A custom message campaign sends the same fixed message to every prospect in the campaign, with a few details swapped in per prospect through placeholders, instead of a different AI-tailored message for each one. You can build one as either a New prospects campaign or an Existing network campaign.
For when to choose custom over trigger-based, see What is the difference between trigger-based and custom campaigns?
How to set it up
Create a campaign and choose its type: New prospects (Spear finds new people for you) or Existing network (people you're already connected to on LinkedIn).
Open the campaign's sequence:
In a New prospects campaign, the first step can be Profile actions (a warming step: view/follow the prospect) or Connection request. A Follow up message or Event invite step only becomes available once a Connection request already exists earlier in the sequence.In an Existing network campaign, there is no connection request. The first message goes straight to the person you're already connected to.
On the message step you want to fix (usually the first one), switch it from Trigger-based to Custom.
Write your message in the Message box. A connection request can be up to 275 characters, and any other message up to 1,000.
Add any follow-up steps and repeat steps 3 and 4 on each one. Follow-ups are always written by you.
Save and activate the campaign.
Placeholders you can use
Spear fills these in per prospect when the message is sent: {first_name}, {last_name}, {company_name}, {job_title}, {prospect_city}, {prospect_state}, {prospect_country}, {linkedin_industry}, {calendar_link}, {spear_profile_first_name}.
If a prospect has no value for a placeholder, it renders empty. The raw token is never sent. City, state, country and industry are often unknown, so place them where the sentence still reads if they drop out. "Fellow {linkedin_industry} folks have been asking about this" only loses one word, while "How are things in {prospect_city}?" would be left with a blank.
Pro-Tip: A fixed message and AI-tailored messaging are mutually exclusive per step. If you'd rather have Spear's AI write a unique first message per prospect based on their trigger, leave that step on Trigger-based instead. You can't combine both in the same step.