Learning Objective
By the end of this guide, you'll know how to enable the "pause leads from same company" feature, understand when it triggers, and use it to create smarter, more focused outreach that avoids redundant messaging within organizations.
Why This Matters
When one person from a company engages with your campaign, continuing to email their colleagues wastes resources and risks damaging your reputation. This feature automatically pauses the campaign for other leads from the same company once engagement happens, allowing you to:
Focus on engaged conversations instead of sending redundant emails to the same organization
Save email credits and sending capacity by stopping unnecessary outreach
Protect your sender reputation by avoiding the appearance of spam or mass blasting
Enable account-based coordination so your team can strategize around the engaged contact
This is especially powerful for B2B outreach where multiple people from the same company might be in your campaign, but you only need one conversation to move forward.
Prerequisites
Before enabling this feature, make sure:
Company names are consistent across your leads. The feature only works when leads from the same company have the exact same value in the Company Name field (e.g., "Acme Corp" won't match "Acme Corporation")
You've defined engagement triggers in your campaign settings (what actions count as "engagement"—reply, click, meeting booked, etc.)
You understand your outreach strategy and when it makes sense to pause other leads
How the Feature Works
When enabled, lemlist monitors lead engagement based on your selected triggers. Once a lead from a specific company takes an engagement action (like replying to an email), lemlist automatically:
Continues the campaign for the engaged lead
Pauses the campaign for all other leads from the same company
Logs the pause action in those leads' activity history
You'll see in the activity log that the lead was paused "because [Lead Name] from the same company engaged."
💡 Key requirement: Leads must have the exact same Company Name value. If one lead has "Microsoft" and another has "Microsoft Corp," they won't be treated as the same company.
Core Lesson: Step-by-Step Workflow
Phase 1: Access Campaign Settings
Step 1: Open your campaign
Go to Campaigns, then select the campaign where you want to enable this feature.
Step 2: Open campaign settings
Click the gear icon (⚙️) to access campaign settings.
Phase 2: Configure Engagement Triggers
Step 3: Set your engagement triggers and enable the company-wide pause
In campaign settings, define what counts as "engagement" under Stop the campaign for people that, then enable Also pause people from the same company.
Select which actions should trigger the pause:
Reply – Lead replies by email, LinkedIn message, or WhatsApp
Meeting booked – Lead schedules a meeting via your calendar link
Click on link – Lead clicks a link in your message
💡 Most common setup: Use Reply as the trigger. This ensures the campaign pauses when someone from the company shows real interest by responding.
Then turn on Also pause people from the same company to apply the pause automatically to other leads at that company.
Step 4: Save your settings
Click Save at the bottom of the settings panel.
The feature is now active. From this point forward, when any lead from a company engages based on your triggers, all other leads from that company will be paused automatically.
What Happens When a Lead Engages
Example scenario:
Your campaign includes two leads from "Acme Corp":
Ariana (Marketing Director)
Carlos (VP of Sales)
Day 1: Both receive your first email
Day 3: Ariana replies asking for more information
What lemlist does automatically:
Ariana's campaign continues (she's engaged, so you keep nurturing this conversation)
Carlos's campaign is paused (no need to keep emailing him since someone from Acme Corp already responded)
Carlos's activity log shows: "Campaign paused because Ariana from the same company engaged"
Practical Application / Real-Life Examples
Example 1: SaaS Sales Team
A B2B SaaS company targets marketing teams at mid-size companies. They typically add 3-5 people per company to their campaigns (CMO, Marketing Director, Demand Gen Manager, etc.).
Setup:
Enable "Pause leads from same company"
Trigger: Reply
Result: When the CMO replies, the campaign stops for the other 4 marketing team members. The sales rep focuses entirely on the CMO conversation, avoiding awkward situations where multiple people from the same company are receiving identical emails.
Impact:
40% reduction in wasted emails
More focused sales conversations
No internal confusion at target companies
Example 2: Webinar Promotion
An agency promotes a webinar to HR leaders at tech companies. They import multiple HR contacts per company to increase registration chances.
