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Use case • Business Strategy & Leadership

Multi-vertical podcast booking engine

Engineered a multi-niche outreach system that identifies qualified podcasts across four distinct verticals (AI systems, spiritual coaching, business & entrepreneurship, and mompreneur), crafts host-specific pitches referencing recent episodes and guests, classifies every reply with AI, and drafts on-brand responses using lane-aware voice selection. Across 2,400 outreach emails the campaign delivered a 15% reply rate (3x industry average) with over half of all replies expressing genuine interest in booking.

15%
Reply rate
55.56%
Positive reply rate
$600k-$1M
Pipeline generated
3× higher
vs. industry avg
n8n
Instantly
OpenAI
Notion
Calendly
PostHog
Runs 24/7
$600k-$1M projected pipeline

Why we built this

A published author and business strategist needed a scalable system to book podcast appearances across four distinct audience verticals without sacrificing the personalised touch that gets hosts to say yes.

Multi-niche podcast discovery
Builds a filtered list of podcasts across four verticals: AI systems, spiritual coaching, business & entrepreneurship, and mompreneur. Each show is scored by episode count, listener thresholds, guest history, and niche-specific topic alignment so outreach only goes to shows where the client is a genuine fit.
Personalised outreach at scale
Each pitch references the host's past episodes, recent guests, and talking points relevant to the client's expertise in that specific niche. No generic templates. Every email reads like it was researched and written by hand.
Automatic reply classification
When a host replies, the AI classifies the response as positive, negative, or auto-reply, and routes it accordingly. No manual triage needed.
Lane-aware AI-drafted replies
For positive replies, the agent drafts a contextual response using campaign-aware lane selection. Each vertical gets its own voice profile (business strategy tone vs. spiritual coaching tone vs. entrepreneurship tone) so replies always match the audience context.
Booking detection & CRM updates
When a lead books through the Calendly link, the system automatically detects it via UTM tracking, updates the CRM status, and adds the event to the calendar.
Full pipeline in Notion
Every lead lives in a Notion CRM with conversation history, draft replies, classification, and one-click approve-and-send. The entire daily workflow is: open Notion, review, click Approve.

Before vs after

Before

Relied on personal networking, word-of-mouth referrals, and occasional social media DMs to land podcast appearances. No structured pipeline, no tracking system, and no way to pursue multiple niches simultaneously. A handful of bookings per quarter despite 10+ hours per week spent on manual research and one-off pitches.

After

The system discovers and qualifies podcasts across all four verticals, sends niche-aware personalised outreach at scale, classifies every reply, drafts on-brand responses with lane-specific voice selection, and tracks the full pipeline in Notion. The client reviews drafts and clicks "Approve". That is the entire daily workflow. Saves 15+ hours per week while reaching 10x more podcasts across AI, spiritual coaching, business, and mompreneur audiences.

Full campaign
2,400 outreach emails
Qualified pipeline
580 podcasts sourced

Campaign results

A production campaign across 2,400 outreach emails spanning four podcast verticals, with reply rates 3x the industry average.

2,400
Outreach emails
Full production campaign
15%
Reply rate
Industry avg for cold email: ~5%
55.56%
Positive reply rate
~200 positive replies projected
$600k-$1M
Projected pipeline
Based on $3k-$5k per booking opportunity

How the speaking pitcher works

A multi-workflow system orchestrated in n8n: from niche-segmented outreach through Instantly to lane-aware AI-drafted replies and Calendly booking detection.

1. Build a qualified podcast list

Podcasts are sourced across all four target verticals and filtered by activity (under 100 episodes), audience size (minimum monthly listeners), guest history, and English language. Each show is scored for niche-specific topic alignment with the client's expertise.

4 niche verticals • 580 qualified from ~1,500 candidates
Step 1

2. Launch personalised outreach

Instantly runs the campaign with warmed-up sending infrastructure. Each email is personalised with references to the host's recent episodes, past guests, and niche-relevant talking points.

Instantly • Warmed inboxes • Niche-aware pitches
Step 2

3. Capture and classify replies

When a host replies, Instantly fires a webhook. n8n extracts the reply content, classifies it as Positive, Negative, or Auto-Reply using GPT-4o Mini, and cleans the data for downstream processing.

Instantly webhook • GPT-4o Mini classification
Step 3

4. Create or update the CRM entry

New leads get a Notion CRM entry with full conversation context. Returning leads have their conversation history appended. Negative replies are logged but no draft is generated.

Notion CRM • Conversation history
Step 4

5. Draft an on-brand reply

For positive replies, GPT-4o drafts a response using the client's niche-specific brand voice guide with campaign-aware lane selection. The draft is saved to the CRM with status "Needs Approval".

GPT-4o • Lane-aware voice • 4 niche profiles
Step 5

6. Approve and send

The client opens Notion, reviews the draft, edits if needed, and clicks "Approve & Send". The reply is sent through Instantly and logged back to the conversation history.

One-click approve • Sent via Instantly
Step 6

7. Track bookings automatically

When a lead books through the UTM-tagged Calendly link, n8n detects the booking, matches it to the CRM record by email, updates the status to "Booked", and adds the event to the calendar.

Calendly detection • UTM attribution • Auto-status update
Step 7

Tech stack

n8n
Orchestrates all workflows: reply handling, drafting, sending, and booking tracking.
Instantly
Cold email campaign engine with inbox warm-up and deliverability management.
OpenAI
GPT-4o Mini for reply classification, GPT-4o for on-brand reply drafting.
Notion
CRM, settings, approval workflow, conversation history, and booking calendar.
Calendly
Booking destination with UTM tracking for end-to-end attribution.
PostHog
Analytics dashboard: reply volume, response time, conversion rates, and pipeline stages.
Analytics & attribution

Every reply, classification, and booking event is tracked with PostHog. UTM-tagged Calendly links enable end-to-end attribution from the first outreach email to a confirmed booking.

PostHog analytics
UTM attribution

Control & deliverability

Designed to protect sender reputation while keeping the client in full control of every message that goes out.

Human approval by default

Every AI-drafted reply goes through the Notion approval workflow before sending. Nothing leaves the outbox without the client clicking "Approve & Send". Auto-reply mode is available but opt-in.

Email reputation protection

Sending infrastructure uses warmed-up inboxes with deliverability monitoring. All recipient emails are validated with MillionVerifier to keep bounce rates under 1% and protect sender reputation.

Configurable brand voice

The brand voice guide is fully editable in Notion, including tone, lane selection rules, guardrails, and CTA strategy. Changes take effect immediately without touching any workflow code.

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