PulpSense
Built by Santi Leoni & Connor KaplanA PulpSense proposal for Engage Your Stage
The right message. The right audience. The right stage. This system does the finding: events that can afford your speakers, the people who book them, and a first message in your voice.
From your call with Santi on October 26, and from engageyourstage.com.
A boutique speaker management and talent agency in Raleigh, started in 2016 when you began representing Justin Skeesuck and Patrick Gray. Keynote fees run $5K–$50K, and you earn a commission on each booking.
You book directly with event professionals and through bureau partners, and your speakers are fully commissionable. The system works both doors.
Outbound with Clay and Apollo a few years ago read as automated, and many of the leads couldn't afford a speaker.
Corporate events with real budgets are often private, so they never show up in an event directory.
Your Speaker Business Growth service lists lead generation and personalized outreach. Once this runs for your roster, the same system can run for those clients too.
Getting more bookings from outbound comes down to three things. Everything below is built to fix them, in this order.
15 of your 30 past clients, and all 5 of your life sciences clients, filter email through Proofpoint, Mimecast or Cisco. Those are your biggest budgets, and they're where most cold email gets quarantined or never lands.
Every booker's domain is checked before the first send, catch-all addresses are held back, and sending is set up for the gateway in front of each inbox. The specifics are part of onboarding.
See your clients' gatewaysYour TAM (total addressable market) is every event that can pay $5K–$50K for your speakers, and most of it never shows up in one place. Corporate events are private, and association conferences are spread across thousands of separate sites.
Pull from association event pages, directories, news, 990 filings and speakers' LinkedIn posts until we're finding at least 80% of the qualifying events in each segment we work. We check coverage against a hand-checked list of known events per segment, so you can see what's still missing.
See who we targetYour last outbound read as automated, and a generic "we represent great speakers" pitch gives a busy planner no reason to reply.
Every email opens with a real signal, names one speaker matched to that audience, and ends with an offer worth answering: a 3-speaker shortlist for their theme, budget and date, from your roster or beyond it, with clips and fee ranges.
See the angles and offersEach speaker gets a profile the matcher works from: what they speak on, and the events and audiences we search for on their behalf.
TEDx speaker, author, poet and former foster youth
Co-creators of I'll Push You, a 500-mile Camino de Santiago journey
Former US Ambassador, UN delegate and CEO; author of Turnaround
Actress (Friends, CSI, Modern Family) and corporate executive with a UNC MBA
Business resilience speaker, former SNL staffer, creator of Signature Leadership
Founder of MylestoGo; 20+ years in education and nonprofits
Every organization on the client wall at engageyourstage.com, with the email security in front of its inbox from a live MX check. Where a speaker's own site names the same client, we show the speaker.
| Client | Sector | Speaker who lists them | In front of the inbox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dyne Therapeutics | Life sciences | - | Proofpoint then Microsoft 365 |
| EMD Serono | Life sciences | - | Proofpoint |
| Entrada Therapeutics | Life sciences | - | Mimecast then Microsoft 365 |
| Pfizer | Life sciences | - | Proofpoint |
| Thermo Fisher Scientific | Life sciences | Justin & Patrick | Proofpoint then Microsoft 365 |
| AMITA Health | Healthcare | - | Mimecast then Microsoft 365 |
| Maxim Healthcare Services | Healthcare | - | Cisco Secure Email |
| PeaceHealth | Healthcare | - | Proofpoint |
| Providence | Healthcare | - | Proofpoint |
| Genesis Community Health | Healthcare | - | Self-hosted |
| Hospice of the Valley | Healthcare | - | Microsoft 365 |
| Bremer Bank | Corporate | - | Cisco Secure Email then Microsoft 365 |
| Caterpillar | Corporate | - | Proofpoint |
| Deloitte | Corporate | Michelle Anne Johnson | Cisco Secure Email |
| Experian | Corporate | - | Proofpoint |
| PwC | Corporate | Michelle Anne Johnson | Proofpoint then Google Workspace |
| Equinix | Corporate | - | Microsoft 365 |
| Fidelity Investments | Corporate | Justin & Patrick | Microsoft 365 |
| Corporate | Justin & Patrick | Google Workspace | |
| Shoe Dept. (Shoe Show) | Corporate | - | Microsoft 365 |
| American Bankers Association | Association | - | Microsoft 365 Forcepoint as backup |
| Biocom California | Association | - | Microsoft 365 |
| Meeting Professionals International | Association | - | Microsoft 365 |
| NAFCU | Association | - | Microsoft 365 |
| U.S. Travel Association | Association | - | Microsoft 365 |
| Compassion International | Nonprofit | - | Mimecast |
| CureDuchenne | Nonprofit | - | Microsoft 365 |
| Legacy Parks Foundation | Nonprofit | - | Google Workspace |
| NC State University | Education | Sharlene Provilus | Google Workspace |
| Visit Houston (Houston First) | Tourism | - | Microsoft 365 |
MX records checked October 27, 2026. Filters that run inside Microsoft 365 or Google, like Microsoft Defender or Abnormal, don't show up in MX records, so "Microsoft 365" means no third-party gateway in front, not no filtering.
