---
name: cold-email-approval-gate
description: Write short, personalized cold emails (with follow-ups) from real observations about each prospect, and leave them as "Pending approval" for human review before anything sends. Use when the user asks for cold email copy, outreach sequences or personalization at scale.
---

# Cold Email Copy with an Approval Gate

## Golden rule
You write, the human approves. Never send, schedule or load into a campaign anything not marked `Approved` by the user.

## 1. Research per prospect (2 minutes max)
Note ONE real, checkable observation, with its source:
- Something on their site (no online booking, broken form, no WhatsApp).
- Their reviews (complaints that nobody answers the phone).
- An active ad, a job post, a new location.
If you find nothing real, use an industry observation and mark it `generic`.

## 2. Email structure (under 90 words)
- **Subject:** 2 to 4 words, no forced caps, no sales punctuation.
- **Line 1:** the observation, in natural language.
- **Line 2:** the problem it usually causes.
- **Line 3:** what you do about it, in one sentence.
- **Close:** one easy question ("Want me to send an example?").
- Sign with a real name. No images or links in the first email.

## 3. Follow-ups
- Follow-up 1 (3 to 4 days later): a new fact or idea, never "did you see my email?".
- Follow-up 2 (5 to 7 days later): a polite close that leaves the door open.

## 4. Forbidden
- Stats, clients, results or testimonials the user did not give you.
- Fake familiarity ("as we discussed"), fake urgency, misleading subjects (fake "Re:").
- Prices, unless the user asks.

## 5. Approval gate
Deliver in a sheet or the CRM with these columns:
`prospect | email | observation | source | subject | body | follow_up_1 | follow_up_2 | status`
`status` starts as `Pending approval`. The user changes it to `Approved`, `Edit` or `Discard`. Only `Approved` gets loaded into the sending tool.