Cold Email List Quality

Cold Email List Quality — list scoring + dedup

Run before any campaign. Bad lists kill reply rates more than bad copy. This sub-skill scores the list across 6 axes, returns the rows to remove, and surfaces fix recommendations.

Activation

Loaded by:

• cold-email-weekly-rhythm — Monday's list refresh
• User invocation: "Score my list", "Check list quality", "Clean my prospect list"

Inputs

The skill accepts:

• CSV with at minimum: email, optional first_name, last_name, role, company, signal, signal_date, linkedin_url
• JSONL with same fields

If brand-config.json is loaded, the skill cross-references icp.segment, icp.role_targets, icp.exclusion_criteria, and psp.signal_anchors for scoring.

Scoring (6 axes, 100 total)

Output

# List Quality Score — <file>

## Overall: <0-100>/100

| Axis | Score | Issues |
|---|---|---|
| Dedup | <0-20>/20 | <N> duplicate rows |
| Role-fit | <0-25>/25 | <N> rows outside ICP role targets |
| Signal freshness | <0-20>/20 | <N> stale signals (>30d) |
| Email validity | <0-15>/15 | <N> invalid / free-email / role-account |
| Exclusion match | <0-10>/10 | <N> rows hit exclusion criteria |
| Company-stage match | <0-10>/10 | <N> wrong-stage companies |

## Rows to remove (<N> total)

| Row | Email | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | sarah@gmail.com | Free-email domain (B2B) |
| 14 | info@acme.com | Role-account email |
| 22 | mike@acme.com (Engineering Manager) | Role outside ICP (target: VP+) |
| 27 | jane@beta.com | Signal stale (45 days) |
| ... |

## Fix recommendations (in order)

1. Remove the 12 free-email + role-account rows (immediate)
2. Re-pull signals for the 8 stale rows (today)
3. Tighten role-fit list — 14 rows are "Engineering Manager" / "Director"
   while ICP targets VP+. Consider adding "Director" if the ICP has
   shifted, or excluding these rows.
4. Run `cold-email-deliverability` on the sending domain before this
   list ships.

## Send-volume recommendation

With cleaning, the deliverable list is: <N - removed> rows.

Given warm-up state (`<warm_up_status>`), recommended weekly send
volume: <X> per day across <M> mailboxes = <X*M> per day = <X*M*5>
per week.

## Send the cleaned list

The skill writes `<file>.cleaned.csv` and `<file>.removed.csv` to the
project root. Operator can review before importing into Smartlead /
Instantly / etc.

What gets flagged automatically

Dedup

• Same email → duplicate (remove all but oldest)
• Same linkedin_url → duplicate (remove all but most-recent signal)
• Same first_name + last_name + company → near-duplicate (warn, don't auto-remove — might be father/son etc.)

Role-fit

• Compare each role against brand-config.icp.role_targets
• Apply role-equivalent map (built-in):
  • "Demand Gen Lead" ↔ "Head of Demand Generation" ↔ "VP Demand Gen"
  • "CRO" ↔ "Chief Revenue Officer" ↔ "VP Revenue"
  • etc.
• Rows where role doesn't match any target → flag with severity

Signal freshness

• Compare signal_date to today
• Score:
  • 0-7 days = full score
  • 8-14 days = full score
  • 15-30 days = half score + warn

  • 30 days = zero score + recommend removal

Email validity heuristics

• RFC-shape (@, ., no spaces)
• Free-email domains (gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com, proton.me, icloud.com, aol.com, gmx.com)
• Role-account patterns (info@, sales@, support@, hello@, contact@, marketing@, hr@, jobs@, careers@, admin@)
• Plus-extension addresses (alex+marketing@acme.com) — flag as warn

Exclusion match

• Each row scored against each exclusion_criteria entry
• Examples: "Pre-PMF (<$2M ARR)", "Enterprise-only ACV >$100k", "Government/regulated industries"
• Uses heuristic + (optional) external enrichment data if present in row

Company-stage match

• Derive stage from signal (e.g., "Series B announced" → stage = Series B)
• Match against ICP segment description
• Out-of-stage rows flagged

Implementation

Backed by scripts/score_list.py (Python 3.8+, no external deps — uses csv stdlib).

python3 ../../scripts/score_list.py \
    --input prospects.csv \
    --brand-config ../../brand-config.json \
    --format text

(Note: score_list.py ships in the next release — for v0.2.0 this skill describes the contract; the deterministic script ships Wave 2.)

References

• brand-config.json — ICP, exclusion, role targets, PSP signal anchors
• ../cold-email-weekly-rhythm/SKILL.md — Monday's caller
• Send-volume math: warm_up_status table in cold-email-deliverability/SKILL.md