swan-gtm Applies when a sequence needs writing, not a single message. Produces three angles, then every touch in the cadence, checked before delivery.
A sequence is not five emails about the same thing
The common failure isn't a bad first message — it's five follow-ups that all say the same thing in a slightly more desperate tone. The prospect ignored the argument once; repeating it four times with "just bumping this" on top adds nothing except a reason to block the sender.
Every touch needs its own reason to exist. That means a fresh angle each time, a different CTA shape than the one before it, and a subject line that isn't a variation on the last. Sequence coherence — angles progressing rather than repeating, consecutive cross-channel touches not doubling up — is what separates a campaign from a nag.
Get the brief before writing anything
Ask once, in a single message, for whatever is missing: what they sell and the problem it solves in one sentence; the target persona, company type and size; whether a signal or trigger exists; and the channel mix. Ask about tone and any banned words if they have them.
If something essential is missing — the persona, what they actually sell — ask one short question and stop. Don't fill the gap with a plausible guess; a sequence written for the wrong buyer is worse than no sequence, because it reads finished.
The campaign type follows from whether a signal exists and where it came from, and it drives the framing, the cadence and the sequence shape:
- Cold outbound — no signal. Relevance has to be argued from research.
references/campaign-type-cold-outbound.md. - Social selling — the prospect engaged with something.
references/campaign-type-social-selling.md. - Employee advocacy — reaching people who engaged with a colleague's post.
references/campaign-type-employee-advocacy.md.
Load only the one that applies.
Three angles, then commit
Produce exactly three distinct angles and recommend one. Distinct means they'd land differently on the same reader, not three phrasings of one idea. Where a signal exists, the first angle is built on it.
Offering angles before writing the sequence isn't ceremony — it's the cheapest possible correction point. Changing the angle after five messages are written means rewriting five messages. references/angle-framework.md covers how to build them and the angle bank the follow-ups draw from.
The CTA is where outreach dies
"Would you be open to a 30-minute call?" in message one is the single most common way a good sequence fails. It's high-friction, seller-centric, and it forces a binary the prospect has no reason to resolve in your favour yet.
The alternative is a CTA that delivers something usable whether or not they ever buy — an insight, a benchmark, a resource, a question worth answering. It earns a reply out of curiosity rather than obligation. Never the same CTA shape twice in a row, and never a meeting ask in the opener. references/cta-framework.md has the six types and the quality bar.
Check it before handing it over
Run the sequence against the bar in references/quality-check.md before output, and rewrite anything that fails. Not as a formality — these are the defects that survive an otherwise good draft:
- Em-dashes, which read as machine-written to most people who read a lot of outreach.
- Punctuation glued to a URL, which breaks link detection and quietly costs clicks.
- More than one question in a message, which reliably gets the easier one answered and the important one ignored.
- Two email subjects that are variations of each other.
- A CTA repeating the previous touch's shape.
- Cadence that drifted from the campaign type's playbook.
The channel rules — length, formatting, what each medium tolerates — are in references/linkedin-rules.md and references/email-rules.md. The universal voice and banned-phrase rules that apply to every message are in references/base-copywriting-rules.md.
What good looks like
The tell of a good operator: they can say what each touch is for — this one earns attention, this one reframes, this one gives something away, this one closes. When every message has a job, the sequence has a shape. When it doesn't, you get five reminders.
The mediocre version personalises the first line and nothing else. "Loved your post on X" followed by two paragraphs of undifferentiated pitch reads worse than no personalisation, because it proves the sender knew enough to be relevant and chose not to be.
Good output is sendable without editing. Every message is a copyable block, the sequence overview shows channel and day per touch, and nothing in it needs a decision from the reader before it can go out. If a message contains a bracketed placeholder the sender has to resolve, it isn't finished — either the brief was thin enough to warrant a question, or the angle was too vague to write from.
Rules
- MUST ask one specific question and stop when the persona, the offer, or the channel mix is missing.
- MUST produce three genuinely distinct angles before writing any message.
- MUST give every follow-up a fresh angle and a different CTA shape than the touch before it.
- MUST run the quality check and rewrite failures before handing anything over.
- NEVER ask for a meeting in the first touch.
- NEVER repeat a CTA type in consecutive touches, or ship two email subjects that are variations of each other.
- NEVER leave a placeholder in a delivered message.