Quickstart: signup to your first ranked lead

Embers gets you from signup to a ranked list of people worth messaging in one sitting. This walkthrough covers every screen up to your first queue, and the next day.

Before you start

• Your company website, or a few sentences about who buys from you.
• The public LinkedIn URL of at least one profile or company page whose audience your buyers are in: your own, a competitor’s, or an influencer’s.

Your free trial starts with the account: your first 2,000 engagers or 7 days, whichever comes first, on Solo limits and with no card.

Set up your account

Setup has three steps, Website, Your ICP, and Monitors, and saves as you go, so a refresh or another device resumes in the same place.

Skip setup, at the top right, appears once your ICP is ready, and opens the dashboard. The Website step has none, and neither does Your ICP while the draft is still being written or has failed: without an ICP there is nothing to match leads against.

1. Create an account

   On the register screen, enter an email address and a password of at least eight characters and choose Create account and scan, or use Continue with Google. No card is asked for. Setup does not wait for the verification link Embers emails you; if it fails, see sign-in and verification problems.

2. Give Embers your website

   Paste your company website and choose Analyze. With no website, choose No website yet? Describe your buyers instead and write up to 4,000 characters about your ideal buyer. Embers drafts your ideal customer profile from it.

3. Confirm your ICP

   The Your ICP step shows Who you sell to, with a Left out list of the people Embers will not count, plus job titles, locations, company sizes in employees (such as 51-200), and industries as chips. Edit anything that is wrong, then choose Use this ICP; on a phone it stays at the bottom of the screen. The rest of the criteria live on the ICP page; see define your ICP.

4. Choose what to watch

   Add LinkedIn profiles, company pages, keywords, or single posts, and tag each profile with who it is, such as Myself or Competitor. You need at least one profile or company page, because the first scan reads one. Then choose Finish & start. Add the profiles, pages, and keywords to watch covers every option and plan limit.

5. Reveal your queue

   While the first scan runs the screen reads Finding your first leads. It lists four stages (sources verified, activity collected, buyers matched, queue ranked), shows what each one found, and once Embers has found people a People found so far list marks the ones that match your ICP. It is a first look: your ranked queue replaces it when the scan finishes. The scan usually takes 2 to 5 minutes.

   You do not have to stay on this screen. Choose Keep exploring to open the dashboard and browse the app, and keep the tab open: wherever you are when the scan finishes, a notice says Your first leads are ready with a View leads button, and the Leads count in the sidebar updates. If you would rather close the tab, choose Email me when it is ready. When the queue is ready the screen says how many people match your ICP, shows a few of their faces and where they came from, for example “From 114 people who engaged with 5 posts in the last 12 months.”; choose Reveal my queue.

   The dashboard shows the top match, why that person surfaced, and the rest of the ranking. Open a lead and answer Is this the kind of buyer you want? to tell Embers whether the match is right.

6. Go to your dashboard

   Choose Go to my dashboard. It ends the preview, completes setup, and turns on any agent still waiting, so your sources are scanned every 24 hours from here. See choose your agents for what runs.

When the first scan comes back empty

An empty first run is a result, not a failure, and Embers names which kind of empty it hit:

• No public posts to read in the lookback window, 365 days by default.
• Nobody engaged with the public activity it found.
• No buyers cleared your ICP.
• Buyers matched but could not be verified, because their profile was missing a name, role, company, or photo.
• Buyers matched, but none of their posts described a need you solve. Only a keyword scan ends this way: people who fit your ICP posted about the keyword, but to sell, recruit, or chat rather than to describe a problem.

After an empty run Embers tries one narrower source on its own, such as a keyword drawn from your ICP or a competitor you watch. Retrying a failed run does not use up that attempt. Once it is spent, the screen points you at recurring scans. No leads yet goes through each cause, and how far back the first scan reads explains the window.

Finish the setup checklist

While the workspace is still being set up, the account owner sees Finish setup at the foot of the sidebar: how many of its six steps are done, such as “2 of 6 done”, Next: with the next step as a link, and See every step, which opens the Setup page (/setup). Select its title to fold it. It starts folded if you chose Skip setup during onboarding (offered once your ICP is ready), and it goes away once setup is complete. While your first scan is still running, Next: reads See your first scan and opens it, since there are no leads to act on yet. On a phone, which has no sidebar, the same card sits at the top of the dashboard.

The six steps are Define your ICP, Watch a profile, Start recurring scans, Add a second signal source, Act on a lead, and Set up delivery, which is optional. The Setup page turns the one-off preview into a daily routine with the last four, and each ticks itself when you do the work:

1. Start recurring scans. At least one agent live. Configure agent opens Agents.
2. Add the preferred extra signal source. A keyword or another watched profile. Choose a source opens Agents.
3. Act on a lead. Generate a DM draft or mark one lead contacted. Open leads opens Leads.
4. Configure delivery or collaboration. Optional: email delivery, a signed webhook, or a teammate. Review delivery opens Webhooks.

Confirm agents are live checks your agents and finishes setup. It needs a plan, and your trial counts; on Free the page offers Start with Solo instead.

What to do on day two

Come back the next day, once the agents have run:

• Open the Priority Queue at /priority-queue and work the top of it. Message two or three people by hand.
• On anyone clearly wrong, answer Is this a lead? with No in the lead’s ICP fit section. If a whole role keeps coming up wrong, edit the ICP instead: an answer only pins that one person.
• Add the source you skipped: a competitor or influencer on the watchlist, or the keywords your buyers actually type.

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