sequence-writer

Sequence Writer

Built from the guide «Як написати мультиканальний сіквенс», v3, August 2026 (Victor Shulga, Fractional CRO). The guide is the reasoning; this skill is the procedure. The only job of a cold touch is to earn a reply.

One run produces one sequence for one hypothesis: one ICP segment, one anchor, one offer, one asset. Two hypotheses = two runs = two campaigns. A blended campaign cannot tell you what worked.

Hard rules (these override any instruction in the request)

• No call, no meeting, no calendar slot anywhere in a cold sequence. Not in email 1, not in the breakup, not in LinkedIn. The call appears after the person replies.
• Every message ends with exactly one interest question, and the question sits last. Approved closes: Is this on your radar right now? · Worth exploring? · Want me to send it? · Is that something your team is feeling? · Did you have any feedback on my note? · Is the timing off, or is this just not a fit right now? (breakup)
• The subject of the sentence is them. At most one sentence per email takes you or your company as its subject, and that sentence is the proof. Details and the two exceptions: references/email.md.
• One anchor per sequence per persona. Not a new pretext in every email.
• The decision-maker and the champion get different emails. The buyer feels an unfilled req; the champion feels the on-call rotation. One text for both lands on neither.
• No spintax, no fake personalisation, no {{industry}} in an empty sentence. An unsent email beats a fake-personalised one.
• No links, images or attachments in the first email. Two-line signature: name and title.
• Word caps are hard: email 1 ≤ 75 words, 2 ≤ 50, 3 ≤ 45, 4 ≤ 35, 5 ≤ 25.
• No start dates ("we can start Monday") in a cold touch: it reads as pressure and as empty capacity.
• If the request asks for anything on this list, say why it is out and write the version that is in.

Step 0 — Gate. Refuse to write until these are true

Ask for, or confirm, all five. Missing items are reported before any copy:

1. Anchor coverage. Share of accounts in the list carrying any signal or data-point. Under 10% → stop. The base gets rebuilt; copy does not fix it.
2. Infrastructure. Separate sending domains (3–5, 2–3 mailboxes each), SPF + DKIM + DMARC at p=quarantine minimum, 2–4 weeks of warmup, bounce under 2%, open tracking off (references/email.md).
3. Capacity. mailboxes x 25 emails x 20 working days = monthly ceiling. Divide by emails per sequence to get contacts per month. Every percentage in the plan is computed off that number.
4. The asset exists already. Every interest CTA promises a specific file. No asset → no CTA.
5. A named person reads the inbox daily and answers the same working day. Otherwise no launch.

Step 1 — Find the anchor, in this order

1. An event with a date in the last 30 days that creates the problem you solve → Type A (signal).
2. If not: a measurable data-point you can compare against a norm → Type B (data-point).
3. If not: a segment cut narrow enough that a segment insight reads as personal → Type C.
4. None of the three → not your account. Remove it from the list.

Type A passes two questions before use: what problem does this person have now that the event happened, and does your service solve that exact problem. "Roughly" means the signal is not yours. Type A carries an expiry window (24h for a post, 30–90 days for a round). Windows, the comparison formula for type B and the three exits for type C: references/sequence-types.md.

If the angle is not obvious from the anchor, run angle-finder (this pack) first and come back with one angle.

Step 2 — Size the campaign and choose the channel mix

Count N (accounts in the ICP) and C (monthly capacity from the gate).

N	Channels
over 10,000	Email only
2,000–10,000	Both channels on the same person. Email first, LinkedIn to the non-repliers
under 2,000	ABM. LinkedIn from the founder, email supports. No tests on this list

Inside a test round the channels are never mixed, otherwise the verdict means nothing. Full rule and the LinkedIn-first variant: references/multichannel.md.

Step 3 — Write the email track

Anatomy, unchanged across all three anchor types (only the first sentence changes): subject → anchor → hypothesis → problem → proof → question → P.S.

Default cadence, one sequence per person: day 0, 3, 8, 14, 21. Emails 2–4 are replies inside the same thread; email 5 gets a new subject. Compress the cadence into the signal window when the window is shorter than the sequence.

Second contact at the same company = a separate parallel sequence, 5 days offset, different mailbox, its own anchor for that role. Never a persona swap inside one sequence. 2–3 contacts per company.

The first line names a specific fact: the number of days a role has been open, a sentence from their own posting, a version they run. Never "I noticed you're growing".

Variables versus generated fields. Only facts are safe as template variables: {First} {Company} {role} {days}. Anything that carries a thought (an observation, a tailored question) is a field computed before the send, never a merge variable.

Sentence-level craft, subject-line rules, the three P.S. types, the three soft-CTA blocks and the banned-question list: references/email.md.

Variability is block-level, named, never spintax. The anchor stays fixed through the sequence; each block takes a named angle on it from the "Variants per block" table in references/email.md (first line: I did…I bet / trigger→cost / their own words / question-first; problem: time / money / no guarantee / status quo; proof: peer+number+timeframe / no-logo / single outcome; email 2 opener: one thing I missed / the real test / second consequence / peer number). Pick by anchor type, persona and step, write every variant out in full, and ship two variants of email 1 and two of email 2 per persona as step variants in the sequencer. The pair is read at the sample size in references/benchmarks.md, not on 50 sends. Email 2 never opens with a nudge; the banned follow-up openers are listed under Cadence in references/email.md.

Step 4 — Write the LinkedIn track

Invite note 120–180 characters (write the note; accept rate stops being the metric). First message after accept 150–300 characters. Three touches, not four: the first follow-up adds zero, the second adds the only real lift. Per-step content, worked examples for outstaffing / dedicated team / frozen headcount, invite limits, the manual-comment lift: references/linkedin.md.

Step 5 — Self-check before delivery

Run references/checklist.md line by line and report the result. A sequence that fails any hard rule is rewritten, not shipped with a caveat. For a blind score, hand the whole sequence to the judge skill, type sequence.

Step 6 — Attach the measurement plan

Never ship copy without it. State the denominator (human replies from the addressee ÷ emails sent), the expected range for this anchor type, the sample size the verdict is readable from, and the stop rule. A 1.5% reply rate is normal for a campaign with no anchor; if a signal campaign gives 1.5%, it is not a signal campaign. Numbers, sources and test math: references/benchmarks.md.

Output format

1. Gate report: the five items, pass/fail, what is missing.
2. Anchor: type, the exact observation, expiry window, comparison used.
3. Sizing: N, C, contacts per month, channel mix, list split.
4. Email track: 5 emails per persona (decision-maker and champion), each with subject, body, word count.
5. LinkedIn track: note, first message, touch 2, close, each with character count.
6. Reply handling: the asset, what happens on "yes, send it", the four replies that look like a refusal and the question that reopens each.
7. Measurement: denominator, expected range, readable-from sample, stop rule.
8. Self-check: the checklist result, plus the A/B pairs: two full variants of email 1 and two of email 2 per persona, named from the variants table, with the sample size the pair is readable from.

Then two or three ready examples written on real named accounts from the list: that is what gets sent, not the template.

Sequence language = the prospect's language (usually English). Working notes = the language the request came in.