Run an outreach campaign
Run link-building outreach from your own Gmail. Your agent finds prospects and writes every email, you review and approve, and RankParse sends on a schedule.
Outreach turns backlink data into a link-building campaign. Your AI agent researches prospects, finds a real contact at each domain and writes one email per contact. RankParse stores the campaign and sends the emails you approved from your own Gmail, paced by a daily cap, so replies land in your inbox.
This guide walks through one campaign. Every endpoint it mentions is documented in the Outreach API reference.
Nothing an agent writes is sent until you approve it. When your agent launches a campaign, the emails wait on the campaign page in RankParse for your review. Outreach can never be set to run automatically in the approval inbox. The only way around the review is a per-mailbox setting, Let Claude send without review, that only you can switch on.
What it costs
Creating campaigns, adding contacts, launching and sending cost 0 credits. Only the research calls do: for example Competitor Gap (5 credits) and Domain Authority (1 credit).
Connect Gmail
Open Integrations and connect a Gmail account. Emails are sent from it, and replies come back to it.
You can connect several Gmail accounts ("mailboxes"), for example one per client. Each website sends from the mailbox chosen in its settings; websites without one use the workspace's default mailbox. A mailbox that is disconnected or needs reconnecting is never swapped for the default, so one client's mail never goes out from another address.
Check the result with Get sending settings (MCP tool outreach_sending_status).
Connect your agent
The outreach tools are on the API-key MCP endpoint: https://mcp.rankparse.com/mcp for Claude Code, Cursor and other HTTP clients, or https://mcp.rankparse.com/ for clients that need the root path. See MCP server for setup. The secure OAuth connector for Claude and ChatGPT on the web only has propose_outreach_send, where proposing is switched on.
Then open Outreach and choose New campaign. The page gives you a starter prompt that walks your agent through the whole flow.
Research prospects and draft emails
Your agent interviews you about your website, goal and competitors, then builds a prospect list with the research tools (get_competitor_gap, get_referring_domains, get_domain_authority). For each prospect domain it finds one real contact email and writes a short, personal subject and body. It shows you the drafts in chat before storing anything.
Create the campaign and add contacts
After you are happy with the drafts, the agent stores them:
- Create a campaign (
outreach_create_campaign), linked to your website withsite_idso it sends from that website's mailbox. - Add contacts (
outreach_add_contacts), up to 100 per call and 500 per campaign, one per domain.
Nothing is sent. Contacts that break a rule come back in skipped with a reason, for example already_contacted (you emailed that address from an earlier campaign) or duplicate_domain. The agent picks a different prospect for those.
The shortcut propose_outreach_send (Create a proposal) does this step and the next in one call.
Launch: put the emails up for review
The agent calls Launch a campaign (outreach_launch_campaign). For an agent this does not queue anything: it returns status: "ready_for_review" and a review_url, the campaign page in RankParse. The agent shares the link with you, and RankParse also emails you once when a campaign first becomes ready.
A single review holds up to 100 emails. For a bigger batch, the agent launches again after you have approved the first.
Review and approve
On the campaign page you read every email with its recipient, subject and body. Approve them one by one or in bulk, remove the ones you do not want, then start sending. Only the emails you approved are queued.
- Change of mind: an approved email can be taken back to review (Unapprove) until it is sent.
- Rewrites: ask your agent to change the copy. It calls Update contacts (
outreach_update_contacts) on the same campaign and launches again. Only emails still waiting for review can change, and a rewritten email needs your approval again. - Safety: an approved email whose content changes before it is sent is not sent.
Sending and limits
An hourly sweep sends queued emails from each mailbox, inside that mailbox's sending window and up to its daily cap. A campaign therefore drains over days, not minutes.
- Daily cap per mailbox:
max_sends_per_day, 1 to 100, default 20, shared by every campaign that sends from that mailbox. On the Free plan, when plan limits apply, each mailbox sends at most 5 emails a day. - Switch per mailbox:
auto_send_enabled. When it is off, approved emails stay queued and nothing sends. - Changing them: in RankParse, or with Update sending settings (
outreach_configure_sending) and an optionalmailbox_id. Lowering a cap or switching sending off always applies at once. When an agent asks to raise a cap or switch sending on, the change waits for your approval where the approval inbox is enforced. - Plan coverage: a website or mailbox beyond what your plan covers cannot start new sends (
402 plan_limit_reached). Emails already queued keep sending.
Track and top up
Follow progress on the campaign page, or with Get a campaign (outreach_get_campaign): how many emails are waiting, queued, sending, sent and skipped. Pause a campaign to hold its queued emails without losing them, and resume it later.
To continue a campaign, the agent starts with Get prospecting context (outreach_suggest_prospects), which lists every domain you have already used so new prospects are fresh, then adds contacts and launches again. Campaigns are topped up, not replaced.
What waits for approval
| Action | By an agent | By you in the dashboard, or a direct API call |
|---|---|---|
| Launch a campaign (send emails) | Waits for your review on the campaign page | Runs now |
| Raise a mailbox's daily cap, or switch sending on | Waits for your approval where the inbox is enforced | Applies now |
| Lower the daily cap, or switch sending off | Applies now | Applies now |
| Create a campaign, add or rewrite contacts, pause, resume | Applies now (nothing is sent) | Applies now |
An agent is any caller that goes through the RankParse MCP server or sends the header X-RankParse-Client: mcp. A script that calls the REST API with your key and without that header is treated as you, and its launch queues emails immediately. See Where approval is enforced.
Troubleshooting
Related
Approval inbox
How agent-proposed actions work in RankParse. An agent proposes, a person approves in the dashboard, and only then does anything run.
Sites & Rank Tracking
Connect Google Search Console, Bing and Yandex, attach properties to a website, add queries, turn on weekly alerts and read the results from the dashboard, API or MCP.