Cold Email Weekly Rhythm

Every other Monday — Inbox lifecycle (30 min)

The rotation decision — what to cancel, what to promote, what to buy — comes from /inbox-lifecycle-manager. Do not eyeball the health CSV and retire whatever looks bad; that is how healthy domains get killed on an unlucky week.

Run (read-only, writes nothing):

# Within /inbox-lifecycle-manager:
npx tsx scripts/plan-lifecycle.ts --goal=<your daily send goal> --out=./lifecycle-$(date +%F) --snapshot

Review plan.csv and actions.csv:

• BURNED — under 1% reply on 200+ sends, 30+ days old. These are the real cancels.
• KEEP_BELOW_THRESHOLD — burned but nothing warm to replace it. Buy first, cancel next week.
• BOUNCE_FORK — bounce over 3%. Classify the codes in /deliverability-incident-response before condemning anything; it is usually the list, not the domain.
• TOO_YOUNG / INSUFFICIENT_DATA — not judged. Leave them alone.
• HELD — warmup is off, so reputation is unreadable. Report it; don't quietly switch warmup back on.

Action — after you have actually looked at the plan and said yes:

# Within /inbox-lifecycle-manager (dry run first, always):
npx tsx scripts/apply-lifecycle.ts --actions=./lifecycle-$(date +%F)/actions.csv
npx tsx scripts/apply-lifecycle.ts --actions=./lifecycle-$(date +%F)/actions.csv --apply

Tags only. Provider subscription cancellations are a separate, explicitly approved step in small verified batches — see that skill's references/cancellation-safety.md.

If the plan reports a capacity shortfall: start a domain purchase cycle via /zapmail-domain-setup-public now. It takes ~2 weeks from purchase to sendable and 30 days before the new domains can even be judged, so you are always buying a month ahead of the need.

Monthly (1st of the month) — Spam placement test (25 min active, test runs ~20 min)

Run: the Smart Delivery spam placement test from /email-deliverability-audit:

npx tsx scripts/run-spam-test.ts --campaign-id=<highest volume active campaign> --senders=100

(Will use G Suite + Office365 provider pools. 100 senders is a sweet spot — large enough for statistical signal, small enough to avoid API stalls.)

Review:

• Overall inbox placement % — target: ≥85%
• Spam filter triggers — which filters fired, which senders affected

Action:

• ≥90% inbox placement: great. Keep doing what you're doing.
• 80-90%: yellow. Look at spam-filter-details. Start fixing the highest-frequency trigger next week.
• <80%: red. Pause the campaign, run /deliverability-incident-response, fix before sending more.

Quarterly (first Monday of each quarter) — Experiment review (90 min)

Read all experiments/*.json from the last quarter. Identify patterns:

• Which campaigns had the highest positive reply rate?
• Which list sources produced the best leads?
• Which copy angles resonated (Observation → Implication? Pain? Social proof?)
• Which ICP archetypes converted best?

Output: a 1-page Q<N> retrospective saved to profiles/<slug>/retrospectives/<YYYY>-Q<N>.md with:

• Top 3 campaigns + what made them work
• Bottom 3 campaigns + what to avoid
• 3-5 hypotheses for next quarter's experiments
• Adjust ICP in client-profile.yaml if the data suggests a different segment performs better

Use the retrospective as input to design next quarter's experiments via /experiment-design.

What to skip

You do NOT need to:

• Check Smartlead every day (Wednesday sweep catches everything important)
• Obsess over daily reply-rate fluctuations (wait for 7-day averages)
• Read every positive reply in real time — set up notifications if you want immediacy, but the Wednesday sweep is the system

Daily pokes at your cold email stack are a procrastination pattern, not a performance pattern.

What to do next

This skill IS the loop. Your next action is the next calendar event on your list.

Or if you haven't run a campaign yet: skip this skill entirely. Come back after your first campaign hits the 7-day mark.

Related skills

• /email-deliverability-audit — the Monday and Monthly tasks
• /positive-reply-scoring — the Wednesday and Friday tasks
• /inbox-lifecycle-manager — the biweekly cancel / promote / buy decision
• /smartlead-inbox-manager — executes the approved tag changes
• /deliverability-incident-response — when the Monday audit flags something
• /experiment-design — the quarterly retrospective feeds into this
• /zapmail-domain-setup-public — when insurance pool runs low