n8n Workflow: Score Ad Prospects & Draft Cold Emails

Score Ad Prospects & Draft Cold Emails — automatically (n8n workflow)

Turn a Google Sheets list of prospects into a weekly pipeline: this n8n workflow checks whether companies are actively advertising (via Apify), analyzes LinkedIn ad signals, detects website tracking/hiring activity, then scores each prospect (0–100) and drafts a three-sentence cold-email opener using OpenAI—finally updating Google Sheets and posting the top matches to Slack.

What this workflow does

• Runs on demand or every Monday at 7am, reading the Prospects tab from Google Sheets.
• Cleans and deduplicates domains, derives a LinkedIn company name for searching, and carries forward last week’s platforms and score for comparison.
• Uses Apify (first call) to check multi-platform ad presence, detect website analytics/pixels, and fetch hiring signals.
• Uses Apify (second call) for detailed LinkedIn ad statistics only for companies confirmed to advertise on LinkedIn.
• Calculates a 0–100 prospect score from ad activity, platform gaps, LinkedIn activity/ad types, hiring signals, and tracking installations.
• Uses OpenAI to generate a plain-text, three-sentence cold-email opener citing only the measured signals and naming the best “ad gap” to pitch.
• Writes results back to Google Sheets (score, signals, gaps, opener) and posts the top five prospects to Slack.
• Alerts on week-over-week changes by comparing this week’s results vs last week and posting Slack notifications for starts/stops in advertising, LinkedIn spend scaling, or new roles.

Use cases

• Weekly lead research for SaaS outreach, using ad activity + tracking + hiring signals to prioritize ICPs.
• Automatically drafting outreach openers that reference measured “ad gaps” instead of generic cold email templates.
• Keeping a sales channel current with Slack alerts when prospect advertising behavior changes.

Technical details

• Triggers: manual run or Monday 7am.
• Integrations: Google Sheets, Apify (requires an Apify API token), Slack, and OpenAI.
• n8n logic nodes: if, code, no op, sort, limit, merge.