What is Autopilot?

  • Updated on Feb 18, 2025
  • Published on Feb 12, 2025
  • 8 minute(s) read

Who is this for?

This article is for Admins using autopilot.

What is Autopilot?

Autopilot is a feature that allows you to automatically enroll prospects into sequences based on specific rules. By skipping manual actions, you can save your sales team time to focus on other tasks. With Autopilot, there are two options for you to use:

  1. Automating enrollment into sequences

    • You can set up playbooks for your sales reps that add prospects directly to sequences in Gong, Outreach, SalesLoft. For example, add prospects who recently attended a webinar to a “Follow up with buyers who attended a webinar” email sequence.

  2. Webhooks

    • You can notify or send data to an external tool when a prospect enters a playbook. For example, send a Slack alert to your sales team when there is a spike in engagement with your website.

Using Autopilot

You can choose to either automatically enroll people into sequences OR use webhooks. You are not able to do both tasks in parallel — you must choose to do one or the other.

How to activate enrollment into sequences?

To make sure you can automate enrolling people into sequences, you first need to make sure your sales engagement platform is connected with MadKudu.

Steps to make sure your platform is connected with MadKudu

  1. Sign in to the admin app

  2. Find the Integrations tab from the lefthand side bar

  3. From here, you can connect your platform (For example, look for Gong, Salesloft, or Outreach)

Why is Autopilot important?

Autopilot removes the need for manual intervention by automating enrollment and using webhooks. With Autopilot mode enabled, common actions for your sales reps, like enrolling a prospect into a sequence or sending information to an external system, can happen instantly.

This can improve efficiency by:

  • Automating repeated tasks

  • Making sure your sales teams has timely engagement through immediate actions

  • Pairing smoothly with external tools (Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, and more) through webhooks

Use Cases - When Can Autopilot be Helpful?

There are different ways you can use Autopilot to automate work for your sales team and generate pipeline in the background. Here are a few use cases for using Autopilot:

  1. Auto-enrolling leads into email sequences

  • Your sales team is already using a playbook to track high-intent leads (like prospects who request a demo). The adoption rate of this playbook is high, and your sales reps rarely reject these leads.

  • Autopilot: Instead of manually enrolling leads, they can be automatically enrolled in a Gong, Outreach, or Salesloft sequence.

  • Webhook: For example, sending a message to Slack when a lead is automatically assigned to a sales rep. That way, everyone stays in the loop.

  1. Auto-engagement with warm leads

  • Since your sales team is very busy, they tend to focus on best-fit/high-fit leads. This causes some warm but lower-priority leads to get lost, and remain un-contacted.

  • Autopilot: Can automatically add lower-priority leads to a email outreach sequence with Gong, Salesloft, or Outreach.

  • Webhook: Can send a message to Slack when a lead gets warmer. For example, “This lead has opened 3 emails, time to follow up!"

  1. Auto-assign warm, unowned accounts to sales reps

  • There could be some high-engagement leads sitting in Salesforce. These leads are not assigned to anyone, and no one is following up with them.

  • Autopilot: If a account is not assigned (but start to show engagement), Autopilot can automatically assign it to a sales rep.

  • Webhook: Send matching accounts to a Zapier which enrolls them into a sequence.

  1. Surfacing tasks directly in a sales engagement platforms

  • Your sales team might prefer to work directly within a platform (Outreach, Salesloft, or Gong Engage) instead of switching between tools.

  • There could be some important leads that go unnoticed if they are not shown in the platform your sales team actively uses.

  • Autopilot: Automatically create tasks or to-do items for reps when a high-priority lead engages (like prospect looking at a pricing page, or requesting a demo).

  • Webhook: Send engagement signals to Gong Engage, Outreach, or Salesloft to make sure that reps see and act on new leads directly from their task queue (without leaving their chosen platform).

How do playbooks match records when using autopilot?

Playbooks using Autopilot will ONLY match records that belong to the user, based on the assigned ownership field (territory/account owner).

For example:

  • Samantha the SDR manually creates a playbook and sees 5 matches from her assigned territory.

  • Or, you (the admin) activate Autopilot for Samantha’s playbook. The same 5 matches will be processed automatically. No additional records from outside Samantha’s territory will be included.

Using autopilot will not change which records match a playbook. It simply automates actions for a user based on their assigned accounts or leads/contacts.

How To Use Autopilot

Before starting to use Autopilot, you should have a playbook in mind that you wish to automate. If not, you can create one now. If you need help creating a playbook, be sure to checkout our How to create a playbook guide.

