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OUTBOUND THAT RESEARCHES BEFORE IT WRITES.

Autonomous Outbound Engine

Cold emails that read like you did the homework. Because the machine did.

Starts
Called by the feeder, one lead per run
Size
28 nodes · 40 connections
Tools
Exa, Anthropic Claude, Baserow, Webhook
Category
Sales Outreach · enterprise
Status
Running on our n8n
autonomous-outbound-engine.jsonRunning now

Drawn by n8n's own canvas from the workflow file, synced 2026-09-29. Click it to pan and zoom. Node settings, credentials, prompts and IDs are removed; names, layout and wiring are exactly as built.

Part 1 The problemWhy teams need this

01 · THE PROBLEM

Everyone knows personalised outreach wins. Nobody has the hours to research 500 companies a week. So teams send templates, reply rates sink, and the list burns. We built this for our own outbound: the research and the first draft happen automatically, and a human keeps the one decision that matters, whether this email should be sent at all.

Part 2 How it worksWhat it does, step by step

02 · WHAT IT DOES

You give it a lead. It reads the company's website and this month's news, works out which of your offers actually fits, and writes an email that proves it looked. Then it stops and waits. Nothing goes out until someone on your team says yes.

03 · HOW IT RUNS

Step by step, as built.

  1. Normalise the lead

    Leads arrive from different sources with different field names. The first step puts every lead into one shape.

  2. Research the company

    Two Exa calls: a news search for anything recent worth mentioning, and a crawl of the company's own site for what it actually sells.

  3. Refuse to write blind

    If the research came back empty or broken, the lead goes to the dead-letter queue instead of getting a generic email.

  4. Pick the angle

    Claude sorts the company into one of our customer buckets. A Switch node routes it to the prompt for that bucket, or skips it entirely.

  5. Write, check, queue

    Claude writes the email, the output is parsed and validated, a duplicate check runs, and the draft is added to the review queue in Baserow.

04 · WHERE A PERSON STAYS IN

The machine drafts. A person decides.

Every draft lands in a review queue. A person reads it and marks it Approved before a separate workflow is allowed to send it. No approval, no email.

05 · TOOLS AND APPS

Built around the systems already in the process.

ExaTrigger or source
Anthropic ClaudeProcessing and orchestration
BaserowProcessing and orchestration
WebhookDestination or delivery

06 · WHEN SOMETHING BREAKS

Failure is designed in.

  • 4nodes retry automatically when an external API fails.
  • 6nodes have their own error branch, so a failure is routed and handled, not just logged.
  • 4decision points (IF or Switch) check the data before it moves on.
  • ✓Anything unhandled triggers our central error workflow, so a crash gets reported instead of failing silently.

Standard on every build

  • Schema validation before downstream writes
  • Retry and error routes for external API failures
  • Duplicate-safe processing and idempotent updates
  • Human approval where the action carries business risk
  • Execution logging for support and audit review

Part 3 The impactWhat it's worth, and how we'd build yours

07 · PROJECTED IMPACT

What it should change in the business.

01Processes 500+ leads/weekProjected
023× reply rate vs generic templatesProjected
03Zero manual copy-pasteProjected

Projections for a typical deployment. The calculation below shows the math, and you can put in your own numbers.

08 · ROI CALCULATION

How it pays back in your business.

The starting numbers are a hypothetical deployment sized to the projections above. Change any of them to your own volumes and costs, and the math updates underneath.

Projected net value per year$206,2325,201 hours back per year
Full-time equivalent freed
2.9 people
Gross value
$208,032
Running cost
−$1,800
Return per $1 of running cost
$115.6

The math: 2,167 leads researched and drafted × 15 min × 12 months × 80% ÷ 60 = 5,201 hours a year × $40/hour = $208,032. Net value = gross value − $1,800 running cost a year.

09 · HOW WE'D BUILD YOURS

How we'd build yours.

  1. Discover: map the current process, systems, volumes, owners and exceptions.
  2. Design: define the canonical data model, approvals, retries and system boundaries.
  3. Build: implement credentials, nodes, validation and observable error routes.
  4. Prove: run controlled data through success, duplicate and failure scenarios.
  5. Operate: publish runbooks, ownership and measurable service levels.

SAME SYSTEM

Outbound that researches before it writes.

Two workflows that work as a pair. The feeder hands over leads one at a time. The engine researches each company, writes the email, and waits for a person to approve it.

YOUR VERSION

Want this, wired to your tools?

Tell us what the process looks like today: the systems, the volumes, the step everyone hates. We'll come back with the n8n version and where a person stays in charge.

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