Google, Fidelity Investments, Capital One, HP, Thermo Fisher
Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, American Express, Cisco, Genentech, PepsiCo, Sony, Universal Music Group, Paramount, WACUBO
Mayo Clinic, Hershey, Nestlé, General Mills, Virginia Society of CPAs, National Academy of Medicine, National Wellness Institute, SMU
NC State, UC San Diego, University of Utah, College of Charleston, East Carolina, Salve Regina, Campbell, Shaw, Saint Augustine's, YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Darkness to Light
Across your site and your speakers' sites, 25 of 61 organizations sit behind a third-party gateway, 15 of them Proofpoint. Jamie Cohen's and Andi-Nichole Myles's sites didn't load, so their client lists come in at onboarding. Your site doesn't have written case studies yet, only the client wall, bureau partner logos and testimonials; we'd write three from your HubSpot during onboarding (who booked, which speaker, which event, what came next).
Many large organizations accept mail for any address, so a standard checker can't tell a real booker's address from a made-up one. The made-up ones bounce later and drag down every inbox they came from.
Proofpoint, Mimecast and Cisco score every message before a person sees it. They sit in front of half your past clients and every life sciences company on the list: the biggest budgets.
We check every booker's domain before anything goes out, and each one is routed and written for what's guarding it. How we handle each case is part of onboarding.
Eight steps from a public signal to a conversation in your inbox. Budget is checked before outreach, not after.
Steps where you or your team are involved
The titles we search for at each kind of event, and what we filter out before a message is written.
What the system reads every day, and what it pulls out of each one.
Sample data · events, bookers and numbers are made up; the speakers are yours"What a room. Thank you to the Northwind Credit Union Association for having me open this year's Leadership Summit. 600 leaders talking honestly about change fatigue."
"2027 Annual Conference, June 9–11. Keynote speakers will be announced in February. 1,200 members expected."
"Kestrel Medical will bring its full sales team of 800 together in Scottsdale this January for its first in-person kickoff in three years."
"1,500 HR leaders, April 2027. Paid keynote slots; proposals for main stage close December 15."
Five parts, set up in your own accounts so you own the data and the system. Here is what each one looks like.
Every event we find, the budget evidence behind it, the speakers it fits, and how many bookers we found. Events that fail the budget check stay visible, with the reason.
| Event | When | Budget evidence | Speaker match | Bookers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northwind CUA Leadership Summit600 credit union execs | Mar 2027 | Peer speaker $10–20K$4.2M revenue | Lisa Gable · 92 Jamie Cohen · 84 | 3 |
| Kestrel Medical Sales Kickoff800 sales staff | Jan 2027 | 5,000+ employees | Justin & Patrick · 90 Michelle Anne Johnson · 82 | 2 |
| Summit State CPAs Annual Conference1,200 members | Jun 2027 | $1.1M conf. revenue | Lisa Gable · 78 | 4 |
| Tri-County Foster Care & Adoption Summit900 caseworkers and foster parents | May 2027 | $2.3M revenue | Sharlene Provilus · 95 | 2 |
| Lakeshore HR Leaders Forum1,500 HR leaders | Apr 2027 | Paid keynotes | Andi-Nichole Myles · 86 Jamie Cohen · 83 | 3 |
| Riverside Young Professionals Meetup80 attendees | Feb 2027 | Skipped: free event, no paid speakers | - | - |
One versioned prompt for each job. New versions are tested against the current one on real sends, and anything that does worse is rolled back.
