Where to start the import
You can pull Outreach prospects into Twain from three places. The picker and the field-mapping form are the same in all three. What differs is when the import runs and how often.
- Campaign creation. Pick Outreach as the lead source while you're setting up a new campaign. The prospects on the tag you chose land in the campaign and Twain starts research on them right away.
- Leads import (existing campaign). Open a campaign you've already built and click Import leads. Good for topping up an audience, expanding to a new tag, or backfilling a campaign that ran out of leads.
- Workflow. Drop an Outreach node onto a workflow and the import keeps running. Every minute Twain checks the tag for new prospects, pulls them in, runs the research, drops them into the campaign, and pings the channel you wired up.
Most teams end up on the workflow once a campaign is proven — it's the version where new prospects on the tag show up in Twain on their own, with research already done, ready for the rep before they open the app.
Tags are the selector
Outreach doesn't expose static lists the way HubSpot or Amplemarket do. The unit of selection for an import is a tag. Whichever tag (or tags) you pick on the import step is the audience: Twain pulls every prospect carrying that tag in Outreach, and that's what flows into the campaign.
Two implications worth calling out:
- The tag has to exist in Outreach first. Twain reads tags, it doesn't create them. Set the tag up on the prospects you want imported, then pick it in the Twain picker.
- Re-imports are deduped by Outreach ID. If you re-run an import on the same tag, prospects already in the campaign won't be added a second time. New prospects you tagged since the last run will.
This is also the seam where the workflow story lights up: a tag you keep applying as part of your normal Outreach hygiene becomes a continuous feeder for Twain. More on that in the Outreach workflows post.
Map fields to variables
After you pick the tag, the next step is the mapping form. This is where you connect Outreach prospect fields to the variables Twain uses for research and sequence generation.
The defaults cover the basics: work email, first name, last name, job title, LinkedIn URL, company. LinkedIn URL is the one that unlocks the deep-research path — without it Twain can still draft a sequence, but with it the research is several notches better because the assistant has a profile to read.
Past the basics, anything you keep on the Outreach prospect is mappable. A few examples of what that gets you:
- Persona-aware copy. Map a Persona or Department custom field and the sequence Twain writes for a Head of RevOps reads differently from the one it writes for an AE on the same campaign.
- Stronger research. Map Last contacted, Stage, or any context field your reps maintain. The research can lean on that instead of starting from a cold web search.
- Trigger-aware drafts. Map a recency field and the assistant can reference the actual reason the prospect is in scope this week.
The point is the same in every integration: the more you tell Twain at import time, the less generic the output is. Variables you map once stay attached to the prospect, so the day-one sequence and the day-fourteen follow-up both have the same context.
Static snapshot or live feed
The same Outreach import lives in two modes depending on where you start it.
A campaign-creation or leads-import run is a snapshot. Twain grabs the prospects on the tag at the moment you submit, runs research, and stops. Add a new prospect to the tag tomorrow and Twain won't notice unless you re-import.
A workflow import is continuous. Twain re-checks the tag on a polling schedule, pulls anything new, dedupes against the campaign, and runs the full pipeline (research → sequence → export → notify) on each new prospect. This is the version you want once the campaign output is calibrated and the audience is going to keep growing.
A few practical notes:
- For one-off launches, A/B tests, or any campaign with a frozen audience, the snapshot path is the right pick. Pick the tag once, take what's on it that day, move on.
- For ongoing motions — new-hire tagging, intent triggers, territory rebuilds — workflows save the manual step. The tag stays in your normal Outreach hygiene; Twain handles the rest.
- Re-running an import on top of an existing campaign is safe. Dedupe is on Outreach prospect ID, so no duplicates. Custom variables refresh on each run, so anything you change in Outreach is reflected next time Twain looks.