AI BDR Agent

An autonomous AI-powered Business Development Representative that discovers leads, enriches contact data, scores opportunities, generates personalized cold emails, sends multi-touch follow-up sequences, and tracks engagement. Built entirely with n8n workflow automation, Claude AI, and Google Sheets.

What It Does

This system replaces the repetitive daily work of a BDR. It runs autonomously on a schedule, executing a 7-stage pipeline every weekday morning:

1. Lead Discovery -- Scrapes business listing platforms to find new prospects matching your ICP criteria (industry, location, tech stack signals)
2. Contact Enrichment -- Discovers owner/manager email addresses using multi-source enrichment (Hunter.io, web scraping, social profiles)
3. Lead Scoring -- AI-powered scoring across four dimensions: delivery signals, business quality, contact completeness, and tech stack fit
4. Email Generation -- Claude AI writes hyper-personalized cold emails using business name, cuisine type, review count, rating, and location context
5. Email Outreach -- Sends personalized emails in daily batches with proper send tracking and Gmail message ID capture for threading
6. Follow-Up Sequences -- 3-touch automated follow-up sequence (value insight, resource/calculator, breakup) threaded into the original email conversation
7. Open Tracking -- Custom webhook-based pixel tracking that logs every email open with timestamp and running count

Architecture

The system is orchestrated by an AI Agent that reads pipeline state, decides which directives to execute, and runs them sequentially:

Orchestrator (Daily 9:32 AM)
  |
  |-- D01: Lead Discovery        --> New leads into Google Sheet
  |-- D02: Enrichment Pipeline   --> Contact emails discovered
  |-- D03: Lead Scoring          --> AI scores each lead 0-100
  |-- D04: Email Generation      --> Claude writes personalized emails
  |-- D05: Email Outreach        --> Sends batch of 50/day (weekdays only)
  |
Follow-Up Engine (Daily 10:17 AM)
  |-- D06: Follow-Up Sequences   --> 3 follow-ups, 3 days apart, threaded
  |
Always On
  |-- Email Open Tracker         --> Webhook pixel tracks opens

Key Features

AI-Personalized Outreach

• Every email references the prospect's business name, review count, rating, and location
• Cuisine-specific pain point scenarios (15 categories with fallback)
• Tier-based ROI claims calibrated to business type (coffee shop vs steakhouse vs pizza)

Intelligent Follow-Up Sequences

• Follow-up #1: Pain point insight with competitor loss angle
• Follow-up #2: Value-add resource (ROI calculator link)
• Follow-up #3: Clean 2-sentence breakup
• All follow-ups thread into the original Gmail conversation using RFC 2822 In-Reply-To headers

Production Safeguards

• pause_outreach config flag to instantly stop all sends
• Weekday-only sending (restaurant owners are busy on weekends)
• Batch size limits to avoid spam triggers
• Empty item handling to prevent pipeline failures
• Continue-on-error for individual send failures

Email Open Tracking

• Custom 1x1 transparent pixel embedded in every email
• Webhook logs opens to Google Sheet with timestamp
• Running open count per lead (multiple opens = high interest signal)
• Cache-busting to prevent false negatives

Gmail Threading

• Captures Gmail message ID and thread ID on initial send
• Follow-ups use Gmail API with raw RFC 2822 messages
• Fetches original Message-ID header for proper In-Reply-To threading
• Follow-ups appear in the same conversation, not as new emails

Tech Stack

• n8n -- Workflow automation platform (self-hosted on DigitalOcean)
• Claude AI (Anthropic) -- Email generation, lead scoring, orchestrator decisions
• Google Sheets -- Lead database, config, analytics
• Gmail API -- Email sending with thread support
• Hunter.io -- Email discovery and verification
• Serper API -- Google search for enrichment
• Caddy -- Reverse proxy with automatic SSL
• Cloudflare -- DNS management

Workflows

File	Description	Nodes
d01-lead-discovery.json	Scrapes business platforms for new leads	26
d02-enrichment-pipeline.json	Multi-source email discovery	18
d03-lead-scoring.json	AI-powered lead scoring (0-100)	10
d04-email-generation.json	Claude writes personalized cold emails	12
d05-email-outreach.json	Batch email sending with tracking	11
d06-follow-up-sequences.json	Threaded 3-touch follow-up engine	17
orchestrator.json	AI agent that coordinates the pipeline	20
email-open-tracker.json	Webhook pixel for open tracking	8

Setup

Prerequisites

• Self-hosted n8n instance
• Google Sheets OAuth2 credentials
• Gmail OAuth2 credentials
• Anthropic API key
• Hunter.io API key
• Serper API key

Installation

1. Import each workflow JSON into your n8n instance
2. Configure credentials (search for YOUR_CREDENTIAL_ID placeholders)
3. Create a Google Sheet with a leads_master tab and a config tab
4. Set pause_outreach to TRUE in the config tab
5. Activate all workflows
6. Set pause_outreach to FALSE when ready to go live

Configuration

The config tab in your Google Sheet controls runtime behavior:

Key	Values	Description
pause_outreach	TRUE/FALSE	Emergency stop for all email sends
max_daily_sends	Number	Override batch size

Google Sheet Schema

The leads_master tab needs these columns (auto-created on first run):

lead_id, business_name, address, city, state, phone, website,
cuisine_type, google_rating, google_review_count, contact_name,
contact_email, score, status, email_subject, email_body,
email_sent_at, last_sent_date, send_count, gmail_message_id,
gmail_thread_id, followup_1_sent, followup_2_sent, breakup_sent,
email_opened_at, email_open_count

How the Follow-Up Engine Works

The follow-up system uses cuisine-specific scenario seeds to generate relevant pain points:

Coffee/cafe/bakery  --> Morning rush, catering calls, baristas on the bar
Pizza               --> Friday dinner rush, phone ringing, delivery orders lost
Chinese/Thai/Asian  --> Lunch rush takeout, large family orders
Italian             --> Private dining bookings, corporate dinner inquiries
American/grill      --> Happy hour overflow, catering for office events

Each follow-up email is threaded into the original conversation by:

1. Fetching the original message's RFC 2822 Message-ID header from Gmail API
2. Setting In-Reply-To and References headers in the raw email
3. Including the threadId in the Gmail API send payload

License

MIT

Author

Built by Mike Paulus as a production RevOps automation system.