Prospect Quarantine

What is quarantine?

Quarantine is a per-sequence safeguard that blocks a prospect from being added if they were recently active in any of your sequences. Use it when you want to avoid contacting the same person twice in a short period, such as when running multiple parallel campaigns or re-uploading prospect lists that may overlap with previous outreach.

When quarantine rejects a prospect, Vaam does not add them to the sequence. The block is recorded on the prospect’s activity feed so you can see why.

How quarantine works

Each sequence can independently opt in to quarantine and pick a duration in days. When the option is enabled, Vaam checks every new prospect against the prospect’s recent history:

1. You try to add a prospect to a sequence that has quarantine enabled with a duration of N days.
2. Vaam looks at all of the prospect’s sequences in any other sequence within the last N days.
3. If any are found, the prospect is rejected and the block is logged on the prospect.
4. If none are found, the prospect is added normally.

What counts as “recent activity”

A prospect is considered recently active if they have any sequences with a start date inside the quarantine window, regardless of its current status:

• ✅ Counts: active sequences
• ✅ Counts: completed sequences
• ✅ Counts: canceled sequences

We intentionally count canceled sequences too. Cancellation can happen for many reasons (replies, manual cleanup, list pruning), and the quarantine rule is meant to be easy to reason about: if a prospect has been touched recently, leave them alone.

Enabling quarantine

Quarantine is configured per sequence and is off by default.

1. Open the sequence you want to configure.
2. In the sequence options panel, find the Quarantine row.
3. Tick the checkbox to enable it.
4. Set the duration in days (defaults to 30 days on first enable).

Toggling quarantine off preserves the previously set duration, so you can re-enable it later without re-entering the value.

Choose a duration

The right duration depends on how aggressive your outreach is and how much overlap you expect between sequences:

• 2 to 4 weeks: a light cooldown, useful when running several campaigns in parallel
• 1 to 3 months: a typical “don’t contact again this quarter” setting
• 6+ months: useful for long sales cycles or for protecting key accounts

When quarantine blocks a prospect

When quarantine blocks a prospect:

• The prospect is not added to the sequence
• The bulk-add result shows a row explaining the prospect was in quarantine and naming the sequence they couldn’t be added to
• A new “Prospect quarantined” entry appears on the prospect’s activity feed, showing:
  • The sequence the prospect was blocked from
  • The sequence that caused the block
  • The quarantine duration that was applied

You’ll see this entry in the prospect details page next to the rest of the activity history, so you can audit exactly why a prospect didn’t go through.

Common scenarios

Re-upload an updated prospect list

You uploaded a list to Sequence A last month. This month you have an updated list that partially overlaps with the old one, and you want to add it to Sequence B. Enable quarantine on Sequence B with a duration that covers your campaigns. Vaam skips overlapping prospects automatically, so you only reach out to the new ones.

Run parallel campaigns

You have two sequences targeting different value propositions, and your CSV lists overlap. Enable quarantine on both sequences so that whichever sequence adds a prospect first “locks” that prospect away from the other for the duration.

Protect replied prospects

A prospect replied to one of your sequences and was completed. You do not want them showing up in next quarter’s outbound list. Quarantine catches this when the new sequence has the option enabled. The completed sequence still counts as recent activity.

Limitations

• Quarantine looks at the start date of past sequences, not the date of the last message sent. A long sequence that started 90 days ago but is still actively sending today will not block new sequences if your quarantine window is shorter than 90 days.
• Quarantine is evaluated only when the prospect is added to a sequence. It does not retroactively remove prospects that are already in multiple sequences.
• The option lives on the receiving sequence. Sequence A having quarantine enabled does not stop someone from being added to Sequence B unless Sequence B also has quarantine enabled.