| Prompt | Type | Version | Status | Reply rate per send |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First touch · associations | v3 | Active | 1.4% | |
| First touch · companies | v2 vs v1 | Testing | 1.0% vs 0.7% | |
| Follow-up · day 4 | v2 | Active | 0.8% | |
| Last note · day 9 | v1 | Active | 0.5% | |
| Speaker matcher | Internal | v4 | Active | - |
| Budget check | Internal | v2 | Active | - |
| First touch · associations | v2 | Retired | 0.9% |
Reads every reply, sorts it, and drafts the answer. Interested buyers are handed to your main inbox. It starts in review mode: you approve its first replies before it runs on its own.
"Good timing. We pick 2027 keynotes in January. Can you send a clip and her fee range?"
"I don't handle the kickoff. That's Priya Shah, our VP of Sales Enablement."
"Please remove me."
Every inbox and domain is scored daily on bounce rate and reply rate. One that bounces too much or falls behind on replies is swapped for a warmed spare the same day, and a replacement starts warming so the bench stays full.
See the full setupContact data, email verification and a HubSpot cross-check, laid out in the review sheet you approve from. Anyone you've worked with before goes to the top.
| Booker | Event | HubSpot | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jordan PriceDirector of Education | Northwind CUA Summit | Verified | Title confirmed | Booked Jamie in 2023 |
| Priya ShahVP Sales Enablement | Kestrel Medical SKO | Verified | Title confirmed | New |
| Chris LowellConference Manager | Summit State CPAs | Verified | Title confirmed | New |
| Alex MorenoProgram Chair | Lakeshore HR Forum | Catch-all, held out | Title confirmed | New |
Four layers, each checked every day. When something breaks, the system fixes what it can on its own, and every alert says what broke, what it already did, and whether anyone needs to act.
About 14 sending domains bought through the Porkbun API. A dry run confirms price and funds before anything is charged, and auto-renew is on for every domain. Two spare domains are bought on day one and left to age.
Expiry date and auto-renew on every domain. SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Blacklists.
A missing DNS record is put back. A domain inside 30 days of expiry without auto-renew raises an alert well before it lapses. Porkbun's monthly API spend limit caps what any job can buy.
40 Google inboxes on Zapmail's Growth plan: 30 sending and 10 warmed spares on the bench. ZapShield on every domain.
Connection, bounce rate and reply rate for every inbox. Blacklist status through ZapShield.
An inbox whose bounce rate rises, or whose reply rate falls below half its campaign's average over 14 days, is swapped for a warmed spare the same day. So is one that disconnects or gets flagged. A blacklisted domain is replaced free under ZapShield, and replacements keep the bench at 10.
About 10 sends per inbox per day, ramped up over the first weeks.
Bounce rate for every campaign, and sends per campaign per day.
A campaign pauses on its own at a 3% bounce rate. A campaign that sends nothing for 24 hours raises an alert.
Scheduled jobs for signals, enrichment, drafts and replies.
Every job run.
Failed steps retry 3 times. Stuck jobs are picked back up every hour. A data source that returns 0 rows is skipped and tried again later.
Replacement inboxes: Zapmail's API comes with its $299 Pro plan, which isn't worth it at 40 inboxes. Until then, we place replacement orders in the Zapmail dashboard within one business day of the alert, and the warmed bench covers the gap.
| What happens | What the system does on its own | Where you hear about it | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| An inbox disconnects | Pauses it and moves its campaigns to a spare | #eys-alerts | ℹ Info |
| An inbox's bounce rate rises or its reply rate falls behind | Swaps it for a warmed spare and flags a replacement order | #eys-alerts | ⚠ Warning |
| A domain is blacklisted | Pauses its inboxes; ZapShield issues a free replacement domain | #eys-alerts + email | ⚠ Warning |
| Spare bench drops below 5 | Flags a replacement order for us | #eys-alerts | ⚠ Warning |
| A DNS record goes missing | Puts it back and checks again the next day | Daily digest | ℹ Info |
| A data source returns 0 rows | Skips it and tries again in 3 hours | #eys-alerts | ⚠ Warning |
| A campaign hits a 3% bounce rate | Pauses the campaign | #eys-alerts + text | ⛔ Critical |
| A domain is 30 days from expiry with auto-renew off | Nothing it can fix: it needs a decision | #eys-alerts + email | ⛔ Critical |
| A job fails after 3 retries | Logs it, skips that item, keeps the rest running | #eys-alerts | ⛔ Critical |
Leads arrive in a Google Sheet you review and approve from. Replies, meetings and alerts post to Slack. Results are tracked per campaign, with notifications set per campaign.
