Context

When building sales sequences, users may want to leverage news articles and market intelligence to identify potential target companies. Users need to understand how Unify's AI capabilities can analyze external content to inform targeting decisions.

Answer

Unify's AI agent can analyze internet content and news articles to help identify companies that may be good targets for your sales sequences. You can configure Agents to search specific news sources (like Product Hunt, company blogs, press releases, or industry publications) and automatically qualify companies based on what they find.

Setting up news-based targeting

1. 1. Build a Company-level Agent with targeted questions

   Configure your Agent to search for specific news or announcements:

   • Use True/False questions like: "Does this company have a Product Hunt launch post that mentions AI?"

   • Add optional open-text questions to capture details:

     • "Link to the announcement source"

     • "Exact snippet from the post mentioning [your criteria]"

     • "Launch date"

   • Add Guidance to tell the Agent where to look (Product Hunt, press releases, company blog, public news, LinkedIn bios, job descriptions)

   • Example Guidance: "Search Product Hunt for the company's launch page(s). Prefer official company launches over unrelated mentions. Treat 'AI' as present if the post or tagline includes terms like 'AI', 'artificial intelligence', 'LLM', 'GPT', or 'machine learning'. If uncertain, answer False."

2. 2. Test and iterate your Agent

   Run the Agent on sample companies until it reliably returns accurate results.

3. 3. Create a Play to operationalize the research

   Trigger: Start from a seed Audience of companies you want to monitor

   Action: Add "AI qualification" using your Agent

   Qualification rule: Proceed when the Agent returns True

   Downstream actions for qualified companies:

   • Update a company field or tag (e.g., ph_ai_launch = true)

   • Optionally store captured details (launch_url, ai_snippet, launch_date)

   • Sync to your CRM if needed

4. 4. Build a dynamic Audience from qualified companies

   Create an Audience filtered by the field or tag you set in the Play (e.g., ph_ai_launch = true). This gives you a continuously updated list of companies matching your news criteria.

5. 5. Reference news findings in outreach

   Create Smart Snippets that reference the Agent's outputs using template variables with fallbacks:

   Example prompt: "Research indicates {{agent_recent_launch_name}} was recently announced by {{company_name}}. Write a 1-2 sentence hook congratulating them and briefly tying it to {{your_value_prop}}. If no launch is found, write a neutral industry-relevant hook."

Note: To monitor companies periodically for new developments, re-run your Play on the seed Audience at your desired cadence. Each Agent question per company uses 1 credit.

This workflow allows you to make data-driven decisions about your sales targeting based on real-time market intelligence and company developments, automatically qualifying prospects and personalizing outreach based on specific news events.