Set Up an Evergreen Cold Email Campaign

How do you set up an evergreen cold email campaign?

Create a campaign with the evergreen type so it has no end date, then leave it live. New leads join whenever you add them, by hand, from a Claude chat, or straight from your app through the API. Each one starts at step one and sends across your warmed, rotated mailboxes.

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Before you start

You need a HotHawk account and the HotHawk MCP server connected to Claude. It takes a couple of minutes and no code. Full setup is on the MCP server page.

Step by step

1

You ask Claude
Set up an evergreen campaign called Inbound Demo Requests that never turns off.

Claude calls mcp__hothawk__campaigns_create

name "Inbound Demo Requests" type EVERGREEN steps 3 steps

Claude builds an evergreen campaign. Unlike a fixed run, it has no end date and stays open to new leads for as long as you leave it live.
2

You ask Claude
Launch it, then add today's 40 new signups.

Claude calls mcp__hothawk__campaigns_activate_create

campaignId Inbound Demo Requests

The campaign goes live and the 40 leads start at step one, sending across your rotated mailboxes. Tomorrow's batch picks up from the same point.
3

You ask Claude
Every morning, drip in whoever signed up overnight.

Claude calls mcp__hothawk__crm_leads_bulk_create

leads overnight signups campaignId Inbound Demo Requests

New leads join the running campaign without you touching the copy or the schedule. Claude can do this on a standing instruction, or your app can hit the same endpoint on its own.

When a fixed campaign is the wrong shape

A normal campaign is built for a list. You load 500 leads, it works through them, it finishes. That is perfect when the list is the whole job. It is the wrong shape when leads arrive a handful at a time: trial signups, form fills, a scraper that drops ten fresh companies a day into a sheet.

Rebuilding a campaign every morning for eleven new leads is a chore nobody keeps up. So it stops happening, and the trickle goes unworked. An evergreen campaign fixes that by staying open. Build it once, leave it live, and it takes whoever you send its way.

Always-on outbound your AI can feed

Set the type to EVERGREEN at creation and the campaign loses its end date. Every new lead you add starts at step one and moves through on the same schedule as the last. The copy and the timing are already decided, so adding a lead is the only daily action left, and even that you can hand off.

Tell Claude once to drip in whoever signed up overnight and it becomes a standing job. Better still, point your product at the same endpoint and the leads add themselves the moment someone starts a trial. That is the real prize here. Your signup flow becomes the trigger, and outbound runs off it with no one in the loop until a reply comes back.

Steady beats spiky

There is a deliverability upside people miss. Forty new leads a day is a calm, even load on your domains. One campaign of 1,200 all at once is a spike, and spikes are what get noticed. An evergreen campaign spreads the same volume into a steady daily rhythm, which is closer to how real sending behaves.

The protections do not care which shape the campaign is. Your mailboxes rotate the same, warmup keeps ticking over on real Google and Microsoft inboxes, and no tracking pixel goes out whether you add 40 leads today or 1,200. So an always-on campaign is not a corner you cut on safety. It is just a campaign that never makes you rebuild it.

The HotHawk tools behind this

Every action here is a real endpoint. Claude reaches it over the MCP server, and you can hit the same endpoints directly from the REST API if you would rather build it into your own stack.

mcp__hothawk__campaigns_create Create the evergreen campaign with no end date
mcp__hothawk__campaigns_activate_create Set it live and keep it open
mcp__hothawk__crm_leads_bulk_create Drip fresh leads into the running campaign

MCP server setup Read the API docs

Frequently asked

What is an evergreen campaign?

A campaign with no end date that stays open to new leads. A normal campaign runs a fixed list and finishes. An evergreen one keeps sending as long as you feed it, which suits a steady trickle of signups, trial starts or scraped leads rather than one big list.

How do new leads get added once it is live?

Two ways, and you can use both. Add them by hand or by chat with Claude, or have your app or CRM push them straight in through the API. Either way the lead starts at step one and moves through the campaign on the schedule you set.

Does an always-on campaign hurt deliverability?

No more than any other campaign, because the same protections run underneath. Sending still rotates across your mailboxes and warmup still runs on real Google and Microsoft inboxes, with the tracking pixel off as always. Steady daily volume is often kinder on your domains than one big blast, so if anything an evergreen campaign is the gentler way to send.

Can I pause or edit it without losing the leads already in flight?

Yes. Pause the campaign and the leads mid-way through simply hold their place. Edit a later step and the change applies to anyone who has not reached it yet. It is a normal HotHawk campaign, so everything you can do to a fixed campaign you can do to this one.

Do I need to write code?

No. Adding leads through Claude over the MCP server is plain language. The REST API is there only if you want your own app to drip leads in automatically, which is where evergreen really earns its keep.

Keep going

Build an AI SDR workflow The full daily loop, run from a chat Bulk import and clean a lead list Get a messy list ready before it drips in AI cold email software The whole picture: what AI runs on inside HotHawk AI cold email Where AI meets your outbound, start here

How to set up an evergreen cold email campaign