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Daily

Draft follow-ups for prospects who have gone quiet

Each morning you get ready-to-send follow-up drafts in Gmail for prospects who have not replied in a week, plus a slot in your calendar to send them.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Gmail, Google Calendar
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Gmail gmail.modify; Calendar write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning, find email threads with prospects where I sent the last message 7 or more days ago, draft a follow-up and add a 15-minute follow-up event to my calendar.

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

A consultant sends proposals to a few prospects each week. Most deals that slip away do so quietly: the prospect gets busy, the email sinks, and nobody follows up. She means to, but writing a fresh nudge for each thread is the task that keeps getting pushed to tomorrow.

Having the draft already written, sitting in Gmail, with a short calendar slot to send it, removes the friction. She reads it, adjusts a line and sends. Deals that would have gone cold get a second chance.

What you get out of it

  • Fewer deals lost to silence

    A polite follow-up after a week often gets the reply that a first email did not. Many prospects simply forgot.

  • The hard part is done

    Each draft refers to the conversation so far, so you only need to review and send it.

  • Time set aside to act

    A 15-minute calendar event makes following up part of the day rather than something squeezed in.

  • You stay in control

    Drafts are never sent automatically. You choose which go out and edit them as you like.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every morning, ClickRuntime looks through your prospect email threads in Gmail.

  2. It picks the threads where you sent the last message seven or more days ago and have not followed up yet.

  3. AI writes a short follow-up for each one, saved as a draft in the thread for you to review.

  4. A 15-minute follow-up event is added to your Google Calendar listing the drafts waiting.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
  • Connect Google Calendar

What you get

RunsDaily
Draft follow-ups for prospects who have gone quiettoday, 9:00Succeeded
Google Calendar · Send 2 follow-upsSend 2 follow-ups: ops@northwind.com (website proposal), finance@acme.com (retainer quote)

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

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • 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 Gmail and Google Calendar 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.
follow_up_reminders_for_quiet_prospects.pyexample
import base64
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from email.message import EmailMessage
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, ai, state
@on_trigger
def run(event):
    creds = Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work"))
    gmail = build("gmail", "v1", credentials=creds, cache_discovery=False)
    done, drafted = set(state.get("done") or []), []
    for t in gmail.users().threads().list(userId="me", q="label:Prospects older_than:7d newer_than:60d").execute().get("threads", []):
        th = gmail.users().threads().get(userId="me", id=t["id"]).execute()
        last = th["messages"][-1]
        if "SENT" not in last["labelIds"] or last["id"] in done:
            continue
        h = {x["name"]: x["value"] for x in last["payload"]["headers"]}
        msg = EmailMessage()
        msg["To"], msg["Subject"] = h["To"], "Re: " + h["Subject"].removeprefix("Re: ")
        msg.set_content(ai.generate(f"Write a short, friendly follow-up to this email:\n{last['snippet']}", max_output_tokens=200).text)
        gmail.users().drafts().create(userId="me", body={"message": {"threadId": t["id"], "raw": base64.urlsafe_b64encode(msg.as_bytes()).decode()}}).execute()
        done.add(last["id"])
        drafted.append(h["To"])
    if drafted:
        start = datetime.now(timezone.utc) + timedelta(hours=1)
        build("calendar", "v3", credentials=creds, cache_discovery=False).events().insert(calendarId="primary", body={
            "summary": f"Send {len(drafted)} follow-ups", "description": "\n".join(drafted),
            "start": {"dateTime": start.isoformat()}, "end": {"dateTime": (start + timedelta(minutes=15)).isoformat()}}).execute()
    state.set("done", list(done)[-500:])
    return {"drafted": len(drafted)}

FAQ

Common questions

Which threads count as prospects?
Threads with a label you choose, such as Prospects, or with addresses outside your company. You decide when setting it up.
Will it draft a second follow-up for the same thread?
Only if you sent the follow-up and another seven days pass with no reply. A thread with an unsent draft is left alone.
When is the calendar event added?
In the next free 15-minute slot that morning, so it does not clash with your meetings.
What permissions does it need?
Gmail gmail.modify; Calendar 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 runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do 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.

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