New audience" -> "Import CSV".

Fixes & improvements

  • Added FirstQuadrant Docs to share developer and usage documentation.
  • Renamed additional "steps" to "follow-ups" in campaigns.
  • Added a clear "Audience size" indicator when creating a new campaign.
  • We now only include fully-enriched leads in audiences.

April 17, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's API key settings

Custom API goals

With the FirstQuadrant API, you can mark conversations as won and perform other tasks programmatically. This is useful if you want to integrate with your CRM or other systems. Create an API key by heading to "Settings" -> "Apps" and enabling the FirstQuadrant API.

Fixes & improvements

  • Faster campaign creation by prioritizing training leads in created audiences.
  • Added additional checks to know whether an account's website is down.
  • Added a fallback scraping service if the primary is unavailable.
  • Rename "Duplicate audience" call-to-action to "Create audience"

April 10, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's follow up settings

Follow-ups for unresponded replies

FirstQuadrant now automatically creates follow-ups when recipients do not respond to your reply. You can configure this by going to "Settings" under "Reply follow-ups". You can select from "Linear", "Fibonacci", or "Exponential" strategies and configure the number of follow-ups to send and how many days to wait after sending the reply.

Fixes & improvements

  • Improved interface for answering questions when recipients request more information.
  • We no longer show copies of audiences on the "Audiences" page.
  • Fixed a bug where follow-ups were generated for "Lost" leads in certain cases.
  • Updated email integration to sync all emails in real time.
  • Improvements to the color scheme of disabled buttons.

April 3, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's create new campaign page

New interface for creating campaigns

Today, we're shipping a brand-new, well-structured interface for creating campaigns. We now open each step of the campaign creation process in a popup, which makes it easier to navigate between steps and to understand the flow of the campaign, and show you helpful hints when a step is incomplete.

Fixes & improvements

  • Allow users to overwrite reply classification and regenerate messages.
  • Added a status page to monitor the health of our services.
  • We now require a subject before continuing to the next training when creating a campaign.
  • Added checks for bounced emails.
  • Added domain verifications.

March 27, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's setting to mark a conversation as lost or won

Manually mark conversations as won or lost

Although FirstQuadrant automatically marks conversations as "Won" when they meet your goal criteria, such as scheduling a meeting using your Calendly link, you can now manually mark conversations as "Won" or "Lost" from the conversation page by clicking on the "More" icon next to a lead's name and selecting "Mark as won" or "Mark as lost".

Fixes & improvements

  • We now show the local time of the lead in the conversation page.
  • Added ability to edit follow-up interval after creating it.
  • We now continue to generate messages for other campaigns when one campaign has reached its todo limit.
  • Added an option to delete an entire conversation, not only individual messages.
  • The conversations page now scrolls to the bottom when loaded.
  • Fixed a bug where responses to out-of-office message were generated immediately instead of after the out-of-office period.

March 20, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's Calendly integration

Calendly integration

We now sync created events in Calendly to FirstQuadrant and automatically mark conversations as "Won" when a meeting is booked. You can connect your Calendly account by going to "Settings" -> "Apps" and clicking "Install" on the Calendly card.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added support for inviting team members to your account.
  • We now link each mailbox to a team member.
  • We now stop generating new conversations for campaigns that already have scheduled messages for one month in the future.
  • Added automated responses when customers request more information.
  • Fixed a bug where an incorrect label for "From" was shown for forwarded messages.
  • Improvements to identifying ongoing conversations when a new reply is received.

March 13, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's automated responses feature

Automated responses

In a big update, we've added automated responses to FirstQuadrant. Now, when a lead replies to your email, FirstQuadrant will automatically generate responses to them, which you can approve and send. This works across many types of responses, such as positive, negative, out-of-office, when leads request more information, etc.

Fixes & improvements

  • You can now create a new audience or offering when creating a campaign without having to leave the page.
  • We no longer generate descriptions for websites that are not in English.
  • We now queue up emails to be sent in the background, so you can continue using FirstQuadrant while emails are being sent.
  • Fixed a bug where quoted text was not being removed from emails.
  • Added relative time to all messages.

March 6, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's setting to reopen lost conversations on reply

Reopen lost conversations on reply

We now reopen conversations that were marked as lost when a reply is received. This is useful if you have a long sales cycle and a lead replies, for example, after a few weeks. You'll see this conversation at the top of your "Todo" list with the reply.

Fixes & improvements

  • We now preload the next and previous message in the conversation view to make it faster to navigate between messages.
  • We now show up to 25 items in a view with an option to load more.
  • We've made the entire app experience much faster by preventing full-page reloads.

February 27, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's email tracking feature

Email tracking

We've added click and open tracking to outbound messages, so you can now see when a message has been opened and when a link has been clicked. This is a great way to see how your campaigns are performing and to get a better understanding of your audience.

Fixes & improvements

  • We now sync the Gmail account for each connected mailbox.
  • Fixed a bug to prevent the same account from being connected multiple times.
  • Add support for custom URLs as goal links when creating campaigns.
  • Added HTML sanitization to prevent XSS attacks in received messages.

February 20, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's snooze messages feature

Snooze messages

If you don't want to deal with a particular message immediately, you can now snooze a message to receive a reminder later, or view it on the "Snoozed" view.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added "History" so when you make changes to a message, you can also view the past versions of a message and restore them.
  • Added "Audit log" to view all events that have happened in your account.

February 13, 2023

Screenshot of FirstQuadrant's website summary feature

Website summaries

We've added comprehensive descriptions of each account, which we generate by visiting, analyzing, and summarizing the content of their website. This is very helpful to write a good pitch and to understand the account better, and is used by our AI to generate outbound messages.

Fixes & improvements

  • Added support for connecting domains and mailboxes.
  • Added support for teams so multiple people can work on the same account.
  • Added enrichment for leads and accounts.
  • We now resize all textareas to fit their content