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Every 15 minutes

Find prospects' emails and draft a first message in your sheet

For each new name and company domain in your sheet, Hunter finds the email address and a short, personal first email is written beside it.

Runs
Every 15 minutes
Apps
Google Sheets, Hunter.io
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Hunter key; Sheets read+write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 15 minutes, for each new row in my Prospects sheet with a name and company domain, find their email with Hunter, then write a short personalised first email and put the email, confidence score and draft in the row.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

Building a prospect list is the easy part. Finding each person's email and writing a first message that does not sound like a template takes several minutes per row, which is why outreach lists sit half finished.

Founders, sales reps and agency owners use it to go from a list of names to ready-to-send drafts, while still reading and sending each email themselves.

What you get out of it

  • Addresses found for you

    Hunter looks up each person's work email from their name and company domain, with a confidence score.

  • A first draft per person

    Each prospect gets a short email that mentions their company and role, not a mail-merge template.

  • Everything in one row

    Email, confidence and draft sit next to your own notes, ready to review and send.

  • Credits spent once

    Rows that already have a result are skipped, so you never pay twice for the same lookup.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every 15 minutes, ClickRuntime reads your sheet for rows with a name and company domain but no email yet.

  2. Hunter looks up each person's email address and how confident it is.

  3. AI writes a short first email for each person it found.

  4. The email, confidence score and draft are written back into the row.

Before it runs live

  • Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
  • Connect Hunter.io

What you get

RunsEvery 15 minutes
Find prospects' emails and draft a first message in your sheettoday, 9:00Succeeded
Google Sheets · Prospectsmaria.lopez@northwind.example · 94 · Hi Maria, I noticed Northwind now ships across Europe. Packaging costs tend to jump at that point...

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Google Sheets and Hunter.io steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
find_emails_for_people_in_a_sheet_and_draft_outreach.pyexample
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, report_fetched, credentials, http, ai

SHEET_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id"
OFFER = "We help small online shops cut delivery costs with smarter packaging."

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    sheets = build("sheets", "v4", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    rows = sheets.spreadsheets().values().get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Prospects!A2:F").execute().get("values", [])
    new = [(i + 2, r) for i, r in enumerate(rows) if len(r) >= 3 and len(r) < 4]
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if not new:
        return {"new": 0}
    updates = []
    for n, (first, last, domain, *_) in new:
        found = http.get("https://api.hunter.io/v2/email-finder", params={"domain": domain, "first_name": first,
                         "last_name": last, "api_key": credentials.secret("HUNTER_API_KEY")}).json().get("data") or {}
        email, score, draft = found.get("email") or "Not found", found.get("score", ""), ""
        if found.get("email"):
            draft = ai.generate(f"Write a 70-word first email to {first} {last} ({found.get('position') or 'unknown role'}) at "
                                f"{domain}. Offer: {OFFER} Friendly, specific, one question at the end.", max_output_tokens=200).text
        updates.append({"range": f"Prospects!D{n}:F{n}", "values": [[email, score, draft.strip()]]})
    sheets.spreadsheets().values().batchUpdate(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID,
                                               body={"valueInputOption": "RAW", "data": updates}).execute()
    return {"processed": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

What if Hunter can't find an email?
The row is marked Not found and no draft is written. You can try a different domain or spelling of the name and clear the status to retry.
Does it send the emails?
No. It writes drafts into the sheet. You review them and send from your own email.
Can I give it context about my offer?
Yes. Describe what you sell and who it helps when you set it up, and every draft uses it.
What permissions does it need?
Hunter key; Sheets read+write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Find prospects' emails and draft a first message in your sheet” from your assistant

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