Research local businesses, log them in a sheet and draft cold emails
Idea + starter prompt, not run by us yet
For: Freelancers and agencies who prospect small businesses by email
The poster linked Claude Code to Gmail and Google Sheets. It looked up businesses and logged each one in a sheet with email, location and notes specific to that business, then drafted a personal cold email for each. The person read the drafts and sent them by hand. Sending still went through a personal inbox and email checks were limited, with no reply numbers shared.
Steps
- Set up a separate sending domain and inbox rather than your personal Gmail.
- Create a sheet with columns for business, email, location and notes.
- Ask Claude Code to research and fill the sheet, then draft one email per row.
- Validate email addresses before sending, since the poster ran short on this.
- Read every draft and send each one yourself.
Starter prompt
Find [number] [type of business] in [area]. For each, prepare a proposed row for [sheet name] with name, public email, location and two notes about something specific to that business. Show me the rows and wait for my approval before writing to the sheet. Then write a short cold email draft for each row about [my offer], using the notes. Save drafts only. Do not send any email. Flag any row where the email address looks unreliable so I can check it first.
Original post: Reddit · found via agentusecases.ai. Written up in our own words. We haven't run it, so test it on made-up data first.