Guides
How to Use Thoughtly Email Campaigns for Post-Call Follow-Up
Step-by-step guide to sending AI-written, post-call follow-up emails with Thoughtly — domain setup, Send Email automations, reply routing, and measurement.
Guides
Step-by-step guide to sending AI-written, post-call follow-up emails with Thoughtly — domain setup, Send Email automations, reply routing, and measurement.
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A voice call captures attention. Email closes the loop. When a prospect hangs up — whether they booked, hesitated, or asked for more information — the next 24 hours determine whether that conversation turns into revenue or fades into a missed opportunity.
Thoughtly Email Campaigns let your AI agents send personalized, dynamically written follow-up emails after every call. Unlike templated drip tools, each message is drafted by the same agent that just spoke with the lead, which means the email references the actual conversation — the quote they asked about, the objection they raised, the appointment they considered.
This guide walks through the full setup: verifying a sending domain, linking email addresses to agents, building an On Call Completed automation with a Send Email step, routing replies back into agent workflows, and measuring what works.
Speed and persistence win in high-consideration consumer funnels — insurance quotes, mortgage applications, elective healthcare consults, education enrollment, home services estimates. A single phone call rarely closes the deal. Leads need a written summary, a booking link, a pricing recap, or a nudge to compare options.
The problem most teams face is timing. Human reps batch their follow-up emails at the end of the day, if they send them at all. By then, the lead has moved on. Thoughtly solves this by making email a native channel inside the same agent workflowWorkflowAn automated, multi-step process — usually triggered by an event (form fill, new lead) and orchestrating one or more voice / SMS / email actions. that handles voice and SMS — so the follow-up goes out within minutes of the call ending, written in context, and routed intelligently if the lead replies.
Before you start, make sure you have:
Email domains let your workspace send and receive email through addresses connected to Thoughtly agents. Before any email goes out, you need to verify ownership of the domain you want to send from.
Navigate to Settings → Email Domains and click Add Domain. Enter the domain you want to send from (for example, yourcompany.com). Thoughtly generates the required DNS records — typically a combination of MX, CNAME, and TXT records for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment.
Add these records at your DNS provider. DNS provider tips:
DNS only — do not proxy themCustom MX for MX records; enter only the host prefix since Namecheap appends your domain automatically@ for the root domain and only the prefix for subdomainsReturn to Thoughtly and click Verify DNS. The domain status moves from Pending to Active once records propagate. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on your DNS provider's caching behavior.
Once your domain is verified, create specific email addresses and link each one to an agent. Think of each address as a channel endpoint — just like a phone number for voice or a dedicated number for SMS.
Examples:
[email protected] → inbound sales qualification agent[email protected] → scheduling agent[email protected] → support triage agentLinking an email address to an agent means two things: the agent can send email from that address, and inbound replies to that address route back into the same agent's conversation flowConversation flowThe designed path an AI agent follows through greeting, intent capture, qualification, routing, objections, fallback, and next-step confirmation. — so the lead gets a consistent, context-aware experience across channels.
Email prompts should be written for email. Do not reuse voice scripts without editing — a spoken greeting sounds wrong in a written subject line. Thoughtly agents are channel-aware, which means you can tune the agent's behavior by medium.
A good email prompt is specific about structure, tone, and intent:
Write a concise email reply that:
- Thanks the lead for their time on the call
- Includes the quote range discussed (use the call transcript for exact numbers)
- Provides a direct booking link if they want to schedule
- Signs off as the Acme Insurance team
- Keep it under 150 words. No emojis. Professional but warm.Avoid voice-shaped instructions like "Say: Hi, is this Brian?". The email channel needs full sentences, clear subjects, and a CTA the lead can act on asynchronously.
Automations are the deterministic engine that runs after your AI agent finishes a call. The On Call Completed triggerTriggerThe event or condition that starts an automated workflow, such as a new lead, missed call, CRM status change, calendar booking, or completed call. fires after every call ends and gives you access to the full call payload — transcriptTranscriptThe text record of a voice conversation, used for review, training, compliance audit, and search., variables captured, outcomes, transfer flags, voicemail detectionVoicemail detectionVoicemail detection is the ability to identify when a call reaches a voicemail greeting instead of a live person, then trigger the right message, callback, or alternate-channel follow-up., durations, and more.
To set it up:
Tools → Automations and create a new automationThoughtly → On Call Completed as the triggerSpecific Agents if you want this to run for a single agent, or All Agents for a workspace-wide post-call workflowOutput → Refresh after a test call to lock the schema and see what fields are available for mappingThe trigger output includes rich call data: durations, outcomes, variables captured during the call, action flags, transfer records, and voicemail detection. You'll use these fields to personalize the email content in the next step.
