Outreach without being a spammer
The rules Larvabot is built around: small batches, personal notes, easy opt-outs and honest community replies. And how to keep your accounts safe.
Outreach only works when people are glad to hear from you. Larvabot is built to be slow, personal and polite, and these docs will keep nudging you the same way. Here's the thinking behind it, and the few rules worth following even when the tool would let you break them.
#The principles Larvabot is built on
| Principle | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| You approve everything | No email leaves without your click. No reply is ever posted by Larvabot. |
| Slow on purpose | One email a day per campaign by default, weekdays only, inside a send window. |
| Specific, not templated | Every draft names the page and a concrete detail it's about, and only suggests what your profile says you offer. |
| Easy to say no | Every email ends with a one-word opt-out and carries a List-Unsubscribe header. A reply stops follow-ups instantly. |
| Honest in communities | Reply drafts say you built the thing. |
| Good sending hygiene | SPF, DKIM, DMARC and MX are checked for every sender before you start. |
#Email: a few habits that pay off
- Edit the first line. The AI gets the facts right, but you know what you actually liked about their post. One human sentence beats three perfect ones.
- Keep the ask small. "Would it be useful to add X to your list?" gets answers. "Can we hop on a call?" gets archived.
- Don't raise the daily limit early. Start at one a day per campaign. Once your replies look healthy and nothing bounces, go to two or three.
- Skip freely. A skipped lead costs nothing. A bad email costs your domain's reputation.
Your domain's reputation is the real budget
Free tiers renew every month. A domain that lands in spam folders takes much longer to recover. If bounces or complaints appear, slow down before anything else. Sending setup
#Communities: how not to get banned
Every platform has its own rules on self-promotion, and moderators are quick to act. Larvabot shows you where people are asking, and a pace that keeps accounts safe, but what you post is your call.
- Answer the question first. Your reply should help even if they never click your link.
- Say you made it. "I built X for exactly this" is fine almost everywhere. Pretending to be a happy customer isn't fine anywhere.
- Check the subreddit's rules. Larvabot looks up each subreddit's self-promotion rules weekly and shows them next to the thread. Subreddit rules
- Keep to the suggested pace. The Conversations tab suggests a daily number per platform (for example 3 on Reddit, 2 on Hacker News) and warns you when you've passed it.
- Use an account with history. New accounts with no activity get filtered on Reddit and flagged on most forums.
Never ask for upvotes
On Reddit and Hacker News, asking friends to upvote (or using several accounts) is the quickest way to a site-wide ban. It also doesn't work.
#Contacts you already know
Friends, colleagues and former clients are often the best first users. The Contacts queue drafts a personal message for each person, but you press send in your own WhatsApp, SMS, Telegram or email app, one at a time. Keep it personal and say why you thought of them.