Setup:
Enable "Pause leads from same company"
Trigger: Meeting booked (webinar registration counts as a booking)
Result: When someone registers for the webinar, others from that company stop receiving registration emails. This prevents over-promotion to the same organization.
Impact:
Cleaner brand impression
No complaints about duplicate outreach
Freed capacity to reach more companies
Example 3: Product Launch Campaign
A software company launches a new feature and emails decision-makers across various departments (IT, Operations, Finance) at each target company.
Setup:
Enable "Pause leads from same company"
Trigger: Email click or reply
Result: When the IT Director clicks for a demo, emails stop for the Operations Manager and CFO from the same company. The sales team coordinates internally to involve the right stakeholders in one unified conversation.
Impact:
Account-based selling approach
Avoided internal competition between departments
Higher close rates due to coordinated outreach
Important Considerations
The company name must match exactly
The feature relies on the Company Name field. If leads have even slightly different company names, they won't be grouped:
"Google" ≠ "Google Inc."
"IBM" ≠ "IBM Corporation"
"Acme Corp" ≠ "acme corp" (case-sensitive in some systems)
Fix: Clean your data before importing. Standardize company names so all leads from the same organization have identical Company Name values.
Paused leads can be manually restarted
If you pause leads from a company but later decide you want to reach out to others (e.g., different department, senior executive), you can manually unpause them:
Go to Leads → Find the paused lead → Click Resume campaign
Only affects future steps
If a lead has already received Step 2 when another lead from their company engages, that lead is paused at their current position. They won't receive future steps, but past emails were already sent.
Works with all engagement types
You control what counts as engagement. This could be replies, clicks, meeting bookings, or custom events. Choose what makes sense for your campaign goal.
Troubleshooting
Issue: Leads from the same company aren't being paused
Root cause: Company names don't match exactly across leads
Fix:
Export your leads to CSV
Check the Company Name field for inconsistencies (extra spaces, different formats, abbreviations)
Standardize all company names
Re-import or manually update in lemlist
Verify the setting is enabled in campaign settings
Issue: I want to unpause a lead but continue pausing others from that company
Root cause: You need to reach a specific person despite another colleague engaging
Fix:
Go to the Leads tab
Find the paused lead
Click the three dots (⋮) next to their name
Select Resume campaign
This restarts their campaign individually without affecting others
Issue: The feature is pausing too aggressively
Root cause: Your engagement trigger is too broad (e.g., any email open counts as engagement)
Fix:
Review your engagement trigger settings
Use more meaningful triggers like Reply or Meeting booked instead of Email opened
This ensures only genuine engagement pauses the campaign, not passive actions
Issue: I want different triggers for different campaigns
Root cause: One campaign should pause on reply, another on booking
Fix:
Each campaign has independent settings
Configure triggers per campaign based on the campaign's goal
Outreach campaigns: use Reply
Event campaigns: use Meeting booked/Registration
Content campaigns: use Click
Optimization Tips
Standardize company names during import: Use a data enrichment tool or manual cleanup to ensure company names are consistent before importing leads. This prevents the feature from failing due to mismatched names.
Combine with account-based selling: Use this feature as part of a broader account-based strategy. When someone engages, have your team research the company and coordinate follow-up across relevant stakeholders.
Set clear engagement triggers: Be intentional about what counts as engagement. Reply is usually the best trigger for most campaigns—it indicates real interest, not just curiosity.
Monitor paused leads: Check your Leads tab regularly to see which companies have engaged. This helps your team prioritize accounts and plan strategic follow-up.
Use with multi-persona campaigns: This feature shines when you're targeting multiple roles at the same company (e.g., CMO + Marketing Director + Head of Demand Gen). One engagement pauses the others, keeping your outreach clean.
Document internal process: Make sure your sales team knows how this feature works. When leads are auto-paused, the team should coordinate who owns the conversation with that company.
Test with small campaigns first: Enable this on a pilot campaign to see how it affects your workflow before rolling it out across all campaigns.