After the trigger, add a Send Email step from the Thoughtly actions library. This step sends email from a connected email channel as part of the automation.
Configure the step:
{{ trigger.variables.email }}"Your insurance quote from Acme — next steps"Use the data picker (lightning icon) to insert fields from the trigger or previous steps. For example, map {{ trigger.transcript }} into a preceding AI → Custom Prompt step to generate a summary, then pass that summary into the email body.
Not every call needs the same email. A lead who booked an appointment needs a confirmation. A lead who expressed interest but didn't commit needs a nudge with a booking link. A lead who was unreachable needs a different touch entirely.
Add a Conditions step between the trigger and the Send Email step to branch on call outcomes:
"booked" → send a confirmation email with appointment details and a calendar invite link"interested_no_booking" → send a follow-up with the pricing discussed and a direct scheduling link"objection" → send a recap addressing the specific objection with relevant resources"voicemail" → skip email and trigger an SMS follow-up insteadThis branching ensures the email content matches the conversation state. Generic blast emails get ignored; context-aware follow-up gets replies.
By default, replies to your connected email addresses are routed based on the conversation context stored in Thoughtly. When a lead replies to a post-call follow-up email, the same agent that handled the call can continue the conversation over email — maintaining full context of what was discussed.
If your team lives in Gmail, connect the Gmail integration so replies flow through both Thoughtly and your inbox. The Gmail integration lets your voice agents:
To connect Gmail, go to Integrations → Communication → Gmail and authorize the connection. Once linked, you can select your Gmail address as the sending channel in the Send Email step.
Before going live, test the complete automation in Draft mode. Draft mode lets you fire safe test events without sending real emails to real leads.
Draft statusGenerate response button in the trigger to simulate a completed call)Send Email step fired with the correct mapped fieldsLiveAfter the automation is live, every completed call for the selected agents triggers the email workflow automatically.
Voice prompts are conversational and rely on real-time back-and-forth. Email prompts need full sentences, clear structure, and a standalone CTA. Always write email-specific prompts for the email channel.
If every lead gets the same generic follow-up, reply rates collapse. Use Conditions to branch email content by call outcome so each message matches where the lead actually is in their decision process.
If your domain isn't verified, emails won't send or will land in spam. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment through the DNS records Thoughtly provides are what keep deliverability healthy. Complete the domain setup before activating any email automation.
The Send Email step needs a recipient. If your agent doesn't capture the lead's email during the call (as a variableVariableA named value the voice agent stores during a conversation — caller name, intent, qualifying answers — and uses to drive routing and post-call actions.), the automation has nothing to send to. Make sure your agent extracts email as a variable during the conversation, and map it in the automation step.
Sending the email is half the job. If a lead replies and nobody handles it, the follow-up was wasted. Link your email address to an agent so replies continue the conversation through the same AI workflow — or connect Gmail so your team can jump in manually when needed.
Once your post-call email workflow is live, track these metrics to understand whether it's driving conversion:
Use Thoughtly Analytics to view call outcomes alongside automation runs. Cross-reference email reply events in your CRMCRMThe system of record for leads, contacts, deals, and activity. Thoughtly reads from and writes to your CRM continuously. or scheduler to close the attribution loop.
Yes. Use the Conditions step in your automation to branch on call outcomes, captured variables, or disposition tags. Each branch can send a different email with content matched to the conversation — booking confirmations, objection recaps, pricing summaries, or scheduling nudges.
Both work. For branded sending from your own domain (e.g., [email protected]), verify your domain in Settings → Email Domains. For teams that prefer Gmail, connect the Gmail integration and use your existing Google Workspace addresses. The Send Email step supports either sending method.
It depends on your DNS provider. Some records verify within minutes; others may take longer because of DNS propagation and provider caching. Check the domain status in Settings → Email Domains — once it shows Active, you're ready to send.
Yes. When you link an email address to an agent, inbound replies route back into that agent's conversation flow. The agent maintains full context of the original call and can continue the conversation over email — or pivot to SMS or voice if the lead prefers a different channel.
If the email variable is empty when the automation runs, the Send Email step will fail gracefully. Add a Conditions check before the email step — if email is empty, route to an SMS follow-upSMS follow-upSMS follow-up is the use of compliant two-way text messages to continue a lead conversation after a form fill, missed call, voicemail, or prior interaction. instead. Always configure your agent to capture email as a variable during the call when post-call email is part of your workflow.