Sample data · events, bookers and numbers are made up; the speakers are yours| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Booker | Title | Event | Budget evidence | Speaker match | Angle | Status | |
| 2 | Jordan Price | Director of Education | Northwind CUA Summit | Peer speaker $10–20K | Lisa Gable · 92 | Just ended, recurring | Verified | Review |
| 3 | Priya Shah | VP Sales Enablement | Kestrel Medical SKO | 5,000+ employees | Justin & Patrick · 90 | Selection process | Verified | Review |
| 4 | Chris Lowell | Conference Manager | Summit State CPAs | $1.1M revenue (990) | Lisa Gable · 78 | Selection process | Verified | Approved |
| 5 | Renee Okafor | Director of Programs | Tri-County Foster Summit | $2.3M revenue (990) | Sharlene Provilus · 95 | Just ended, recurring | Verified | Approved |
| 6 | Marcus Bell | Chief People Officer | Halvorsen Offsite | 2,000+ employees | Jamie Cohen · 88 | Theme match | Verified | Review |
| 7 | Dana Kim | Senior Account Exec | Bluefin Speakers Bureau | Bureau partner | Whole roster | Bureau assets | Verified | Review |
| 8 | Alex Moreno | Program Chair | Lakeshore HR Forum | Paid keynotes | Andi-Nichole Myles · 86 | Proposal deadline | Catch-all | Held out |
| Campaign | Contacted | Reply rate | Positive | Calls | Booked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Associations · just ended | 670 | 2.6% | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Associations · selection process | 610 | 2.1% | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| Corporate kickoffs | 480 | 1.3% | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| HR and L&D | 400 | 1.6% | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Child welfare and education | 160 | 3.0% | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Bureau partners | 80 | 8.0% | 2 | 0 | - |
| Campaign | Positive reply | Meeting booked | Referral | Bounce alert | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Associations · just ended | #eys-replies | #eys-meetings + email | #eys-replies | #eys-alerts | Daily digest |
| Associations · selection process | #eys-replies | #eys-meetings + email | #eys-replies | #eys-alerts | Daily digest |
| Corporate kickoffs | #eys-replies + text | #eys-meetings + email | #eys-replies | #eys-alerts · 2.8% | Daily digest |
| HR and L&D | #eys-replies | #eys-meetings | Off | #eys-alerts | Weekly, Mon 8am |
| Child welfare and education | #eys-replies | #eys-meetings | #eys-replies | #eys-alerts | Weekly, Mon 8am |
| Bureau partners | Email Shelley | Email Shelley | Off | #eys-alerts | Monthly |
Every lead gets a recommended angle in the sheet, picked from what we know about the event. Two lead the program; the rest are used when the signal calls for them.
Hi Jordan, congrats on the Leadership Summit last week. From the recap, the room was full. Does it run every year?
If you're already thinking about 2027, I represent Lisa Gable, former U.S. Ambassador and author of Turnaround. Want me to check her availability for your dates?
Shelley
Hi Chris, a quick question about the 2027 Annual Conference: how does your team pick keynote speakers? A committee, a member survey, or through a bureau?
I manage a small roster that includes former U.S. Ambassador Lisa Gable, and I'd rather fit your process than guess at it.
Shelley
A speaker like yours posted about keynoting their event. Open with the post, pitch the speaker who fits the same room.
A call for main-stage proposals is open. Offer to send the speaker's proposal before it closes.
The event announced a theme, like resilience or belonging. Offer the speaker whose talk was built for it.
Sales kickoffs run in January and February and book in the fall. Ask whether the kickoff keynote is locked.
HubSpot shows they booked one of your speakers before. Lead with that, and share who's new on the roster.
For bureaus: offer bureau-ready assets (topics, bios, photos and videos) so your speakers go into their database.
Each message has three parts: why now (the signal), why this speaker (the match), and one small offer that's easy to say yes to.
