121 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
121 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
# Backlink Outreach Workflow Guide
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This guide walks through the complete Backlink Outreach lifecycle from campaign creation to analytics review.
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## 1) Create a Campaign
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Campaigns group your leads, outreach attempts, replies, and analytics together. Every action in the system belongs to a campaign.
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!!! tip "Best practice"
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Create one campaign per target vertical or client. For example: "SaaS Growth Blogs Q3" or "Fitness Influencer Outreach".
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**What to validate before continuing:**
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- Campaign name is descriptive enough to distinguish from others.
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- You have a clear keyword or niche for discovery.
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## 2) Discover Opportunities
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Use AI-powered discovery to find websites that accept guest posts in your niche.
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!!! note "How discovery works"
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The system combines **Exa neural search** (semantic understanding) with **DuckDuckGo** (broad coverage), scrapes full pages, extracts contact emails, and scores each opportunity for quality and guest-post likelihood.
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**Recommended sequence:**
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1. Enter a keyword (e.g., "AI marketing", "SaaS growth").
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2. Click **Discover** to search across multiple query patterns ("write for us", "guest contributor", etc.).
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3. Review results — check quality score, confidence score, and email detection badges.
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4. Select a campaign and click **Save to Campaign** to persist leads.
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**What to look for:**
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- Quality score > 60% — the site is relevant to your keyword.
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- Confidence score > 50% — the site likely accepts guest posts.
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- "Has guidelines" badge — the site has a dedicated guest post page.
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- "Email found" badge — a contact email was extracted.
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## 3) Compose Outreach Emails
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Use the AI email composer to craft personalized outreach messages.
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!!! note "AI generation options"
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- **Generate**: Create an email from a topic, tone, and optional template.
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- **Personalize**: Tailor an email to a specific lead (name, site, content topic).
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- **Subject Lines**: Get 5-10 AI-suggested subject line variants.
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- **Follow-up**: Generate a polite follow-up referencing the original email.
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**Recommended sequence:**
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1. Choose a template or start fresh.
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2. Enter your topic and target site (optional).
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3. Select a tone (Professional, Friendly, Casual, Formal).
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4. Click **Generate with AI** to create a subject + body.
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5. Optionally click **Suggest** for subject line variants.
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6. Use **Personalize** to tailor the email to a specific lead.
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7. Preview the email in the live preview pane.
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## 4) Send Outreach
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Once your email is composed, navigate to the Leads tab to send outreach.
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!!! warning "Policy validation"
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Every send is validated against your daily caps, suppression list, and GDPR rules. EU-domain leads automatically use "consent" as legal basis; others use "legitimate_interest".
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**What happens when you send:**
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1. Policy is validated (caps, suppression, idempotency, legal basis).
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2. An outreach attempt is recorded in the database.
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3. If approved, the email is sent via SMTP with TLS.
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4. Send counters are incremented **only after successful delivery**.
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5. Idempotency key is marked to prevent duplicate sends.
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6. Lead status is updated to "contacted".
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**Daily limits:**
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- 100 emails per user per day.
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- 20 emails per domain per day.
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## 5) Monitor Replies
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After sending outreach, monitor replies through the IMAP-powered inbox.
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!!! note "Auto-classification"
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Replies are automatically classified as:
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- **Interested** — positive language detected ("sounds good", "tell me more").
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- **Not interested** — negative language ("not interested", "unsubscribe").
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- **Out of office** — auto-responder detected.
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- **Replied** — general reply without strong signals.
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**What to do with classified replies:**
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- **Interested**: Move the lead to "replied" status, then "placed" after publication.
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- **Not interested**: Mark as "bounced" or leave as-is. The sender is auto-added to suppression.
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- **Out of office**: Schedule a follow-up for after their return date.
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- **Replied**: Read and manually classify, then update lead status.
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## 6) Track Analytics
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Monitor campaign performance with built-in analytics.
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**Key metrics:**
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- **Send Volume**: Daily email send trend over time.
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- **Response Rate**: Percentage of sent emails that received a reply.
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- **Placement Rate**: Percentage of leads that resulted in a published post.
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- **Conversion Funnel**: Lead count by status stage (discovered → contacted → replied → placed).
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- **Reply Classification**: Breakdown of reply types.
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**Export options:**
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- Export Leads as CSV for CRM import.
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- Export Attempts for audit trails.
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- Export Replies for analysis in spreadsheets.
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!!! tip "CSV safety"
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All CSV exports are sanitized against formula injection — cells starting with `=`, `+`, `-`, or `@` are automatically escaped.
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## 7) Iterate and Optimize
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Use analytics insights to improve your outreach:
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1. **Low response rate?** Try different subject lines or tones.
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2. **High bounce rate?** Improve lead quality filters during discovery.
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3. **Low placement rate?** Refine your pitch personalization.
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4. **Many "not interested"?** Adjust your target niche or messaging.
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---
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*Now you know the full workflow! Dive deeper with [Campaign Management](campaign-management.md) or [Discovery](discovery.md).*
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