Cold Email Starter Kit
The complete tutorial version of the cold email system: from zero to a launched campaign on Joel's real stack (AI Ark for lists, Dynadot for domains, Zapmail for inboxes, EmailBison for sending, Kitt for verifying outside lists). Walks through deliverability basics, infrastructure setup, offer strategy, copywriting, sequencing, list building, and the pre-launch QA gate, with realistic costs and timelines at every step. No prior cold email experience required.
Pipeline Playbooks · Open Source, MIT Licensed
The full end-to-end cold email manual: infrastructure, offer strategy, copywriting, sequencing, list building, and launch, on the exact stack Joel runs at his agency.
When to use this
- Starting cold email completely from scratch
- Learning the whole system step by step, not just running it
- Teaching someone else cold email
- Setting up a first campaign on a new stack
- Wanting the full manual instead of a guided flow
What it covers
- Deliverability basics: domains, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, warmup, volume math
- Infrastructure setup: Dynadot domains, Zapmail inboxes, EmailBison
- Offer and strategy doctrine, and the two base frameworks
- Copywriting and the 4-step sequence architecture
- List building with AI Ark, hygiene, and the MX check
- Realistic costs: roughly $300-500 for month one plus $599/mo EmailBison
- Joel-proven defaults: 20 domains x 2 inboxes, 1 email/day per sender
- Ten common beginner mistakes and the decision tree for where to start
Install just this skill
Every skill folder is self-contained. Run this from your project root to pull just this one into .claude/skills/cold-email-starter-kit/:
npx degit joelwylie7/cold-email-playbooks/.claude/skills/cold-email-starter-kit .claude/skills/cold-email-starter-kit
Want the whole system, not just one skill?
Related skills
Cold Email Kickoff
The guided start-here orchestrator: four questions asked one at a time, then it runs the right skills in order and hands off to the exact next step.
ICP Builder
A one-time conversational intake that scrapes your website, interviews you question by question, and writes profile.yaml, the single file every other skill in the system reads.
Domain & Inbox Setup
Takes you from zero to warmed, connected sending infrastructure: generate domains, buy them, route through Zapmail, provision inboxes, and sit through the 2 to 3 week warmup no one should skip.