Zoho CRM Cadences: A Step-by-Step Setup Guide

Cadences is Zoho CRM's email sequencing tool — with calls, tasks and WhatsApp steps built in. If you already have Zoho Campaigns or Zoho Marketing Automation, it's worth being clear on where Cadences fits: it's a direct outreach and follow-up tool. Marketing emails are glossy, centred and full of images. Cadence emails work best when they look like a normal email a salesperson typed in Outlook — personal, plain, and sent from the person who owns the record.

This guide walks through building a cadence that takes cold leads and warms them up until they engage, at which point a person takes over.

Before you start: limits and permissions

What you can do with Cadences depends on your Zoho CRM edition. In practice the limits are generous — on the Standard edition you can create 20 cadences per module and have 10 active per module. The one limit smaller teams are more likely to meet is the combined maximum follow-ups per cadence, which is 18 on Standard. Every branch you add counts towards it. Zoho does revise these limits, so check the current figures for your edition.

To let someone manage cadences without giving them control of all your workflows, go to Setup → Profiles, open their profile and enable the permission to enrol records into cadences. This used to be tied to full automation access; it's now separate.

Step 1: Create the cadence

1. Go to Setup and search for Cadences, then click Create Cadence.
2. Give it a name and choose the module. This matters: a cadence only works in the module you pick. You can't have one cadence that spans Leads and Contacts.
3. Under "Who is this for?" — which really means how do records get into this cadence — choose either manual enrolment or records in a custom view (automatic). Start with manual; we'll cover automatic below.

You'll land in a column-based builder, a bit like a Kanban board. Each column is a follow-up stage.

Step 2: Add the first email

Click Add Follow-up and choose Email. The other options are Task, Call and — if you've connected WhatsApp Business — WhatsApp.

• Timing: send immediately after enrolment, or add a delay. A delay of an hour or two after a web form submission makes the email feel less automated.
• Recipient: pick which email field to use (e.g. Email or Secondary Email).
• From: choose the record owner's email rather than your own. When leads are assigned to the right rep, the emails then come from that rep. The reply-to can be the record owner too, or a shared mailbox.

Make the template look like a real email

When you create the template, don't pick the "Blank" design. Even plain text in the drag-and-drop editor is sent inside a centred white column, which looks like marketing. Instead choose Insert HTML or plain text. That gives you a normal email editor with no columns or buttons — exactly what you want for personal-looking outreach.

• Type # to merge fields such as First Name or Company.
• Only merge fields you know are filled in. If a merged field is empty, the email reads with a gap. Make those fields mandatory on the layout if you rely on them.
• Save templates into a dedicated folder (e.g. "Cadence emails") and choose who it's shared with.
• AI tools are great for a first draft; edit for tone and your own language before you use it.
• Every time you edit a template, Zoho asks for a version comment. That's so the template's analytics can show open and click rates per version — useful when you're refining copy.

Step 3: Build the branches

Click the + to add follow-up 2. Its trigger is based on what happened with follow-up 1: sent, opened, clicked or replied, plus a delay.

A simple, readable pattern is to build the default path first, then add the branches underneath it:

1. Sent (the "nothing happened" path): 14 days after email 1 is sent, send email 2. "Sent" effectively means sent but not opened, clicked or replied to.
2. Opened: 3 days after email 1 is opened, send email 2 sooner — they look engaged.
3. Clicked: immediately create a task to call the lead, due in one business day (so the call doesn't feel creepy). Leave "Assign to" empty and it defaults to the record owner; tick Notify assignee. You can merge fields into the task subject too, e.g. "Call #First Name #Last Name — clicked cadence email".

Two rules to keep in mind:

• Only one action per column ever runs — whichever trigger happens first. If someone does nothing for 14 days and goes down the default path, a click on email 1 a month later won't fire the call task, because they've already left that stage.
• A "clicked" branch needs a link in the email. It sounds obvious, but without a link the click trigger can never fire.

Follow-ups after a call or task have their own triggers — for example "immediately after the call is completed", which is ideal for a "thanks for your time, here's how to book a longer meeting" email.

Newer options: negative triggers and criteria

Zoho has since added follow-ups based on what didn't happen — not opened, not clicked, not replied and opened but not replied — which are often more useful than the positive triggers. For example: seven days after email 1, if not opened, send email 2; if opened but not replied, send email 3; three days after any email that isn't opened, create a call task.

