The Acquisition Email Writer skill for Claude

No software to install, no subscription, no login: a single text file of 3,972 words that tells Claude how to build a cold business email, what it needs to know from you first, how it checks its own draft before delivering it, and what it never writes under any circumstances. You download the zip at the top of this page, put it in your Claude environment, and from that moment Claude works to this structure. What a skill actually is and how that file format works, you can read in what Claude skills are NL.

You recognise the problem this skill solves instantly if you have ever written or received an acquisition email. The writer starts with themselves. My name is so and so, we are an agency in such and such, we help companies like yours with this and that. Only on line four does something about the recipient appear, and that is usually a compliment that fits any company. The recipient knows within two seconds that this is an email that also went to a hundred others, and then it is over. Not because the service is not good, but because there is nothing in the email that is only about them.

Here it works exactly the other way round, with one hard rule: the observation first, only then the email. An observation is something concrete that you have seen or read somewhere about this one company. A vacancy that has been open for weeks. A sentence on their own site. A step in their ordering process where you yourself got stuck. A new branch. A page that is broken. That observation is then tested against three requirements: specific, so it must not fit just as well on any other company in the sector; traceable, so you can say where you saw it; and useful, so there is a conceivable link with what you do. If the observation fails, it writes nothing and you get questions back instead.

That immediately makes it unsuitable for a certain kind of work, and that is deliberate. If you have a list of two hundred addresses and want to pour one text over all of them, this is not your tool. It will not start on that, it advises against it, and it does not help you compile such a list either. What it does do is write ten emails that do not resemble each other, provided you answer three questions per company. Expect it to take work. It is just the work that makes the difference between an email that gets ignored and an email that gets answered.

It is useful for anyone who has to bring in clients themselves without a sales department: freelancers, small agencies, consultants, installers looking for business clients, software builders, and anyone who comes home from a trade show with a stack of business cards. This skill belongs to the skill library NL we make freely available through our AI and automation service, with no account and no sales email afterwards. That last part is the least you can expect from a skill about acquisition emails.

One thing sits right at the front of the file, and we quote it here word for word: this skill is not a lawyer. It knows the broad outline of the Dutch rules around unsolicited business email, it puts the opt-out line and the recognisable sender block into your email as standard, and it refuses a misleading subject line. But it never judges whether the way you collect addresses and send email is lawful. For that you need your own lawyer, and the file points you there too.

The email starts with the sender. According to the file, this is the most common problem, and it is also the easiest to fix. The first sentence is about you, your company or your offer, while at that point the reader has zero reason to want to know anything about you. The file solves this with a test that leaves no room: if the email starts with I, we, my, our or your own company name, the first sentence gets rewritten.

The email survives the name swap. Replace the name of the receiving company with any other and read the email again. Does it still hold up? Then you have not written a personal email but a template with a name dropped in. In the file this is called the copy test, and it is the only test where the skill does not correct but stops completely. There is simply nothing to rewrite: there is just no trigger yet.

The offer comes before the trigger. Many emails neatly explain what the sender does and for whom, but never make the connection to this specific company. The reader has to build that bridge themselves, and they do not. This is what the file devotes the core of the email to: a maximum of four sentences that tie the observation and your work together, including one mandatory sentence that acknowledges what you do not yet know. That last part sounds weak and is the opposite: it is the one small sentence in the email that proves you are not bluffing.

The question is too big. Shall we grab a coffee sometime to see what I can do for you. That is not a question but a calendar request, and answering it costs the recipient half an hour of thinking. Every email therefore ends with one question that can be answered in one word, and where no is a perfectly fine answer. Someone who answers no has answered you, and that is more than you get from most emails.

There are tricks in it. Re: in the subject line to suggest a conversation that never happened. A deadline that does not exist. A mutual acquaintance you do not actually know. Only two spots left this month. It sometimes works once, and never again with that person after that. The skill categorically refuses these tricks, even if you explicitly ask for them, and it states why in the check block.

In diff form, with the difference the assessment function marks in almost every email it is given: what comes out and what goes in instead.

Anyone who says something like that to Claude while the skill is loaded gets it automatically. The same frontmatter also lists the cases where the skill should specifically not start, and that is a deliberate choice: over-triggering is the most common complaint about popular skills. Below that sits the licence: MIT, version 1.0.0.

Then comes the core: eleven fixed steps. It starts with the question of what you concretely know about this company and where you saw it. It tests that observation against specific, traceable and useful. It asks what you deliver, for whom that worked before and what changed then. It asks who the recipient is and whether that person is the right one to decide on this. Then it builds the subject line, the opening, the core and the closing question, in that order and each with its own rule. It puts the sender block in place with the opt-out line underneath. It runs the self-check. And it delivers the email, the check block, the notes and one follow-up email.

Before anything gets written, the skill runs through a mandatory eight-point input checklist: the observation with where you saw it, the company name and size, the recipient and their role, what you deliver and what not, the evidence you actually have, where the address came from, whether there was earlier contact, and the tone.

That point about where the address came from is sharper than it looks. It goes into the email if the recipient could reasonably ask about it, and at the same time it is your own test: if you cannot answer that question, you already know enough. If the observation is missing, the skill stops. If something else that is not crucial is missing, it carries on and puts its assumption visibly in the notes.

There is a separate chapter about language, and it is written for Dutch and not translated from English. An email stays under 150 words and preferably under 120. Short sentences alternate with long ones. No dashes in running text. And there is a list of openings that are completely banned, which in English come down to: I am reaching out because, my name is X and I work at Y, we are a leading agency, I noticed you have a great company, hope this email finds you well, I will keep this short.

