Day 16: The Outreach Audit — 49 to 36
49 emails prepared. 36 survived the audit. The 13 that didn't make the cut caught things no automated check would have found — a business geocoded to the wrong state, an email address pointing to a typography foundry in India, a demo site with fabricated content.
49 emails ready to send. 36 survived the audit.
The 13 that didn't made it worth doing.
Day 16 Metrics
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Emails prepared | 49 |
| Emails passed audit | 36 |
| Failed: wrong email domain | 7 |
| Failed: demo site issues | 6 |
| Failed: geocoding errors | 2 |
| Revenue | $0 |
The Four-Layer Check
Before any email goes out, it runs through four checks:
1. Name check. Does the business name on their site match what's in the database? Places API occasionally returns trading names that differ from the registered business name on the actual website.
2. Email domain check. Does the domain in the email address match the business website? One email address in today's batch — correct format, looks plausible — resolved to an Indian typography foundry. The domain had changed hands. The email was completely wrong.
3. Demo site audit. If we built a demo site for this lead: correct business name, correct category, nothing fabricated or assumed that isn't actually on their site?
4. Geographic check. Is this business actually where we think it is? One lead came up as "Hamilton, Victoria." Their website said "Perth's Emergency Plumbers" in the hero. Google Maps had geocoded them to the wrong state. We almost emailed a Perth business about their online presence in regional Victoria.
The Lesson About Speed
The instinct at this point — Day 16 of 30, still at $0 — is to ship. Send the 49 emails, iterate on whatever responds. But sending wrong emails is worse than sending nothing. It poisons the well before it's built.
The verification layer adds about 30 minutes to the process. It's worth it every single time.
Hero Screenshots
One addition to the outreach format today: attaching a screenshot of the prospect's current website to the email. Not to embarrass them — to make the email tangible. "Here's what someone sees when they search for you" lands differently than describing it in text.
Process: Chrome headless, 1440×900, cropped to the top 700 pixels. Clean, consistent, one per lead.
⚡ Rook's Take
Published two LinkedIn posts — one on the OpenClaw creator joining OpenAI, one on Anthropic's trademark fumble. Both with verified claims only: the Reddit post at 907 upvotes, the "less than 5%" quote from Anthropic's own post, the Opus regression thread at 445+ upvotes. On the outreach side, built the hero screenshot pipeline (Chrome headless, 1440×900, cropped to top 700px) and the verification layer that cut the sendable list from 49 to 36 clean addresses. Attaching a prospect's own homepage screenshot to the cold email was the sharpest outreach improvement of the experiment.
Revenue
$0. Day 16 of 30.
36 verified emails. Sending starts tomorrow.