You can also add criteria to a follow-up, so it only runs if the record matches — for example, only if Priority is High, or only if a call's result was "Interested" and it lasted more than ten minutes. That lets one cadence branch by industry or by which brochure someone requested, rather than building a separate cadence for each. These features roll out by region, so check they're available in your data centre.

Treat opens with caution

Open tracking is more art than science. Apple Mail and many corporate security tools scan emails before delivery, which can register as an open. Clicks are more reliable than opens, but neither is perfect — use them to adjust timing, not as proof of interest.

Step 4: Add an unsubscribe link

In the template editor, use Insert link → Unsubscribe link. Clicking it removes the person from the cadence. Whether you're legally required to include one depends on your basis for contacting people, so take advice if you're unsure — but if someone doesn't want to hear from you, it's better to let them leave.

Step 5: Publish and test

Publish the cadence, then enrol a test lead from the Cadences related list on the record (or select several leads in the list view and use Actions → Cadences → Enrol). A temporary email service such as temp-mail.org gives you a disposable inbox for testing.

On the lead's Timeline, the Upcoming actions panel shows the next step and exactly when it will run. Open the test email and you'll see the next action move forward — from 14 days to 3 days — because the lead switched branch.

Enrol leads automatically with a custom view

Create a second cadence and choose records in a custom view. A custom view is a saved filter — for example, Lead Status is "Cold prospect", Owner is you, Country is United Kingdom. Choose to enrol records when they meet the view's criteria. You can add a delay here, but it's usually simpler to handle timing inside the sequence.

When you publish, Zoho asks whether to include records already in the view or only new ones. From then on, any record that starts matching the view — a new form submission, or a mass update that changes a field — is enrolled automatically. This is a good replacement for autoresponders: a "thanks for getting in touch" email, then a booking link a couple of days later.

Get people out: unenrolment rules

In the cadence, open the ⋯ menu and choose Unenrol properties. Useful rules:

• Any email is replied to — they've engaged, so a person should take over. You can also target a specific email.
• A field changes — e.g. Lead Status is no longer "Cold prospect".
• A task is completed.

There's also an option to end on a fixed date, but it's a hard-coded date rather than a dynamic one, so it's rarely useful.

Add WhatsApp steps

WhatsApp tends to suit B2C businesses better than B2B, but it's a strong channel for reminders. To set it up:

1. In Setup, go to Business Messaging and integrate WhatsApp. You need a WhatsApp Business account and access to your Meta business account. Sending messages uses credits, charged in addition to your CRM subscription.
2. Create templates under Functions & Actions → WhatsApp notifications. Choose the module, language and category (marketing or utility). Meta must approve every template, and approval can take a day or more.
3. Create a notification that uses the approved template and picks the phone field to send to. If your team uses Phone and Mobile interchangeably, tidy that up first.
4. Add a WhatsApp step to the cadence, e.g. immediately after a task is completed.

WhatsApp steps currently only report delivered or failed — there's no "read" trigger. A failed branch is a sensible way to fall back to email when someone isn't on WhatsApp. You can also send WhatsApp messages from ordinary workflow rules, not just cadences.

Reporting: use the funnel view

People often look for cadence reports on the lead record. The useful one is in Setup → Cadences: hover over a cadence and click View report, then Show funnel. It shows each step's outcomes — opened, bounced, delivered versus failed for WhatsApp, completed versus open for tasks — so you can see where people drop off and which emails need rewriting.

Go further with email workflows

Workflow rules have a separate Email module that triggers on incoming and outgoing emails. Combine it with Cadences to do things the cadence can't: when someone replies to a specific cadence email (match on subject), update their Lead Status, reassign them to a senior salesperson, or run a custom function. Pair a status update with your unenrolment rule and the lead leaves the cadence automatically. For a worked example, see how to re-engage cold leads with Cadences.

Other uses

Leads are the most common use, but cadences work in other modules too: re-engaging deals that have gone cold, an onboarding sequence after a deal is won, or an introduction for a new contact at an existing account.

Once a cadence is live, check the funnel regularly and refine the emails where people stop engaging. Watch the full Cadences masterclass to see every step on screen.