# Cold email weekly rhythm Human Guide

## What This Is For
Operational playbook for running cold email continuously. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for email marketing: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Cold email weekly rhythm agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for cold email weekly rhythm.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Cold email weekly rhythm guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Fleet reply rate over last 7 days — must be ≥1% (the 1% rule)
- Flagged campaigns (`flag_low_reply = TRUE`)
- Flagged inboxes (`flag_high_bounce = TRUE`)
- If any campaign failed the 1% rule: run `/deliverability-incident-response` → triage decision tree
- If bounce rate spiked above 2%: pause the offending campaign immediately, then triage
- If everything clean: log the check in a weekly journal, close the tab
- Any `positive_interested` or `positive_soft` replies — these are leads wanting to engage
- Any `positive_referral` replies — these are people saying "talk to Jane instead"
- Any `negative_hostile` replies — red flag, investigate
- Respond to every `positive_interested` reply within 30 seconds of seeing it. Do not batch these — a reply feeling like it took minutes to return converts 3× better than one that took hours.
- For referrals: reach out to the referred person within 24h, mention the referrer by name.
- For hostile: apologize, remove from all lists, investigate why they were flagged for hostility (often signals bad targeting).

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Step 1 (required before using this skill): Put the rhythm on your calendar, Monday — Deliverability audit (15 min), Wednesday — Positive-reply sweep (30-60 min depending on volume), Friday — Campaign retrospectives (20 min per campaign), Every other Monday — Inbox rotation (30 min), Monthly (1st of the month) — Spam placement test (25 min active, test runs ~20 min), Quarterly (first Monday of each quarter) — Experiment review (90 min), What to skip, What to do next, Related skills.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- Having 29 cold email skills doesn't help if you don't run them on a schedule. This is that schedule.
- Step 1 (required before using this skill): Put the rhythm on your calendar
- Fleet reply rate over last 7 days — must be ≥1% (the 1% rule)
- Respond to every `positive_interested` reply within 30 seconds of seeing it. Do not batch these — a reply feeling like it took minutes to return converts 3× better than one that took hours.
- **Critical:** do not skip the log. Over a quarter, these logs become the input for `/experiment-design` quarterly reviews. Without the history, you can't learn across campaigns.
- (Will use G Suite + Office365 provider pools. 100 senders is a sweet spot — large enough for statistical signal, small enough to avoid API stalls.)
- Bottom 3 campaigns + what to avoid
- Check Smartlead every day (Wednesday sweep catches everything important)

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Cold email weekly rhythm human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the growthenginenowoslawski/coldoutboundskills skill entry for `cold-email-weekly-rhythm`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Cold Email Weekly Rhythm

Having 29 cold email skills doesn't help if you don't run them on a schedule. This is that schedule.

**This is a pure playbook.** No scripts, no automatic reminders. You put the rhythm on your own calendar (Step 1 below) and run the prescribed skill at the prescribed time. That's the entire system.

---

## Step 1 (required before using this skill): Put the rhythm on your calendar

Open Google Calendar / Outlook / Apple Reminders / whatever you actually look at every day. Create these as recurring events. Copy the titles and cadences exactly.

| Event title | Cadence |
|---|---|
| Cold email: Monday deliverability audit | Every Monday, 9:00 am |
| Cold email: Wednesday positive-reply sweep | Every Wednesday, 10:00 am |
| Cold email: Friday campaign retrospectives | Every Friday, 3:00 pm |
| Cold email: Inbox rotation | Every other Monday, 11:00 am |
| Cold email: Monthly spam placement test | 1st of each month, 10:00 am |
| Cold email: Quarterly experiment review | First Monday of each quarter, 1:00 pm |

**Do not skip Step 1.** The difference between hobbyist and top-1% cold email operators is that the top-1% operators actually run these tasks on their declared cadence, week after week. Your calendar is the accountability system. This skill doesn't have a built-in reminder — intentionally — because if it did and it broke, your ops would silently fail.

---

## Monday — Deliverability audit (15 min)

**Run:**

```bash
/email-deliverability-audit --days=7
```

(If using the scoped version: `audit-performance.ts --campaign-ids=<active campaign ids> --days=7`)

**Review:**

- Fleet reply rate over last 7 days — must be ≥1% (the 1% rule)
- Flagged campaigns (`flag_low_reply = TRUE`)
- Flagged inboxes (`flag_high_bounce = TRUE`)

**Action:**

- If any campaign failed the 1% rule: run `/deliverability-incident-response` → triage decision tree
- If bounce rate spiked above 2%: pause the offending campaign immediately, then triage
- If everything clean: log the check in a weekly journal, close the tab

---

## Wednesday — Positive-reply sweep (30-60 min depending on volume)

**Run:**

```bash
/positive-reply-scoring  # on all campaigns active in the last 7 days
```

**Review:**

- Any `positive_interested` or `positive_soft` replies — these are leads wanting to engage
- Any `positive_referral` replies — these are people saying "talk to Jane instead"
- Any `negative_hostile` replies — red flag, investigate

**Action:**

- Respond to every `positive_interested` reply within 30 seconds of seeing it. Do not batch these — a reply feeling like it took minutes to return converts 3× better than one that took hours.
- For referrals: reach out to the referred person within 24h, mention the referrer by name.
- For hostile: apologize, remove from all lists, investigate why they were flagged for hostility (often signals bad targeting).

**Time management:** if you have >50 positive replies per week, you're at the scale where you should hand off to a dedicated closer/AE. Do that handoff Wednesday morning so they can work replies by Wednesday afternoon.

---

## Friday — Campaign retrospectives (20 min per campaign)

**Identify campaigns hitting their 21-day mark this week.** (21 days is the minimum for reply-rate signal to stabilize.)

For each one:

1. Run `/positive-reply-scoring --campaign-id=<id>`