Cold Email Outreach in n8n: Gmail + OpenRouter Reply Classification

Cold Email Outreach in n8n that sends, monitors replies, and classifies interest with OpenRouter

Turn a lead file into a scheduled cold email campaign in n8n: the workflow loads leads into a Data Table, sends personalized first-touch emails via Gmail, then watches your inbox for replies and uses OpenRouter to classify whether prospects are already interested—flagging them for human handoff.

What this workflow does

• Imports leads from an uploaded file: An n8n Form trigger receives the file and extracts rows containing name and email.
• Creates/updates lead records: Each lead is upserted into an n8n Data Table with status new_leads.
• Sends first-touch cold emails: On a schedule (or on-demand), the workflow loads the outreach subject/body, fetches leads with status new_leads, and sends email via Gmail with the recipient’s name merged into the message.
• Tracks outreach and prevents duplicates: Sent emails are stored in a separate Data Table with Gmail message/thread IDs, and each lead status is updated to first_offer.
• Captures replies from Gmail: When a new Gmail message arrives, it matches the sender email to a lead and stores the reply in the email inbox Data Table.
• Classifies reply intent with OpenRouter: The workflow fetches the thread history, keeps only the prospect’s received messages, and sends them to an OpenRouter-powered LLM to classify whether the prospect is already interested.
• Flags qualified leads: If interest is detected, the lead is updated to handoff and a handoff destination value is set.

Use cases

• SaaS teams running targeted cold outreach and needing automated reply triage.
• Automation engineers deploying a Gmail-based cold email + reply classification pipeline in n8n.
• Operators who want faster human follow-up by detecting interested replies before reviewing everything.

Technical details

• Gmail OAuth2 for both sending emails and triggering on incoming replies.
• OpenRouter API credential for reply classification (model selectable in setup).
• Nodes used: if, set, code, gmail, data table, sticky note (plus the described triggers/logic).
• n8n Data Tables for leads, sent email tracking (message/thread IDs), and inbox reply storage.