How the Small Business Expo email campaign worked
From the registration list to Booth 412: every tool and owner at each step. Updated November 5, 2026.
Registrant list
The Show Producers sent a full registrant export every Monday, which Claude diffed against the master. 11,142 new registrants from August 31 to October 15, about 250 a day, and 2,700 to 2,900 a week in the final two weeks.
Diff and tier
Claude diffed each export against the master, tiered every row T0 to T4 and split people from role inboxes. Viktor merged it into Master v2, removed duplicates by business and phone, and caught re-registrations and withdrawals.
Validate every address
Valid, catch-all or invalid, with catch-all results scored before loading. Suggested typo corrections held for Chris’s review; approved fixes sent.
Master v2
One row per registrant: 15,497 rows, about 12,500 distinct businesses, with row_id, tier, status, send dates and Do Not Contact flags. One contact per business picked for the personal emails; drop-offs marked. The Call Sheet tab holds one row per business.
Draft founder emails
Claude drafted each email, Zapier placed all 155 of Claude’s drafts in Chris’s Gmail for review. Viktor queued and tracked the T0 send list across six batches.
Review and send
Reviewed and sent 155 personal emails over eight days, September 1 to 29, from chris@vetano.com.
Mailbox fleet
37 mailboxes across 12 dedicated sending domains, kept separate from vetano.com. Tracking off, unsubscribe link and postal address in every email.
Launch the campaigns
Viktor created each campaign paused, loaded the leads with their fields and tracking links, set the daily caps and built the thank-you list; Chris launched each one. Touch 1 (A/B subject), Touch 2, weekly adds, final reminder October 10 to 14, thank-you October 22 to 28; after the show, a thank-you went to 9,872 registrants. Ramp from 30 to 55 a day per mailbox.
Email in the inbox
Short link vetano.com/expo, tagged with utm_source, utm_content and utm_term = row_id.
vetano.com/expo
Lovable site. Amplitude recorded every visit by row_id, with session replay. Viktor reviewed each session and summarized it in Slack (step 4).
Create the account
Free business account, created before the expo on app.vetano.com or in the mobile app. Both live in production; UTMs forwarded from the site.
Verify ID
Persona government ID verification in the mobile app. A verified, complete profile gets its own Vetano QR code.
Booth 412, October 15
Most arrived with the account already created and verified. Scanning their Vetano QR code confirmed it was ID verified and complete, entered them in the iPhone 18 Pro drawing and gave them a free job post.
Replies
Replies landed in the sending mailbox. Stop on reply halted the sequence.
Session review
Viktor reviewed every real vetano.com/expo session, 263 in all, and posted a summary to #alerts-instantly: who visited, any issues they hit, whether they signed up. He stamped the Call Sheet in Master v2 and flagged business owners who signed up under the wrong role.
Slack signup alerts
#alerts-user, #alerts-employer and #alerts-talent: every new account posts an alert with name and email.
Welcome workflow
Triggered by new-account alerts. Skips test accounts, checks the address with ZeroBounce, and catches duplicates by checking what’s already been sent. 179 accounts processed, 72 businesses and 107 talent.
Welcome email
Sent about 12 seconds after the account was created, from hello@vetano.com via Gmail, signed ‘Chris at Vetano,’ with replies to support@vetano.com. The Expo P.S. dropped off automatically after October 15.
#alerts-instantly
Each reply posted with name, email, phone, title, industry, campaign, tier and the reply text.
Draft the reply
Viktor tagged each reply (call, quick, question, opt-out), drafted the response in the thread, saved reply templates in the Unibox and audited every inbound reply against what had been answered; Claude reviewed the wording.
Send
Sent from the Unibox. A human wrote or approved every template, and Chris personally reviewed every founder email.
Outcomes
Interested replies, marked in Instantly, became HubSpot leads automatically. Opt-outs went to the Instantly blocklist and Do Not Contact in Master v2.
Measure results
19,569 emails before the expo reached 8,915 registrants. After the show, a thank-you went to 9,872 registrants. Viktor matched every signup back to the list and reported conversion by tier, before and after the expo.
How Zapier stitched it together
Built as Next-Gen Zaps and tested with free draft runs before going live. Every change saved as a new version; the original August Zaps kept as a backup.
Founder emails drafted
Placed all 155 of Claude’s drafts in Chris’s Gmail for review before he sent each one.
New accounts welcomed by name
Each one triggered by a Slack signup alert, checked against what was already sent, validated with ZeroBounce and welcomed from hello@vetano.com about 12 seconds after signup. Nobody touched it.
Campaign reply posted
To #alerts-instantly with the sender’s name, title, tier and message, so Viktor and Chris could answer within hours.
Interested leads created
One click in Instantly created the HubSpot lead with source, tier and campaign.
Guardrails
- A human wrote or approved every template before it was sent.
- ZeroBounce ran before any address was loaded. Invalid and do-not-mail never sent.
- Open and link tracking off. Links showed short.
- Viktor flagged any mailbox over 3% bounces (after 10 sends) in the daily report; Chris paused it in Instantly.
- Stop on reply. The blocklist covered every campaign.
- Opt-outs marked Do Not Contact in Master v2 the same day.
- Suggested typo corrections held for review; approved fixes sent.
- Role inboxes kept out of the main campaigns; included only in the thank-you campaign.
- Welcome emails: test accounts skipped, duplicates caught, built to send anyway if ZeroBounce is down.
- Every QR code passed the decode test before print (Viktor).
- Viktor posted daily stats in #alerts-instantly.
- Subject A/B planned to be judged by Amplitude visits, not opens.