The smallest yes. Used when we know the speaker fits and the budget is there.
"Want me to check her availability for your dates?" Used for recurring events with a known date.
Built around their theme and budget, from your roster or beyond it, the way your Event Pros page describes.
For bureau partners: topics, bios, photos and videos, ready for their database.
Never in a first message: attachments, calendar links or a full fee sheet. Those go out after they reply, which keeps deliverability high and keeps the message short.
Three emails to each booker, in one thread. Every line comes from the signal, the event and the speaker match, not a template with a first name dropped in.
Sample data · made-up event and booker; real speaker from your rosterNorthwind's 2027 summit
Hi Jordan,
Saw Dana Whitfield's post about opening your Leadership Summit. Sounds like the session on change fatigue landed.
If you're starting on the 2027 lineup, I represent Lisa Gable. She's a former U.S. Ambassador and CEO, and wrote Turnaround: How to Change Course When Things Are Going South. A good follow-on for a room living through change.
Want me to send a short clip and her fee range?
Shelley
Engage Your Stage
Email 1 · day 1. Opens with the signal, names one speaker, makes one small offer.
Re: Northwind's 2027 summit
Hi Jordan,
One more thought on the 2027 lineup. Since this year's summit centered on change fatigue, Lisa's talk on changing course would give your members the next step, not a repeat.
Happy to send a 2-minute clip so you can see her on stage.
Shelley
Email 2 · day 4. Same thread, one new reason, the same small offer.
Re: Northwind's 2027 summit
Hi Jordan,
I'll leave it here. If Lisa isn't the right fit, I'm glad to put together a short list of 3 speakers for your theme and budget.
Just reply with the theme and I'll send it over.
Shelley
Email 3 · day 9. Closes the loop and offers the shortlist instead.
Go live in 2 weeks. We set up your domains and infrastructure in those 2 weeks, and sending starts low while the new inboxes finish warming, so your domains stay out of spam. Dates assume we start this week.
Onboarding call. We buy your sending domains and start warming the inboxes the same day.
About 14 domains on Porkbun and 40 Zapmail inboxes (30 sending, 10 spares), the database, the scheduled jobs and your speaker profiles, all set up for you. The first 300 events are pulled, budget-checked and matched. You approve the copy.
Email starts at low volume. The reply assistant runs in review mode.
Inboxes reach full volume, about 300 emails a day. Training session on running the system. The reply assistant goes on its own once you've approved its first replies.
~1,200 bookers contacted in NovemberNew events every week, message versions tested against each other, new bookers added as replies point us to them.
~2,400 bookers contactedWhat's getting replies and bookings, what to change, which speakers to add. Your included consulting hours run through January 27.
~2,400 bookers contactedAbout 1,800 qualified events and 6,000 bookers contacted by email, 3 emails each.
The benchmarks we'd hold the program to. Change any assumption below and the numbers update.
Targets, not guarantees. The average fee and commission are placeholders; set them to yours. Calls held late in the window often book after month 3, and recurring events keep paying after the first booking.
One price for the build, setup and training, paid in two parts.
Build and launch
Optional
Monthly consulting calls once the included hours are used, for new campaigns, new speakers, or tuning what's working.
Paid directly to each tool, in your name. Estimates at the volume above; they rise and fall with volume.
| Tool | What it does | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Instantly (Hypergrowth) | Sends and tracks email, up to 25,000 contacts | $97 |
| Supabase (Pro) | The database behind everything | $25 |
| Trigger.dev | Runs the jobs on a schedule and retries failures | $10–50 |
| Claude | Reads signals, matches speakers, writes drafts | ~$45–90 |
| OpenRouter | Low-cost AI for bulk sorting | ~$5–15 |
| LinkedIn data | Public speaker posts about their bookings, and booker titles | ~$20–40 |
| Zapmail (Growth) | 40 Google inboxes: 30 sending, 10 warmed spares ($99 plan plus 10 extra at $3.25) | ~$132 |
| ZapShield | Daily blacklist checks and free domain replacement, about 14 domains at $3 each | ~$42 |
| Total | ~$375–490 |
Plus about 14 sending domains from Porkbun at about $11 a year each. Sending from separate domains protects engageyourstage.com's email reputation.
To start this week.