Link Leads Blog · August 31, 2026
A good opener gets the first reply. A cadence decides what happens to the other 9,900 records that didn't answer. Here's the actual schedule, and where the line sits between "not yet" and "dead."
Most agents spend their planning time on the message and none on the calendar. That's backwards on an aged list. A single text to 10,000 records pulls a real but modest reply rate, and the schedule you run after that first send — not a better opening line — is what decides whether the batch pays for itself over its full working life or gets left half-touched in a CRM tag. The cadence below treats a purchased list as a multi-week asset, not a one-shot blast.
The first two touches are the ones covered in our SMS scripts post: a one-segment, one-question opener on day 0, and a softer revival text on day 3 or 4 for anyone who didn't reply. That's still the right opening move and this post doesn't change it. What it adds is what happens after day 4, because that's where most agents stop thinking about the list entirely — and where most of a batch's remaining value still sits.
A record that didn't reply to two texts is unresponsive, not dead. "Dead" is a narrower category: a number that replied "stop," a number a carrier flags as disconnected, or a number that comes back reassigned on a check. Silence is a different outcome and it's the most common one — most people don't reply to a cold text from a number they don't recognize, on the first message or the fifth. Treating silence as a permanent no throws away records you already paid for and already cleared to contact.
Anyone who didn't opt out and didn't reply after the day 0/day 3 sequence goes into a holding pool for a second run, spaced far enough apart that it reads as a new outreach rather than the same ignored conversation:
This is the step that gets skipped, and it's the one that matters most. A DNC scrub is a point-in-time check — the registry updates monthly, and the working assumption on any scrub is that it's good for about 31 days. If your day 0 scrub happened at list load, it's already stale by day 30 and long stale by day 60 or 90. Sending a re-engagement wave off the original scrub isn't a shortcut, it's skipping the scrub. Re-run it before each wave, the same way you would for a list you just bought. The tool we point buyers at for this is Landline Remover (disclosure: that's an affiliate link and we may earn a commission) — upload the surviving pool before each wave and it clears DNC-listed and disconnected numbers in one pass, which is faster than re-running a fresh scrub by hand every 30 days on a shrinking list.
A day on the schedule isn't a single blast. On a file of any real size, sending 10,000 opener texts in one hour looks nothing like organic traffic to a carrier or to your 10DLC campaign's throughput limits, and it burns your daily allotment before the replies from the first thousand have even come back. Stagger a day's send across your registered campaign's approved throughput and across the hours your state's calling/texting windows actually allow, and let replies from the early batches inform tweaks to the message before the rest of the day's records go out.
This is a practical scheduling framework, not legal advice. TCPA, TSR, state texting rules, and 10DLC carrier requirements vary and change, and a re-engagement wave still has to clear the same DNC scrub, opt-out handling, and campaign registration as a first send. Confirm current requirements with counsel or a compliance vendor before running a multi-wave cadence at scale.
A 90-day cadence needs a batch that's still worth working three months in — that's what aged data is priced for. Link Leads sells SMS lead lists at a flat $0.012 per lead, minimum order 5,000 leads ($60), filterable by state and age band, deduped and delivered as an instant CSV. Build an order in the order builder, or pull a free 100-row sample to see the fields before you plan a cadence around them. For the cost math behind an early wave, see the math on texting 10,000 aged leads.