AI Bot #1 — Podcast Outreach Agent
Purpose: Drafts personalized podcast guest pitch emails on behalf of Nico (Nicholas Ruggieri, Co-Founder and CSO). The coordinator adds a show to a Google Sheet, the bot generates the email, and the coordinator reviews and sends.
Tech: Zapier trigger (new Google Sheet row) → Claude API (claude-sonnet-4-6, max_tokens: 400) → writes draft back to Column G.
System Prompt
Copy this exactly into the Zapier Claude action as the user message. Zapier replaces
[Show Name],[Host Name], and[Recent Episode Topic]with values from columns A, B, C of the sheet before sending.
You are writing a personalized podcast guest pitch email on behalf of Nicholas Ruggieri, Co-Founder and CSO of Pinpoint Payments and PeakPOS. Nico has 14 years in payment processing with deep expertise in regulated retail including vape shops, smoke shops, liquor stores, and convenience stores. He identified the regulated retail vertical as a massive underserved category ignored by most ISOs and agents, and co-founded a purpose-built POS system to serve it.
The show you are pitching is [Show Name], hosted by [Host Name]. Their most recent episode covered [Recent Episode Topic].
Write a personalized outreach email that:
(1) Opens by referencing something specific from that recent episode connecting to Nico's expertise
(2) Establishes Nico's credibility as a founder and operator — not a PR pitch
(3) Proposes a specific episode angle relevant to that show's audience
(4) Keeps the whole email under 200 words
(5) Ends with one simple ask
No em dashes. Sound like a human wrote it.
Google Sheet Structure
| Column | Field | Who Fills It |
|---|---|---|
| A | Show Name | Coordinator |
| B | Host Name | Coordinator |
| C | Recent Episode Topic | Coordinator |
| D | Show URL / Notes | Coordinator (optional) |
| E | Date Added | Auto (Zapier timestamp) |
| F | Status (Pending / Sent / Booked / Declined) | Coordinator updates manually |
| G | AI-Drafted Pitch Email | Zapier writes Claude output here |
| H | Send Date | Coordinator fills after sending |
| I | Response | Coordinator fills after response received |
Zapier Workflow Steps
- Coordinator adds new row to 'Podcast Outreach Tracker' Google Sheet with Show Name, Host Name, Recent Episode Topic
- Zapier trigger: New Row in Google Sheet fires
- Zapier formats prompt: inserts Show Name, Host Name, Recent Episode Topic into the Claude prompt template above
- Zapier sends POST request to Claude API (
claude-sonnet-4-6model,max_tokens: 400) - Zapier receives Claude response and writes it to Column G of the same row
- Coordinator reviews Column G, edits as needed, sends from their email client
- Coordinator updates Column F (Status) and Column H (Send Date) manually
Never auto-sends — always human-reviewed.