How do I send cold emails only to specific leads via CSV upload?
All cold emails in Acquisity are sent through campaigns, and campaigns require leads to be added first.
To send cold emails only to specific leads via CSV upload, you need to create a campaign and choose the CSV upload option during setup.
Open the campaigns list
In the left sidebar, click Cold Email Agent (under Marketing).
Click New Campaign
Click the New Campaign button in the top-right corner of the campaigns list page.
Name your campaign
Enter a descriptive name for your campaign (e.g., Direct | Target Accounts | US | Enterprise).
Choose Upload Your Own as the lead source
On the lead source selection screen, click Upload Your Own instead of "Acquisity Lead Database".
Upload your CSV file
Upload a CSV file containing only the specific leads you want to email. The file must:
- Be under 100 MB
- Have 20,000 rows or fewer
- Include at minimum Name, Email, and Industry values
Map your CSV columns
After upload, map your CSV columns to the system fields. Check the auto-mapping carefully: the required mappings are Name (or first/last name), Email, and Industry. Map useful extra columns as custom variables if you want to use them in the sequence.
Review values and preview the import
The import flow shows a Review values step with validation errors by column, then a Preview import step with the number of valid rows that will be imported and the number of error rows that will be skipped.
Complete the campaign setup
Continue through the remaining steps:
- Choose your email method (Podcast, Interview, AI Business Audit, or Direct)
- Review the AI-generated email sequence on the Sequences tab if the campaign remains a Draft
- Select which email accounts to send from
- Click Create Campaign, then launch the Draft only when you're ready for emails to start
The system will check for duplicates and skip any leads that are already in other campaigns. You'll see a summary showing how many leads were imported or skipped.
Important: All cold emails in Acquisity must be sent through campaigns. There is no way to send a one-off cold email outside of the campaign system. If you need to email just one person, create a CSV with that single row and follow the same process.