← Viktor Madič

Paid-inbound autoresponder

5 min

to a researched reply on every paid lead.

Paid marketplace leads sat in a shared inbox.

It replied within 5 minutes with research on the company and a matching case study, then sent up to 5 follow-ups in the buyer’s working hours, with a colleague in hidden copy. It ran from April to October 2026.

It is the one system of mine that sent mail without my approving it first: the lead had just asked for a vendor, and a colleague was in hidden copy on every message.

How it works

  1. Read the leadcompany, site, service, goalsFrom: the shared inbox: marketplace notices
  2. Research the companyalert if the research layer diesFrom: Public web search
  3. Claude writes the replypicks a matching referenceFrom: approved references, public portfolio only
  4. Send within 5 minutescolleague in Bcc, Slack noteTo: Reply to the lead
  5. Follow up, up to 5 timesbuyer’s working hours, weekdays
  6. A colleague takes overany reply stops the sequenceFrom: a reply by mail, a marketplace message or a calendar bookingTo: the sequence stops and the lead is theirs
Solid box: rules and code. Dashed box: Claude. Yellow box: a person decides.Steps marked Claude are done by Claude. The rest is rules and code. Yellow is where a person decides.

What broke and what I changed

  • For three weeks it wrote without research after a key rotation.

    The new keys never reached the server, and the fallback switched keys on only one error code while the search providers return several. An alert existed, but it could not tell a dead research layer from a company with no web footprint. I fixed the cause and added an alert for a dead research layer and 10 regression tests.

  • Production ran on older code than I thought.

    Only some files were copied by hand at each deploy, for months. Now one script deploys exactly what is in version control, refuses a dirty tree, compares file fingerprints and rolls back if the health check fails.

  • Automatic echoes from the marketplace counted as replies.

    They ended the sequences of some leads early. I filter them out now.

  • It worked technically and still didn’t pay.

    Few paid leads ever replied. The data showed about half of them were junk, and I used it to get $2,860 back in credits.

Guardrails

  • A colleague is in hidden copy on every message.

    They can take over at any moment.

  • References come only from the approved public portfolio.

    Tests guard statements that once turned out to be false.

  • Follow-ups are capped and timed.

    Up to 5, only in the recipient’s working hours, never at weekends, and any reply stops the sequence.

  • Failures are loud and contained.

    Alerts go to Slack with a cooldown. A lead that fails repeatedly is skipped, and data is written atomically with a backup.

Numbers

5 min
to a researched reply on every paid lead
Up to 5
follow-ups in the buyer’s working hours
Apr–Oct
2026: in production, then switched off
$2,860
credited back after I showed the data: about half of the paid leads were junk
3 weeks
it wrote without research after a key rotation
10
regression tests added after that