Cold Email Prompts: Find Clients and Build Your Outreach Dashboard

These are the exact prompts I use to find businesses worth emailing, and to build the dashboard I run my outreach from. Copy them, change the words in capitals, and run them in Claude with web search on.

Step 0: no portfolio yet? Pick a niche and a city first

Skip this if you already know your niche. If you’re starting from zero, this gives you one niche and one city to begin with.

📋 Prompt 1 — pick your niche and city — copy everything in the box below

I build websites and I don't have a client portfolio yet. Help me pick one niche and one city to start cold outreach in, in COUNTRY. Use web search so the suggestions are current.

Suggest 5 niches where businesses depend on local Google searches, where one job is worth $1,000 or more to them, and where lots of independent owners still run dated or thin websites (for example roofing, remodeling, dermatology, dental, HVAC, family law).

For each niche, suggest 3 mid-size cities (a metro of roughly 150,000 to 1 million people) with plenty of independent businesses but not a crowded web-agency market.

Give it to me as a table: niche, city, the exact search a customer would type, and why that city.

Then tell me which single niche and city you'd start with, and why, in two sentences.

Then build one homepage concept for a real business in that niche. That concept becomes your first portfolio piece. “Here’s what I’d build for a roofer” beats “I build websites” every time.

Already know your niche? Just find cities

📋 Prompt 2 — find cities for a niche you already have — copy everything in the box below

My niche is NICHE and I build websites for them. I need US cities to start cold outreach in. Use web search.

Suggest 8 mid-size cities (metro of roughly 150,000 to 1 million people) where:
- there are plenty of independent businesses in this niche, not mostly franchises or hospital-owned groups
- lots of them still run dated or thin websites
- the local web-agency market isn't crowded

Give it to me as a table: city, state, why this city, and the exact search a customer there would type to find this service.

Then tell me which 3 you'd start with, and why, in one line each.

Step 1: the research prompt

Fill in three things before you run it:

• NICHE — the kind of business: roofing contractors, kitchen remodelers, dermatology practices
• CITY — one city with its state: Pittsburgh, PA
• MAIN SERVICE — what their customers type into Google: roof repair, kitchen remodeling, dermatologist

📋 Prompt 3 — the research prompt — copy everything in the box below

Find NICHE in CITY that are worth emailing about their website. Research only: don't contact anyone and don't fill in any forms. Use web search.

Check about 20 independent businesses that have their own website. Skip franchises and national chains.

For each one, check:
1. Can people find them? Search "MAIN SERVICE CITY" and note whether their own website appears.
2. How big is the site? Open /sitemap.xml and count the real pages.
3. How old is it? The copyright year in the footer, the date of the last blog post, and if it's WordPress, when the pages were last edited (/wp-json/wp/v2/pages?per_page=100&_fields=slug,modified).
4. Can a visitor act? Is the phone number near the top and tappable on a phone? Is there a quote or booking form? Are there real photos of their work?
5. Reputation: rating, review count and the date of the most recent review, on Google, Yelp, Houzz or BBB. Say which source.
6. Ads: check Google's Ads Transparency Center and Meta's Ad Library for their domain. Say whether they're running ads now, ran them in the past, or none.
7. Contact: owner's name, published email, phone, and social profiles.

Then put each business in exactly one group:
- A — Outdated design: the site is clearly 3 to 8 years old.
- B — Alive but invisible: reviews in the last few months, so they're trading, but their website doesn't show up for their own services. No recent reviews? Skip, they may be winding down.
- C — Paying for visitors: they run ads or rank on page one, and the site loses those visitors: hard to call, no quote form, or a dated design. Note how long they've been running ads.
- Skip: big active sites with lots of pages and a current blog, franchises, hospital-owned practices, and businesses with almost no reviews or rated under 4.0.

Give me the best 6 as a table: business, city, website, group, the one specific thing I could open an email with, what they're good at, what they could improve, owner, email, phone.

Mark anything you couldn't confirm as UNVERIFIED. List the ones you skipped with a one-line reason, and say how many you checked in total.

The three types, in one line each

• A — Outdated design. Old footer, stale blog, bad on a phone. People land and leave. I build them a homepage concept.
• B — Alive but invisible. Recent reviews, busy business, but their website doesn’t come up for their own services. I talk about getting found.
• C — Paying for visitors. They’re spending on ads, and the site they pay to send people to loses them: no tappable phone, no form, or a dated design. I give one fix away free, then make the case for organic: ads stop when the budget stops, pages that rank keep working.

Already have a client in that niche? Go 50–100 km away, or to another city

Don’t email your own client’s direct competitors. Keep the same niche and move at least 50–100 km (30–60 miles) away, or pick another city. Your portfolio still works: “I built this for a roofer in Helena” lands just as well in Great Falls, and your client never hears that you pitched the business down the road.

The dashboard prompt

Run this once. It builds the pipeline I track everything in: who I found, what’s wrong with their site, who’s running ads, who I’ve emailed, and who’s owed a follow-up today.

📋 Prompt 4 — the dashboard prompt — copy everything in the box below

Build me a cold-outreach pipeline as a single web page (a Claude artifact). Save everything I enter so it's still there when I come back tomorrow.

Each business is one row with: business name, niche, city, website, type (A, B or C), the one thing I noticed about their site, owner name, email, phone, best way to contact them, Google rating and review count, date of their last review, whether they run ads (No ads found / Past ads only / Google Ads / Meta ads / Google + Meta), what the site is built on, what they're good at, what they could improve, the search I used to find them, the concept page URL I sent, a video URL, and notes.

Types:
- A: Outdated site (I send a homepage concept)
- B: Alive but invisible (recent reviews, but their site doesn't show up in search)
- C: Paying for visitors, losing them (they run ads or rank, but the site makes it hard to call or get a quote)

Status on each row: Queued, Building concept, Ready to send, Emailed, Follow-up 1 sent, Follow-up 2 sent, Replied, Won, Closed. When I set a row to Emailed, save today's date and make the follow-up due in 4 days. After Follow-up 1, it's due 5 days later. After Follow-up 2, 7 days later.

Also on each row: a "First email" dropdown (With link / Ask first, no link), and two tick boxes: "Page viewed" and "Replied".

At the top, show counts: sites checked, prospects listed, due now, waiting for a reply, replied, running ads, and the reply score for each first-email version (for example 2/10 with link, 4/10 ask first). Add a "+1 checked, skipped" button for sites I look at and decide not to add.

Filters: by niche, by type (A, B, C), Due now, Running ads, Hide closed, and a search box. Sort anything that's due to the top. If the filters match nothing, say which filters are on and give me a "Clear filters" button.

Also: a form to add a business, a "Copy as CSV" button so I can paste everything into Google Sheets, and a short legend at the bottom explaining A, B and C.

Keep the design clean and easy to read, and make it work on a phone.

How to use them together

1. Pick a niche and a city (Step 0, or the city prompt).
2. Run the research prompt for that city.
3. Build the dashboard once, then paste the results in.
4. Search by hand too, and add anything good with the add form.
5. Open every site yourself before you email. The research gets you a shortlist; it doesn’t replace looking.

One rule above all: only say things you’ve checked. Email someone about a problem they don’t have and you’ve lost them.