I'm building Gethery, parent directory for schools. We just launched, and I needed to get it in front of the people who'd actually use it: school offices and PTO parents in my own city, where my kids are in school.
I had no contact list, no CRM, and no sales team. What I did have was Claude, a Google Sheet, and an Instantly account. Here's the process I used to go from nothing to a live automated drip campaign, including every email template word for word.
Step 1: Source the list with Claude
My target was every elementary school in my city: public, charter, and private. Instead of buying a list or pulling one together by hand, I asked Claude to build it for me.
The result was a spreadsheet of over 600 schools with the school name, type, address, zip, grade levels, and website.
One tip if you try this: be specific about the columns you want up front. It's much easier to have Claude fill a defined structure than to reorganize a pile of research after the fact.
Step 2: Enrich the list with contacts, PTOs, and directory tools
A list of school names isn't a campaign, so the next pass was enrichment. For each school, I had Claude research:
Contacts. Names, roles, and email addresses, pulled only from what's actually published on school websites and public profiles. One rule I set: only record emails that are actually displayed on a page, never ones guessed from name patterns. Guessed emails hurt your deliverability and your credibility.
PTO and PTA info. Whether the school has a parent organization, what it's called, and a link to it. This matters because a PTO parent and a school office are two different audiences, which shaped everything that came after.
Directory services. Whether parents at the school already use a directory tool. If a school already has a solution, that changes the conversation.
The enrichment also produced a personalization line for each school, so no email in the campaign opens with a generic pitch.
Step 3: Write the sequences, one for schools and one for parents
The enrichment made something obvious: I wasn't running one campaign, I was running two. A principal's office and a PTO volunteer care about different things, so each got its own sequence.
These are the actual templates, unedited.
The school sequence
Email 1 (Day 1)
Subject: A free parent directory pilot for {{schoolName}} this school year
Hi {{firstName}},
My name is Ryan and I'm the founder of Gethery, a new parent directory built for schools. We just launched and are working with a small group of local schools on our pilot. I live in the city with my kids in school here, so I wanted to start close to home.
Gethery gives parents one simple directory to find and connect with each other. It's built around privacy, every parent chooses who can reach them, and onboarding is easy for your office and your families. Right now those connections usually live in private WhatsApp groups and email chains that only reach some parents. We believe the more parents engage, the stronger the school, and a directory that includes everyone gets you there.
For pilot schools, Gethery is free for the full upcoming school year. No catch, we want feedback from real school communities as we grow.
If you have 10 minutes, I'd love to connect and share more.
Thanks, Ryan Founder, Gethery
Email 2 (5 days later)
Hi {{firstName}},
Just floating this back up in case it got buried, I know school offices are busy this time of year. Short version: we're offering a free year of Gethery, a privacy first parent directory that helps your families connect without the private group chats that leave people out.
Happy to send a one page overview if that's easier than a call. And if there's someone better to route this to, just let me know.
Thanks, Ryan
The parent / PTO sequence
Email 1 (Day 1)
Subject: A fellow PTO parent built this for schools
Hi there,
I'm a parent and PTO volunteer myself - we built Gethery because our own school's communication was a mess of email chains and a Facebook group half the families skipped. So I'm reaching out to a few local parent orgs like yours.
It gives every family at your school one private place to connect - parents can find and message each other by classroom, grade, or school-wide, form groups for room parents and committees, and follow a shared calendar, each person controlling their own privacy. For the whole community, not just PTO members.
We're signing a few founding schools now - free your first year, then 50% off for life, setup included.
Worth a look for your school? Reply and I'll send a 2-minute overview.
Ryan, Parent and Co-Founder of Gethery Gethery - www.gethery.com
Email 2 (Day 3)
Hi there,
Following up on my note. Picture the first week of school: room-parent sign-ups, a directory nobody kept current, three different group texts going at once. Gethery is the one private place that handles all of it - for the whole community, not just PTO members and we set it up for you before day one.
Founding schools that join now get their first year free, then 50% off for life - setup included.
Want the 2-minute overview? Reply "yes" and I'll send it over.
A couple of founding spots are already taken - worth holding one for your school?
Ryan Fischer Parent and Co-Founder of Gethery Gethery - www.gethery.com
Email 3 (Day 10)
Hi there -
I'll stop crowding your inbox; I know how much a PTO already juggles, especially heading into a new year. The founding-school offer - first year free, then 50% off for life - still stands if the timing ever makes sense. If giving your families one calmer place to connect this fall sounds worth a look, just reply and I'll walk you through it in a couple minutes. And if it's not the right fit, no worries at all. Thanks for everything you do for your school.
Ryan Fischer Parent and Co-Founder of Gethery Gethery - www.gethery.com
A few notes on why the emails are written this way. The school sequence leads with trust and low friction: a free pilot year, no catch, and an offer of a one-pager instead of a call. The parent sequence leads with identity, "I'm a PTO parent too," because that's the credibility that matters to a volunteer. The last email in each sequence takes the pressure off on purpose. "I'll stop crowding your inbox" gets replies because it isn't asking for anything.
Step 4: Build the campaign in Instantly
With the list enriched and the templates written, I loaded everything into Instantly and set up the automated sequences with wait steps between each touch. The merge fields ({{firstName}}, {{schoolName}}, and the personalization line) come straight from the enriched spreadsheet, so every email that goes out is specific to that school.
Step 5: Launch small
I didn't blast 600 schools. I launched with 10 emails, and I'm calling that a win.
The goal of the first send isn't replies. It's making sure the machine works: merge fields render correctly, the sequence timing fires, nothing lands in spam, and the personalization reads like a human wrote it. Once that's proven, scaling up is easy.
What's next
Over the coming weeks I'll be testing subject lines, sequence timing, and the school-office pitch against the PTO pitch. I'll share every sequence I try here, with real numbers on what worked and what didn't.