A cadence is a sequenced set of follow-up touches against a lead over time. For example: a call, then a text two days later, then a voicemail drop if neither connects. Cadences layer on top of a campaign. They’re for chasing outstanding documents, re-engaging a caller who went quiet, or working a lead over several days rather than in a single dialing pass.
Cadences are enabled per workspace. If your workspace doesn’t have them enabled, the Cadences page will tell you so. Talk to your account team about turning them on.
Building a cadence
Cadences are built on the Cadences page as a ladder of steps, each one a channel and a wait before the step fires.
- Channel. Call, SMS, voicemail, or email. A voicemail step pins a specific script from your voicemail message library; an SMS or email step carries its own message body.
- Wait. How long after the previous step, or after enrollment for the first step, this step fires, set in minutes, hours, days, or weeks.
- Repeat. A step can repeat a set number of times at a fixed spacing, and can be conditioned to only run after a streak of no-answers.
A cadence stays a draft until you publish it. Publishing validates the whole ladder before it can start running against real leads. If you’d rather describe the sequence in plain English, the “Draft with AI” panel turns an instruction into a starting ladder for you to review. It never publishes on its own, so nothing goes live until you confirm it.
Quiet hours
Every call and SMS step a cadence fires is checked against quiet hours before it goes out, using the lead’s own local time, not the campaign’s. Email steps are exempt from quiet hours. When a regulated-channel step lands outside the calling window, it isn’t skipped or dropped. It’s held and retried at the next permissible window for that lead.
Opt-out and DNC handling
Before any touch fires, Compensable checks the lead against every suppression source: a prior opt-out, a DNC flag, and the lead’s own lifecycle status. By default, a retained or DNC lead is never re-touched. A STOP reply, a DNC registration, or an opt-out recorded anywhere in the platform stops every future touch in every active cadence for that lead, not just the channel the opt-out came in on.
A cadence also stops on its own when the lead reaches a terminal outcome elsewhere. If a call qualifies the lead or a retainer goes out, the lead doesn’t keep getting chased once it’s done.
Per-lead pacing
Cadences enforce frequency caps per lead: a rolling limit on touches per channel, and a cross-channel limit, within a configured window. These caps exist alongside quiet hours and opt-out checks, so a lead can’t be over-contacted even if every individual touch would otherwise be allowed.
Enrollment lifecycle
A lead’s participation in a cadence is its enrollment. You can pause an enrollment (it stays enrolled but nothing fires until you resume it), resume it, or cancel it outright. Cancelling is terminal for that enrollment. The lead can be re-enrolled separately if needed.
See Compliance overview for how quiet hours and frequency caps can be adjusted, and by whom. 