Step 1: Edit Your Playbook

  1. Find a playbook you wish to automate from the lefthand navigation bar.

  2. Select the playbook.

  3. On the top righthand side, find the Edit Playbook button.

Step 2: Turn on Autopilot Mode

  1. Scroll down until you find the Automation section, and enable Autopilot mode.

  2. Once enabled, the manual action section will be disabled because actions will now be done automatically.

Step 3: Automate Enrollment OR Use Webhooks

There are two options for Step 3.

Remember, you can use Autopilot to either automate enrolling people into sequences OR to use webhooks. There are steps below for both scenarios you may choose.

Automate Enrollment

  1. You can choose to add your prospects to sequences in Salesloft, Outreach, or Gong.

  2. Simply select a platform, and choose the sequence you are interested in.

Now you have completed the step for automating enrollment into sequences.

Add a Webhook

If you want to send data to an external tool:

  1. Select the Webhook option.

  2. Enter your Webhook URL (given by a third-party service like Slack or Zapier).

  3. Map fields from your playbook to webhook fields.

    • When you map fields, you are selecting data points from your playbook and are assigning them to corresponding fields in the external tool.

    • For example, if you are sending a Slack alert for spiking engagement, you can map the “first_name” field from a playbook to show up as the “Name” field in Slack.

  1. Test your webhook.

    • With the Test your workbook button, you are able to make sure that your data is being sent correctly.

    • If you structured your webhook correctly, you should receive a “status code 200” response.

Done Section

If you have set up Autopilot correctly, playbooks that have handled all of their matches via Autopilot will show up in the Done section of your Inbox.

To see which playbooks have been successfully handled by Autopilot:

  1. Find the Done tab in the lefthand navigation bar under your Inbox.

  2. Find the playbook you are interested in

  3. In the playbook, the Autopilot column should contain a green check mark which means the prospect was successfully processed via automation.

Troubleshooting

Autopilot has a built-in troubleshooting feature that helps track/resolve issues when automated actions encounter errors. If an action fails, it will appear in your Inbox with a status of ❌ and a message to go along with the issue.

MadKudu will automatically retry failed actions gradually to prevent system overload. This means the first few retries will happen more frequently, but the system will wait longer between each retry attempt if failures continue:

  • The first retry happens after 5 minutes

  • The retry wait time increases over time (retry after 10 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour…up to 12 hours)

  • The system will retry for up to 8 days

If an action still fails after 8 days, it will stop retrying, and manual intervention may be needed.

Received Destination Error From Autopilot

  • If a playbook gets a Destination Error, this means MadKudu could not send data to an external sales engagement platform (Gong, Outreach, Salesloft).

  • This could happen because the platform is experiencing downtime, or your integration setup is incomplete.

  • You can troubleshoot this by checking the settings in the destination tool (Outreach, Salesloft, Gong).

Received 404 Authentication Error From Autopilot

  • If a playbook gets a "404 Authentication Error,” this means there is an issue with how integrations are connected to MadKudu.

  • You can troubleshoot this by checking your integrations page in MadKudu and seeing if the connection is active.

  • You can also double check that the webhook URL is correct and pointing to an existing endpoint.

Prospect Active in Another Sequence Error

  • If a playbook gets the error “Prospect Active in Another Exclusive Sequence,” this means that Autopilot tried to add a prospect to a sequence, but failed because they were already in an a exclusive sequence.

  • You can troubleshoot this by checking the prospect’s sequence status in your sales engagement platform (e.g., Outreach, Salesloft, Gong Engage).

  • You can also confirm if you sequence does not allow multiple enrollments, or manually remove the prospect from their existing sequence before retrying.

API Rate Limit Errors

  • A playbook may encounter rate limit errors if too many API calls are made in a short period when using webhooks or automation.

  • If a rate limit is reached, an action may fail temporarily and cause a “Too Many Requests” error.

  • In this case, autopilot automatically retries failed requests using the gradual retry system described above.

How to Tell What Playbook is Sending Alerts

  • It might be important for your sales team to know which playbook is triggering automated actions.

  • For example, let’s say a playbook alerts your sales team when a buyer is looking at the pricing page. You have used Autopilot to automatically send prospect data to Zapier, which then triggers a email sequence. Your sales reps want to know which playbook triggered the actions.

  • Playbook names are not automatically included in webhook data, but you can manually create a free text field to add them:

    • For example, use “sequenceName” as a free text field and set it to “Buyer Viewed Pricing Page” (the playbook name) so that each webhook request includes the playbook name.

Need More Help?

If you encounter issues or have questions, contact your CSM or email us at product@madkudu.com.