Problem
My client, a cybersecurity SaaS company serving over 2 million users, was facing a critical growth challenge. Traditional paid acquisition was costing them $600 per user, making sustainable growth nearly impossible. They needed high-quality, targeted traffic from tech-savvy audiences, but manual content partnership development was too slow and resource-intensive to scale.
Results
- 99% CAC Reduction: From $600 per user through paid ads to under $10 per user through organic partnerships
- 25-30 Qualified Conversations Monthly: Consistent pipeline of partnership opportunities with respected tech publications
- 15% Response Rate: High engagement from contextually relevant, personalized outreach to active journalists
- 400-500 Articles Processed: Automated monitoring and analysis across 4 major tech publications every hour
Before vs After
Before: Manual tracking of tech publications, reading hundreds of articles weekly, researching each author individually, drafting generic outreach emails. Full-time team requirement with inconsistent results and high CAC.
After: Fully automated 52-step workflow monitors articles hourly, extracts content with structured parsing, enriches author data automatically, generates contextually personalized outreach, and tracks all interactions. Runs continuously at under $200 monthly operational cost.
Client Goal
Scale content partnership acquisition to secure regular coverage in major tech publications without adding headcount. Generate consistent pipeline of qualified partnership conversations with journalists who actively cover their space, while keeping acquisition costs minimal and maintaining high personalization quality.
Challenges
- Volume vs Quality Tradeoff: Needed to monitor hundreds of articles across multiple publications daily without missing relevant content or wasting resources on low-value targets
- Author Research Bottleneck: Finding professional contact information for tech journalists required manual LinkedIn searches, email verification, and context gathering that didn't scale
- Personalization at Scale: Generic templates got ignored, but writing contextual outreach for each author based on their specific article and background was impossibly time-consuming
- Reputation Risk Management: Accidentally double-contacting authors or sending irrelevant outreach to journalists could permanently damage relationships with influential publishers
Solution Overview
We built a comprehensive 52-step automation system that operates as a continuous partnership development engine. The workflow monitors major tech publications through RSS feeds, uses intelligent scraping to extract clean article content, applies AI-powered filtering for relevance and authority, enriches author data through professional databases, maintains anti-spam memory to protect relationships, and generates highly personalized outreach that references specific articles and author backgrounds. Everything runs on self-hosted n8n, keeping monthly costs under $200 for unlimited processing.
How It Works
- RSS Feed Monitoring: System checks 4 major tech publications every hour through RSS feeds. All articles merge into single processing stream regardless of source, enabling scalable monitoring of 10, 20, or more publications without workflow complexity.
- Content Extraction with Firecrawl: Each article gets processed through Firecrawl's structured parsing. Tech articles contain embedded code blocks, screenshots, and complex layouts. Basic scrapers return messy HTML. Firecrawl delivers clean, readable markdown that AI can properly analyze.
- Double-Layer Quality Filter: First filter evaluates article relevance using AI against specific domain criteria. Articles about adjacent topics get filtered out immediately. Second filter checks source authority. TechCrunch, Wired, and major industry blogs pass. Random personal sites and low-traffic blogs get excluded. This prevents wasted outreach on content that won't drive meaningful traffic.
- Author Enrichment via Apollo: System extracts author names from articles, runs them through Apollo's B2B database to validate business emails, pull LinkedIn profiles, gather professional background, and collect company information. Transforms basic bylines into comprehensive professional profiles.
- Anti-Spam Memory Check: Before sending anything, workflow queries Google Sheets database with three safety checks: contacted within last 90 days, marked as no-contact, or draft already exists in Gmail. This protects reputation with journalists who have real audiences.
- Contextual Outreach Generation: GPT-4o-mini writes emails using the specific article just published, author's professional background from Apollo, and collaboration offer details. Result isn't template-based. It's "I read your piece on cloud security trends. You mentioned authentication challenges in hybrid environments - that's exactly what our platform solves. Would you be interested in enterprise tier access for a potential follow-up?"
Key Features
- Hourly Publication Monitoring: RSS feed integration tracks 4 major tech outlets automatically, with capacity to scale to 20+ publications in single workflow stream
- Structured Content Parsing: Firecrawl extracts clean article text from complex layouts, code blocks, and embedded media for accurate AI analysis
- Intelligent Quality Filtering: Two-stage AI evaluation checks both topic relevance and publication authority before processing authors
- Professional Data Enrichment: Apollo integration delivers validated business emails, LinkedIn profiles, and career history for each author
- Relationship Protection System: Google Sheets memory prevents duplicate contacts, respects opt-outs, and tracks all outreach history permanently
Tools Used
n8n
Self-hosted workflow orchestration platform powering all 52 automation steps with zero monthly licensing fees
Firecrawl
Intelligent web scraping API that extracts clean, structured content from complex tech articles for AI analysis
Apollo
B2B data enrichment platform delivering verified business emails and professional backgrounds for author contacts
GPT-4o-mini
AI model powering relevance filtering, authority evaluation, and contextually personalized outreach generation
Google Sheets
Anti-spam memory database tracking all contact history, opt-outs, and outreach timing to protect relationships
Gmail
Outreach delivery platform managing personalized email drafts, automated follow-ups, and response tracking
Video Walkthrough
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