Email outreach
How leads are found, read, scored and drafted: the lead stages, fit scores, contact finding and adding a lead by hand.
Email outreach is the heart of Larvabot: finding pages where your project genuinely belongs and writing to the people behind them. This page covers everything up to the draft. Reviewing and sending covers the rest.
#Where leads come from
Each email campaign has a list of search queries. Every few hours, Larvabot takes the next query, runs it through your search providers, and saves new pages as leads. Pages you've already seen, big platforms and obvious junk are filtered out.
You can also add leads yourself: paste a URL into Paste a page URL to add a lead on the Leads tab. Manual leads go through the same research and drafting.
#The lead stages
The strip at the top of the Leads tab counts leads in each stage. Click a stage to filter.
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| Found | A search result, not read yet |
| No contact | Read and a good fit, but no way to reach anyone was found |
| Contact found | A good fit with an email (or contact form). Ready to draft |
| Drafted | Emails written. Waiting on the Review tab |
| Approved | You said yes. Waiting for its send date and window |
| Sent | First email sent. Follow-ups pending |
| Replied | They replied. Follow-ups stopped |
| Linked | Their page now links to your site. The butterfly stage 🦋 |
| Skipped | Poor fit, bounced, or skipped by you. Hidden from the default list |
#Research: reading and scoring
For each found lead, Larvabot reads the page (direct fetch, or Jina Reader for JavaScript-heavy pages) and the AI scores its fit from 0 to 100 against your profile and the campaign's goal. Leads under 60 are skipped automatically.
For the rest, it records what you'd want to know before writing:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Page summary | What the page is about |
| Their audience | Who reads it |
| Why we're reaching out | Why your project fits here |
| Detail to mention | Something specific from the page, so the email couldn't be sent to anyone else |
| What to suggest | A concrete ask, picked from your profile's What you can offer |
| Entry point | The exact URL the email is about |
Open a lead to see and edit these. Re-research reads the page again.
#Finding a contact
Contacts come from the page first, because that's free, unlimited and usually right:
- The page itself: mailto links, visible addresses, the author byline and bio
- Nearby pages: contact, about and "work with me" pages, plus contact forms and social profiles
- Free finders, only if nothing turned up: Prospeo (when the author's name is known), the Tomba author finder, Hunter, then Tomba domain search
- MX check: every address's domain is checked for a mail server, so you don't write to dead domains
When only a contact form exists, the lead is marked for sending via contact form: you paste the draft into their form yourself and click Mark sent (via form).
You can always type a contact in yourself on the lead: Name, Email or Contact form URL, then Save.
#Drafting
For each lead with a contact, the AI writes three emails:
- First email: short, names the entry page and the detail, makes one small suggestion
- Follow-up 1: about 4 days later, a gentle nudge
- Follow-up 2: about 9 days after the first, a polite last note
Drafts use your profile's tone and cautions, and end with your signature and the opt-out line. Want another go? Redraft writes a fresh set.
#Running steps by hand
The hourly schedule does all of this for you, a few leads at a time. To speed things up, use the buttons at the top of the Leads tab:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1 · Find leads | Runs the next search query for this project |
| 2 · Research 3 | Reads and scores three found leads |
| 3 · Draft 3 | Writes emails for three leads with a contact |
Each lead also has its own Draft now, Skip and Restore buttons.
Why so few at a time?
Free AI tiers limit requests per minute. Three at a time finishes in well under a minute and never trips a rate limit. The hourly schedule keeps a steady trickle going without you.
#When a lead stalls
If something goes wrong (the page is down, the AI times out), the lead shows a Last error. Most fix themselves on the next run. If one keeps failing, skip it or add the contact yourself. Troubleshooting