Why this segment and this trigger
The person who feels an empty shift first is not HR. It is the operations manager who has to run the line anyway, usually by paying overtime to the same tired people. A company with a dozen hourly roles open at once is in that situation today, and the job posts say so in public. You do not have to guess at their pain. You can count it.
That gives you something rare in cold email, a first line that is specific, true and about them. "Saw you have 14 warehouse associate roles posted" beats any compliment about their website.
Step 1, build the trigger list
Once a week, go through the job boards you already use for candidates and search for the hourly roles you place, in the metros your branches cover. Write down every company with 8 or more of those roles posted in the last 14 days. Keep three columns.
website,open_roles,city
ridgelinefreight.example,14 warehouse associate roles,Columbus
halvorsenpackaging.example,22 production roles,IndianapolisWrite open_roles the way you would say it out loud, including the role. It goes straight into the email.
Two hours a week gets you 100 to 200 companies in most metro areas. If you have an AI agent connected to Argorant, it can do the counting and the list building for you, see connecting your agent.
Step 2, find the right people at those companies
Open Search and then People, and set the filters.
Company domains paste the websites from your trigger list
Job titles Operations Manager, Warehouse Manager,
Distribution Center Manager, Plant Manager,
Director of Operations, Site Manager,
Production Manager, Shift Manager
Location the states your branches cover
Must have emailLeave Industry and Employees empty when you search by domain. The trigger already did that work, and extra filters only drop people you want.
Aim for two people per company, the site-level manager and the person above them. If a company only shows an HR manager, take them too. HR is the second-best door for staffing, and the email works with a small change explained below.
Then open Leave out people from a list and pick every list you sent to in the last 90 days. Save the result as a list named after the week, such as Staffing trigger 2026-W43.
No time for job boards this week
Run the same search without the domains and with these filters instead. You lose the trigger line, so use the variant B email below, which does not need it.
Industry Transportation & Logistics, Warehousing, Food Production
Employees 51-200, 201-500, 501-1,000
Job titles as above
Location the states your branches coverStep 3, bring in the custom column
To use {{open_roles}} in the email, the campaign needs that column. Export the saved list, add open_roles and city from your trigger sheet by company website, and upload the file as the campaign audience with Upload CSV. Keep open_roles as a custom field when you map the columns. Rows you upload yourself use no credits.
Step 4, the math
companies per week 150
people per company 2
new people per week 300 (60 per weekday)
emails per person 3
emails per weekday ~180 once follow-ups overlap
per mailbox per day 5
mailboxes needed 36The mailbox math is the same as in the Academy lesson on mailboxes and limits. Our own Microsoft mailboxes are set to 5 cold emails a day each, and we would start any new segment there.
If you have fewer mailboxes, lower the companies per week rather than raising the per-mailbox limit. A smaller list with a true first line does more than a bigger one sent from tired mailboxes.
Step 5, the sequence
Set the campaign timezone to your prospects' timezone and the sending window early. Operations managers are on the floor before most office workers sit down, and the first hour of their day is when they read email. The gap between sends can stay at the default.
Email 1, variant A (with the trigger)
Subject {{open_roles|the open roles}}
{Hi|Hey} {{first_name|there}},
Saw {{company|your team}} has {{open_roles|a lot of hourly roles}} posted. When that many are open at once, it is usually overtime covering the gap, and the same people carrying it every week.
We place warehouse and production staff around {{city|your area}}. Most clients start with two or three people on one shift, so they can judge the fit before anything bigger.
Worth 15 minutes to see if we can take part of it off your plate?
{{sender_first_name}}
The subject is the trigger itself, lowercase, like a note from someone who read the post. If the fallback ever fires, "the open roles" still reads fine.
Email 1, variant B (no trigger needed)
Subject {shifts|covering shifts} at {{company|your site}}
{Hi|Hey} {{first_name|there}},
How long does it take you to fill an hourly role right now, from the day someone quits to the day the replacement shows up?
We place warehouse and production staff around {{city|your area}} and usually have screened people on site within [your real turnaround]. If that gap is costing you overtime, it might be worth a short call.
{{sender_first_name}}
Run A and B as two variants of the first email when your list mixes trigger and non-trigger companies. Compare them after a few hundred people each.
If the person is in HR
Swap the second sentence of variant A for "Usually that means the hiring team is running flat out and the floor is still short." Everything else holds. Put HR people in their own campaign so the line only goes to them.
Email 2, three days later, same thread
{{first_name|Hi}}, one thing I left out.
[Your real no-show policy, in one sentence, for example: if someone we place does not show up, we send a replacement the same day and you do not pay for the missed shift.]
Is that the bigger problem for you, people not showing up, or finding them in the first place?
{{sender_first_name}}
The follow-up adds one new fact and asks a question that is easy to answer in five words. Either answer starts a conversation.
Email 3, five days after that, same thread
Last note from me on this.
If temp staff is covered for now, who should I talk to when peak season planning starts? Happy to reach out then instead.
{{sender_first_name}}
It asks for a name instead of a meeting. On our own sending, about one in ten replies pointed us to someone else, so make it easy.
Step 6, subsequences for the yes
Add two subsequences on the campaign's Subsequences tab. Order matters, because the first match from the top wins.
Rates goes first. Keywords are rates, pricing, cost, how much, fees, bill rate. First email in the next sending window.
Subject Re: {{thread_subject}}
Sure. It depends on the role and the shift, so I would rather give you a real number than a range. [Your typical bill rate range for the most common role, if you are comfortable sharing it.]
If you tell me the role, the shift and when you need people, I will come back with the exact rate today. Or we do it in 15 minutes on a call, whichever is easier.
{{sender_first_name}}
Interested goes second. Keywords are interested, tell me more, send info, sure, call me, available, candidates, profiles, let's talk. First email in the next sending window, second email two days later.
Subject Re: {{thread_subject}}
Great. The quickest way is 15 minutes where you tell me the roles and shifts, and I tell you who we have available this week.
Does {Thursday|Friday} morning work? If another day is better, tell me which.
{{sender_first_name}}
{{first_name|Hi}}, would it help if I sent two anonymised profiles for one of the roles instead? Easier to judge real people than a description.
{{sender_first_name}}
Step 7, reply handling
Switch on the Referral, Wrong person and Not interested labels before launch, and check the Unibox at least twice a day. On our own sending, 65% of people who answered did so within an hour of the email, so a same-morning reply catches them while they still remember writing.
- "We already use an agency." Most sites use two or three. Ask which roles are hardest for the current one to fill, and offer to cover only those.
- "Talk to HR" or "talk to Maria". Write to the new person the same day and mention who sent you. Answer the original sender with one line of thanks.
- "Not right now, try after peak." Ask for the month, set the reply to Other, and put the date in your calendar. Do not argue.
- "Send me your rates." The Rates subsequence handles the first answer. Follow it with a real number fast.
- Out of office with a return date. Nothing to do. Stop on reply ended the sequence, so write once by hand after they are back.
- "Remove me." The Unsubscribe label catches it and the person gets nothing further.
What to watch
We have not run this segment ourselves, so here are decision points instead of promised numbers. After 300 people, look at the replies. If they are close to zero, check delivery before you touch the copy. If people answer but rarely say yes, the trigger is probably too weak, so raise the cut-off from 8 open roles to 12. If you get many referrals to HR, put HR people in from the start.
For reference, our own healthiest campaign reached a 3.5% reply rate per person contacted, out-of-office notices included, with 0.05% bounces, sent from mailboxes at 5 cold emails a day to a valid-only list. That was a different segment and offer, so treat it as a sanity check, not a target. The lesson on reading the numbers says which change to make for which result.