Anyone who cuts those six sentences out of their own emails is already well on the way, even without this skill. On top of that, the file strips out the well-known AI tells, which is exactly the same work the Text Humanizer skill does, just built into the writing itself.

There is also an explicit rule about prices in it: they do not belong in a first cold email. If you ask for one anyway, the skill puts the amount in with excluding VAT next to it, and notes in the notes section that it advises against this and why. Here the skill does what you ask while also having an opinion about it, which is rare in this file. The proposal with the prices in it comes later, and that is what the Offer Writer skill is for.

The file also has a second mode. If you hand it an email you have already written, the skill assesses it on five points: first the copy test, then the I-you count with both numbers next to it, then a marker on every sentence the recipient does not need in order to reply, then a verdict on the subject line and the closing question with an alternative, and finally a rewritten version plus the questions you still need to answer before the email is genuinely personal. If you want to learn to set up an instruction file like this yourself, the method is at writing a SKILL.md NL.

The question order comes from SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham, 1988. Rackham describes how, in a sales conversation, you first ask about the situation and the problem before talking about a solution. A cold email is too short for that whole sequence, so the skill uses part of it: the observation plays the role of the situation question and the closing question plays that of the problem question. If you want that same order in the conversation that follows, the SPIN Sales Conversation skill NL is the logical next step.

The closing question leans on Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference, 2016. Voss describes how a question someone can answer with no creates less pressure than a question that asks for yes. That is why no is always allowed to be a good answer in these emails, and why the follow-up email in the example ends with "should I let this go". That is not a trick but the removal of the pressure most acquisition emails get stuck in.

For reciprocity and social proof, Robert Cialdini's Influence, 1984, applies, and for attention his Pre-Suasion, 2016. The skill uses only the honest side of those: evidence you actually have, and attention you earn through relevance rather than a misleading subject line. If you want to work out the six principles separately for a text, that is what the Cialdini Persuasion skill is for.

The rule that you write in plain words is backed by Daniel Oppenheimer in Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2006. Needlessly complicated language does not make the writer look smarter to the reader. For the questioning that comes before the email, The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, 2013, is on the list: talk about their work, not your idea. That same attitude sits in the Mom Test Coach skill.

Then the legal foundation, in broad outline, because the skill is not a lawyer and says so itself. The Dutch ban on spam sits in article 11.7 of the Dutch Telecommunications Act (Telecommunicatiewet) and applies not only to consumers but also to business recipients: the third paragraph makes an exception for contact details the recipient has themselves designated and published for this kind of message. The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) supervises this. Source checked on 25 August 2026.

Every commercial email must include a working opt-out option, and a line at the bottom where the recipient can reply that they do not want to hear anything more counts as such an option, provided you also stick to it. The sender must be recognisable: a real name, a real company, a real address, and a subject line that covers the content.

For a business email address with a person's name in it, the GDPR also applies, so you must be able to explain where you got the address from and why you are approaching that person, and you must honour an objection. Exactly where the line sits with a general address of a legal entity is a question for your lawyer, not for a text file.

What the skill does with that broad outline is limited and concrete: it puts the recognisable sender block and the opt-out line into your email as standard, it refuses a misleading subject line, and it notes in the notes section what you said about where the address came from. What it never does is judge that your approach is allowed. That distinction is explicit in the file, and it is exactly the kind of honest boundary that is completely missing from most outreach skills on GitHub.

After that, using it is simple: name the company, say what you know about that company and where you saw it, and say what you do. If something is missing, it asks you itself, at most three things at a time. If you already have an email you have written and just want to know what is wrong with it, paste it in full: the second mode assesses it on five points and hands back a rewritten version. If you get stuck installing it, the full step-by-step plan per environment is at installing Claude skills NL, and the broader explanation of working with AI is in the knowledge base.

At a larger organisation you write to a person and not a department, and then the closing question is allowed, as the only exception, to expect a name as the answer: does this sit with you or with someone else. A no is followed by a two-sentence thank you and nothing further. And a restart email after months of silence is only allowed with a new observation, because without a new trigger it is simply a third email.

There are also situations where you are better off leaving it alone, and the file is brief about that. Mass emails to a bought or scraped address list are out. Newsletters and mailings to existing clients are also out of scope, because there the relationship is different, and so are the rules. A job application letter is not for this either, however tempting the resemblance. The proposal that follows a good conversation belongs with the Offer Writer, not here. And it is not fit for use as a legal check on your email policy.

One more honest limit: the skill does not fetch addresses, it does not look anything up and it does not browse websites. Everything it writes about the recipient comes from what you give it. That feels like a limitation and it is exactly why its emails are credible: there is not a single sentence in them you cannot defend if the recipient pushes back. The research stays human work, and for ten companies that is about an hour.

If your question sits closer to the conversation than to the email, the SPIN Sales Conversation skill NL picks up from there. If you first need to get clear on why a recipient would respond at all, the Jobs to be Done Analyst is the better starting point. If the conversation that follows needs to be recorded, the Intake Summary skill does that, and once it comes down to price, the Negotiator takes over.

The same goes, by the way, for the other side of the coin: while you are sending emails, people are actively searching for what you do. The free SEO scan shows in a few seconds how your site is doing technically, and we explain there what an outsourced marketing department NL can do for you. If you want your team to learn to work with skills like this, we do that in the AI training NL. And if you want to talk further about what else AI can do for your business, from individual skills to full automation, we just do that in a conversation.