# Your first month with Victoria AI

A week-by-week routine for your first month with Victoria AI, from setup and daily replies to weekly analytics, A/B decisions and lead refills.

Victoria AI does the sending, the follow-up and the first conversation. Your part is a few minutes a day on replies and a short weekly check of the numbers. This is the routine we recommend for the first month.

## Before your first campaign sends

Set these up once, before you activate:

- **Your LinkedIn profile**: a clear headshot and a short headline about who you help. See [Optimize your LinkedIn profile](https://docs.versionseven.ai/playbook/linkedin-profile).
- **Your mailboxes**: on a dedicated sending domain, warmed up with a warm-up service, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC passing. See [Sending mailbox best practices](https://docs.versionseven.ai/help/sending-mailbox-best-practices).
- **Your first campaign**: built with the Copilot or from a template, with a blank connection request and give-first messages. See [Set up Victoria AI with the Copilot](https://docs.versionseven.ai/help/set-up-with-the-copilot).
- **The Appointment Setter**: a goal with a working booking link, your knowledge base, your own hand-off triggers and a **Notification email** someone watches. Use **Test it** to try it on a few pretend prospects first. See [Configuring the Appointment Setter](https://docs.versionseven.ai/playbook/appointment-setter-configuration).
- **A list sized to your senders**: two to three weeks of first touches. See [Size a campaign](https://docs.versionseven.ai/playbook/size-a-campaign).

## Daily habit: answer replies in the Inbox

Once a day, open the **Inbox**, or start from the **Dashboard**, whose attention panel links to positive replies waiting for you and conversations handed to you.

- Answer every conversation marked **Needs you** the same day. These are the ones the Appointment Setter handed to you, with the reason in a banner.
- Read the positive replies the agent is handling, and take over when you'd rather answer yourself.
- On a hard no, leave a polite break-up and move on. See [Objections and hard no's](https://docs.versionseven.ai/playbook/objections-and-hard-nos).
- When a prospect tells you they booked, select **Mark meeting booked**.

Also check **Notifications** for a disconnected sender or a payment problem. A disconnected sender stops its leads until you reconnect it. See [Reconnect a sender](https://docs.versionseven.ai/help/reconnect-a-sender).

## Week 1: let the senders ramp

Expect low volume in the first week. Every new sender ramps up over 14 days, starting at 5 LinkedIn requests or messages and 5 emails a day. That's on purpose; don't skip the ramp.

- Check that **Contacted** is growing on the campaign's **Analytics** tab. If it isn't, see [Leads aren't moving](https://docs.versionseven.ai/help/troubleshooting-leads-not-moving).
- Check each mailbox's DNS chip on **Sender Accounts** reads **DNS ok**.
- Don't judge reply rates yet. There isn't enough data.

## Week 2: check acceptance and sender health

- **Accept rate** is the first number with enough data to read. If it's low, fix the LinkedIn profile before anything else.
- On **Sender Accounts**, check every sender is **Active**, how far through the ramp each one is, and that no domain has slipped to **DNS failing**.
- If the sequence uses AI Personalization fields, open **Preview** on a step and check a few results. Add a fallback to any field that comes back **Generic** or held.
- Look at **Not yet contacted**. If the backlog will run out within a week, add leads.

## Week 3: read the analytics by bottleneck

By now most campaigns have about 100 contacted leads. Once a week, open each campaign's **Analytics** tab and find the bottleneck: the first stage that's below its benchmark, in the order acceptance, replies, positive replies, meetings. Fix that stage and nothing else.

- [Outbound benchmarks](https://docs.versionseven.ai/playbook/benchmarks) has the ranges.
- [Diagnose a campaign by its bottleneck](https://docs.versionseven.ai/playbook/diagnose-a-campaign) has the checklist.

If the copy is the bottleneck, test the fix as Variation B with [A/B testing](https://docs.versionseven.ai/help/ab-testing) rather than replacing what's running.

## Week 4: make A/B decisions and plan the next month

- **A/B tests**: read the **A/B verdict** card. Act only on **A wins** or **B wins**, once each arm has at least 50 contacted leads, and ideally 100 or more. **Leaning** means keep it running. To promote the winner, ask the Copilot.
- **Refill**: top up each campaign so it has at least a week or two of backlog.
- **Capacity**: if a campaign is working and you want more of it, add senders rather than raising limits.
- **Trial**: if you're on the free trial, check its progress in **Credits & Billing → Plan**. See [Free trial](https://docs.versionseven.ai/help/free-trial).

## The weekly campaign review

Every Monday, Victoria reviews each active campaign that has had activity in the last 14 days, the way the bottleneck checklist does, and proposes up to three changes per campaign, such as a copy rewrite, a Variation B to test, promoting an A/B winner, a lead top-up, or a fix to a personalization field. Nothing changes until someone approves it.

- You get a notification, and the workspace owner gets an email, when a review is ready. Open it from either, or from **Reviews** in the Copilot's history.
- Each proposal is a card in the Copilot with the evidence, what changes and any credit cost. Approve or skip each one.
- Senders that need reconnecting and domains failing their DNS check are listed as findings, with the fix, for you to do.
- The review spends up to 10 credits per active campaign each week, and runs only while your balance is above 50 credits.

Owners and admins can turn it on or off in **Settings → Weekly campaign review**. Make reading it part of your Monday.

## The routine at a glance

- **Daily**: the **Inbox**, starting with **Needs you**; **Notifications** for disconnected senders.
- **Weekly**: the weekly campaign review; each campaign's bottleneck on **Analytics**; sender health and DNS on **Sender Accounts**; refill any campaign with less than a week or two of backlog.
- **When an A/B test reaches its floor**: decide, promote, and start the next test.