Run outreach with Hunter

Hunter finds the editor’s address, verifies it and sends a short sequence from your own mailbox. AgentLinkOps keeps the prospect and confirms the link. Your agent carries the AgentLinkOps watch id into Hunter, so every outcome comes back to the right prospect without matching on email addresses. This is the sequencer we recommend for backlink outreach. It has a free plan, sends 15 emails a day per mailbox by default, and stops the sequence for anyone who replies.

What it costs

From Hunter’s pricing page, checked October 20, 2026:

Plan	Price	Includes
Free	$0	1 connected mailbox, 500 recipients per sequence, 50 credits a month
Starter	$49 a month, or $34 a month billed yearly	3 mailboxes, 2,500 recipients per sequence, 2,000 credits a month

The free plan includes an API key and 50 credits a month, enough to find and verify addresses for a small first campaign. AgentLinkOps checks come from your workspace allowance as in the default guide.

Before you start

AgentLinkOps connected to your agent, with prospects saved as in step 1 of the default guide.
A Hunter account with your Gmail, Google Workspace or Microsoft mailbox connected. Other mailboxes connect over SMTP and IMAP on paid plans.
Hunter connected to your agent. Hunter’s MCP server is at https://mcp.hunter.io/mcp; Hunter’s agent reference lists its lead and sequence tools. An agent can also call Hunter’s REST API with an API key you set in its environment. Never paste the key into a chat.
In Hunter, a lead custom attribute with the slug alo_watch_id. Hunter rejects a lead that names an attribute you haven’t created.

1. Find and verify the editor

For each prospect, your agent runs Hunter’s Email Finder or Domain Search on the publisher’s domain, then the Email Verifier. When Hunter finds no verified address, try the contact routes from get_public_contacts. If those fail too, mark the prospect abandoned and retire it.

2. Create the lead with the watch id

Create the Hunter lead (POST https://api.hunter.io/v2/leads) with the AgentLinkOps watch id in the custom attribute:

{
  "email": "editor@publisher.example",
  "first_name": "Sam",
  "custom_attributes": {
    "alo_watch_id": "wat_example_1"
  }
}

Hunter deduplicates leads by email, so a retry doesn’t create a second lead. The address stays in Hunter. Don’t copy it into AgentLinkOps. One lead carries one watch id. If the same editor covers two of your prospect pages, pitch both in one email and record the second page’s outcome by hand.

3. Review and start the sequence

Create the sequence in Hunter with your first email and up to five follow-ups. Add the leads as recipients, and have your agent personalize each recipient’s first email. Read every message, then start the sequence yourself. Don’t let an agent start a sequence you haven’t reviewed. Hunter stops the sequence for a recipient who replies, unsubscribes or bounces. It also stops when you mark the recipient Successful.

4. Bring outcomes back once a day

Your agent reads the leads in the sequence (GET /v2/leads with sequence_ids[]). Each lead returns its sending_status, its last_contacted_at and your alo_watch_id. The agent then updates that watch with update_link_watch:

Hunter `sending_status`	AgentLinkOps `outreachStatus`
`sent` (Hunter shows `opened` or `clicked` only after a send)	`requested`, with `lastContactedAt` from the lead’s `last_contacted_at`. Never use an open or click time
`replied`	`pending`. Your agent reads the reply and sets `declined` if the answer is no
`bounced`	`abandoned`
`unsubscribed`	`declined`
`pending`, `error`, `canceled`	No change

Opens and clicks only tell you the email was sent. They never move a prospect past requested. Bring back the status and date only: no subjects, message bodies, reply text or addresses. Each day’s read sees yesterday’s statuses again. Follow the rule in the default guide: never move a status backwards, so a reply your agent marked declined stays declined. Updating an outcome never starts a check.

Optional: webhooks instead of a daily read

Hunter’s webhooks are in beta. They send message.sent, message.read, message.clicked and message.replied, and each delivery carries the lead with its custom attributes. Hunter doesn’t sign webhook requests, so put a long random token in your receiver’s URL. Deliveries can repeat or arrive out of order, so keep the daily read as your source of truth.

5. Confirm the link

When an editor says the link is live, run the check from step 4 of the default guide. Marking a recipient Successful in Hunter stops their follow-ups. It doesn’t make the prospect won. Only a check that finds your link does.

What we haven’t tested

We wrote this guide from Hunter’s public API documentation on October 20, 2026. We haven’t run it end to end in a live Hunter account. Confirm these in your own account before you rely on them:

That the leads list returns your alo_watch_id value.
That a lead’s last_contacted_at changes only when Hunter sends an email.
That the free plan’s API key can manage sequences, not only find addresses.

If any of these doesn’t hold, use the recipient list in the Hunter app, or its CSV export, which includes your custom attribute columns. Record each status and send date in AgentLinkOps from there.

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Run outreach with Hunter

What it costs

Before you start

1. Find and verify the editor

2. Create the lead with the watch id

3. Review and start the sequence

4. Bring outcomes back once a day

5. Confirm the link

What we haven’t tested

​What it costs

​Before you start

​1. Find and verify the editor

​2. Create the lead with the watch id

​3. Review and start the sequence

​4. Bring outcomes back once a day

​5. Confirm the link

​What we haven’t tested

What it costs

Before you start

1. Find and verify the editor

2. Create the lead with the watch id

3. Review and start the sequence

4. Bring outcomes back once a day

5. Confirm the link

What we haven’t tested