Bringing people into an Outreach custom

An Outreach custom has no quiz. You bring the people in yourself — from your CRM, your ads, a form on your site, or a spreadsheet you already have — and each one gets their own video and page. They all land in Leads.

Using a Quiz custom?

A Quiz custom fills from its quiz: everyone who answers it appears in Leads on their own, so there is nothing to connect and this page isn’t for you. Webhooks and imports are how an Outreach custom fills.

Where people come in

Open Leads. Everything starts from Add people, which offers four ways in:

Option	What it does
Upload a CSV	import a file you already have
Paste a list	paste emails or a spreadsheet range
Add one person	type one person’s details by hand
Connect an app	send people in from another tool, by webhook

The same four show on an empty table. The Connections tab lists everything connected to this custom — webhooks and past imports — with Import a file and Connect an app at the top.

Everyone arrives waiting for a video

However someone gets in, they arrive without a video. Nothing is made until you ask, because making a video spends one from your plan.

The cards above the table sort people by where they are:

View	Who is in it
Received	everyone who arrived, from any source
To generate	waiting for a video
Generating	their video is being made
Ready	video done
Failed	something went wrong — open the status to see why
Watched	started their video at least once

While people are waiting, a bar above the table says how many, and how many minutes of video are left on your plan. Press Generate all there, or select the people you want and press Generate. A waiting person’s own row also has a Generate button.

You can collect people before your custom is finished

Generating videos needs the rest of it ready — a result page, your clips recorded, a destination for your landing page — and the custom published. Collecting people needs none of that, so you can gather people while you’re still building. If you press Generate before the custom is published, you’re shown what’s missing, each item takes you there, and once everything is set you can Publish & generate in one go.

Bringing people in from another tool

An inbound webhook is a URL. You give it to another tool, that tool sends people to it, and they appear in Leads. Nothing to install, no API key to create.

1. In Leads, open Add people, then Connect an app, and pick Webhook.
2. Copy the Ingest URL.
3. Paste it into whatever is sending you people — Make, Zapier, n8n, your form builder, your CRM. Anywhere that asks for a webhook or POST URL.
4. Send one test from that tool.
5. Come back and open the Connections tab. Your test will be in Recent requests.

Treat the URL like a password

The URL is the credential — the same way Zapier, Make and Slack webhooks work. Anyone who has it can send people into this custom, so don’t post it publicly. If it leaks, use Generate a new URL: the old one stops working immediately.

Matching their fields to yours

Send one person per request, as a flat JSON object. Anything recognised fills a field; anything else is listed in Recent requests so you can map it.

Three rules:

• Use the field’s name as it appears in your table — or the sender’s own name, and map it in Match your fields.
• Capitals, spaces, dashes and underscores don’t matter.
• If a name matches nothing, the value is reported rather than dropped. Nothing is lost silently.

When an answer doesn’t match

If they send hot_lead and your answer is “Hot lead”, that matches on its own. If they send a genuinely different word, you’re asked whether to match it to an answer you already have, or add it as a new one.

Prefer matching over adding

Adding a new answer each time leaves “Hot lead”, “hot_lead” and “Prospect chaud” as three separate answers, which splits your filters and your reporting. Once taught, the other name works everywhere — every webhook and every CSV import.

Checking what arrived

Recent requests, in the Connections tab, lists what’s been sent, successes and failures. Click one to jump to the person it created, or to see exactly what the other tool sent, word for word. From a person’s row menu, View received JSON shows the same thing. Deliveries are kept for 30 days.

If the same person arrives twice

The same information arriving twice within a few minutes is treated as one person. Make and Zapier retry automatically when they don’t get a quick answer, and this stops a retry becoming a duplicate person and a duplicate video. The repeat is noted in Recent requests, so it’s never silent.

Pausing, replacing and removing

A webhook’s controls are in its Settings, from its row in Connections.

Control	What it does
Pause	stops deliveries; your URL keeps working
Generate a new URL	old URL stops immediately — for leaks, not pausing
Remove this webhook	only for a webhook that was never used

You can have several webhooks on one custom — one per tool, each with its own URL, field matching and pause switch. Name them (“Meta lead ads”, “Make — CRM”): the name is what shows in your table as each person’s origin.

Importing a list you already have

1. In Leads, open Add people, then Upload a CSV — or Paste a list to paste the rows straight in.
2. Check the matching, then import.

Your headers are matched where they’re recognised. For anything else, point the column at an existing field, let it create a new one, or skip it. If a column feeds a multiple-choice field and some values don’t match, you’re told which ones before importing — with the same choice as a webhook: match it, or add it.

Column types are guessed from the values. Dates become dates, links become links, a repeated set of short labels becomes a multiple-choice answer, and a column of plain numbers becomes a Number field — a price, a count, an age. Numbers written with formatting ($1,200, 7,5, 10%) stay as text, so no value is lost on the way in.

Several answers in one cell can be separated with a comma, semicolon or pipe — Design, Copywriting reads as two answers. For yes/no columns, yes / y / true / 1 / on read as yes; no / n / false / 0 / off read as no.

Imported people wait too

People from an import arrive waiting, exactly like webhook people, and no videos are made until you ask.

Making videos automatically

By default people arrive waiting and you generate when you choose. In a webhook’s settings, turn on Auto-submit incoming leads and a video is made as soon as someone arrives through it. Use it once you’re happy with your setup — it spends from your plan without asking.

Auto-submit is paced: a busy source makes videos steadily rather than all at once, so a burst of arrivals can’t consume your whole plan in minutes. Everyone still arrives immediately — only the video-making is spread out.

When something doesn’t work

Someone arrived but their row is empty. Their tool’s field names didn’t match any of yours and no matching was set up yet. Open Match your fields, use Detect from last request, map them, then send another test.

I fixed my matching and re-sent, but nothing changed. Send a new test rather than the same one — identical information sent twice in quick succession is treated as one person.

Recent requests shows a rejection. Click it. The usual causes are a wrong or old URL (if you regenerated it), or a tool sending something other than JSON. Viewing the received data shows what actually arrived.

Nothing arrives at all. Check the webhook isn’t paused, and that the URL was pasted in full — including the long code at the end.