Outreach Composer

# Outreach Composer

Write outreach the owner would actually send under their own name.

The single most repeated condition owners set is some version of "without sounding like a bot." Owners will not send copy that embarrasses them, so a message that reads as generated is worth nothing regardless of how well structured it is. Voice fidelity is the product here, not a finishing touch.

## Step 1 — Learn the voice before writing anything

Read [the shared voice profile](../../shared/voice-profile.md) first. If a profile already exists there, use it and skip to Step 2 — rebuilding it every time wastes the owner's patience and produces drift.

If there is no profile, build one from evidence:

- **Gmail or Microsoft 365** — pull 15 to 30 of the owner's own sent messages to customers and prospects. This is the best source by a wide margin. Confirm the mailbox is the owner's first (`../../shared/tenant-scope.md`); another tenant's sent mail would teach the wrong voice. - **HubSpot** — logged emails and notes - **Their website and any published writing** — weaker, but real - **Pasted examples** — ask for three emails they were happy with

Then extract the specific, imitable traits: sentence length, greeting and sign-off habits, contractions, whether they use exclamation marks, how direct the ask is, what they call their own product, regionalisms, and the things they never do. Save the profile so every later run inherits it.

**Without any sample, say so and ask for three.** Writing in a guessed voice produces exactly the generic copy the owner is trying to avoid.

## Step 2 — Ground each message in something real

A personalized email is not one with the company name merged into a template. It is one that could only have been sent to that person.

For each prospect, find the specific hook. In order of strength:

1. The buying signal from `lead-finder` — a permit filed, a location opened, a role posted 2. A shared connection or customer 3. Something specific about their business the owner can genuinely speak to 4. A relevant result the owner produced for a similar customer

If no hook exists beyond category fit, write a shorter, plainly cold message and say it is cold. A fake-warm opener is worse than an honest cold one, because it reads as a mail merge and destroys credibility in the first line.

**Apollo or Clay, when connected, can fill in the contact and company detail that makes a thin hook usable** — role, tenure, company size, tech stack — the kind of specific that keeps a message from reading as generic. Enrichment data, not a hook on its own.

## Step 3 — Write the sequence

Read `reference/sequence_patterns.md` for structure by scenario. Defaults:

- **Cold outreach** — 4 messages over 3 weeks - **Warm or referral** — 3 messages over 2 weeks - **Post-meeting follow-up** — 2 messages over 10 days - **Re-engagement of a quiet customer** — 3 messages over 4 weeks

Each message in a sequence must add something new. A follow-up whose entire content is "just bumping this" trains people to ignore the sender. Give every touch a fresh reason to exist: a different angle, a relevant result, a genuinely useful piece of information, or a clean close-out.

Length rule: first message under 120 words. Owners in this segment sell to people who read on their phone between jobs.

## Step 4 — Self-check against the slop test

Before showing anything, run every draft against `reference/slop_test.md`. It catches the specific patterns that make copy read as machine-written.

The fastest checks:

- Would the owner say this sentence out loud? If not, rewrite it. - Could this message be sent to any other company with two words changed? If yes, it is not personalized. - Does it open with a compliment about the prospect's business? Delete it — everyone does this and everyone recognizes it. - Is there a phrase here the owner has never used in their life? Cut it.

This step is not optional and it is not a formality. It is the difference between copy that gets sent and copy that gets rewritten by hand, which is the outcome the skill exists to prevent.

## Step 5 — Present for approval

Show the full sequence before anything queues. Follow `reference/output_template.md`.

Present message one in full, then the rest of the sequence with subject lines and the angle each takes. Owners want to read the first one closely and skim the shape of the rest.

**Deliver per the owner's stored output preference — never default to a markdown file.** Check the `## Business context` block's `Output preference` (shared style guide rule, `../../shared/artifact-style.md`):

- **Visual artifact (the default):** an HTML page in the house style — one card per prospect or sequence, each message as a copy block so any single message can be copied and sent by hand. - **docx / md / notion / canva preference:** deliver the same content in that form — a DOCX or markdown file, a Notion page created via the connector (named destination, never overwriting), or a Canv