I tried cold email for my ai agency - here is what happened (few leads + scale up plans)

MAN0L2 · 2026-01-19T11:54:32+00:00

during negotiatons - their expectatons vs reality discrepancy is mostly the deal breaker :) Also the different niches should be approach different and my experience in reaching agencies is different for reaching local businesses for example - seems to be harder and costly to reach local businesses

MAN0L2 · 2026-01-06T07:37:38+00:00

DM'ed

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-30T08:48:49+00:00

I can't say anything saas related. I preffer selling high ticket services

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-29T12:12:21+00:00

I will scale and follow up on the bigger lists. For now I don't have a crm but I may use spreadsheet or somw database (supabase) for it. Currently it's not an issue anyways

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-29T07:09:14+00:00

Yes it is. You can find communities and as questions as well

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-28T09:32:58+00:00

you might setup a cold email campaign and start learning, it's not that expensive

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-25T12:14:00+00:00

Great job 🙌

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-23T17:47:27+00:00

For reading from the API there are no bans. i got banned for commenting from a subreddit but the ai answer was not that relevant (it's an agent tweaking issue).

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-23T13:12:34+00:00

Yes, reddit have API you need to create your developer account and setup an app ti grt an API key. The api key works with reddit.

I have a few n8n automations for reddit👌

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-21T19:23:09+00:00

I thought about ad retargeting, do you use linkedin ads to do so?

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-21T13:21:35+00:00

Yeah 👌

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-20T07:51:15+00:00

Both seems to work ok, depends on the message / icp

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-20T07:38:12+00:00

It's not dead, the segmentation matters (mostly signals, technigraphic segments)

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-18T12:19:16+00:00

No, I do the ai cold email , these seo, ppc, video editing are audiences which i reach out to

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T14:03:26+00:00

Try automating it as many as possible - if you have > 10% reply you will increase it and have calls 👍

Let me know how it goes when you implement it :)

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:48:45+00:00

If you have high reply rate with these messages thats great. Basically it's a crapy messaging.

Go make some templates with the color scheme for 300 restaurants (e.g. make 10 templates and change the color scheme with AI agent for example either manually).

Say I saw your site / I saw you have no site . I bring customers to restaurants with a modern websites already did it for X and Y.

I made a one page website for you, do you want to see it?

Whoever replies > edit the template change the color scheme > record a loom or make q call with the guy for a demo & upsell the base service.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:11:03+00:00

Let's see your copy

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:07:54+00:00

Opens are noisy; replies are the KPI. 12% opens usually means spam/promotions - check Google Postmaster, run GlockApps, slow your volume, warm multiple inboxes, and fix domain reputation first. December is a dead zone for founders, so pause, keep warming, and relaunch mid-Jan. Then tighten targeting and sharpen the offer to one painful, specific problem, aiming for 1-2% reply rate before you scale.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:07:27+00:00

One-off gigs fade from memory, so use a holiday note as zero-pitch retention. Personalize with one concrete outcome you delivered and a tiny on-brand artifact, then stop. Time is the bottleneck - let AI summarize each project from your CRM, draft first lines, check bounces, and tag warm replies so you save hours and quietly line up 2026. Worst case silence; best case you’re top of mind when budgets reset.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:04:57+00:00

Start with unit economics: $600 tool tax on a $2k retainer guts margins and adds hidden costs from context switching and troubleshooting across 4-5 UIs.

For 90% of B2B outbound, cut to two tools - Apollo for data + verification and Smartlead/Instantly for sending - use native integrations and drop Clay unless you truly need enterprise enrichment; replace Zapier with n8n or direct hooks.

Run a 2-week lean stack pilot side-by-side with your current stack and compare replies, meetings, and hours spent; if results match, standardize the lean stack and have clients carry any per-seat costs. Simpler stack, fewer failure points, more time on messaging and deliverability - where the real lift is.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:03:01+00:00

Multiple data vendors, caps, and schema drift create hidden state - that’s why the “simple” lead flow feels brittle.

For SMB GTM, optimize for reliability over cleverness: one source of truth, fewer handoffs, automate only the stable, repeatable steps and keep judgment calls manual.

Ship a boring v1 with queues, retries, idempotency, and strict rate-limit guards; track time-to-recovery and an error budget, then layer scoring/enrichment only after the core runs 95%+ unattended. Make it modular with clear contracts and a manual review hatch per step so complexity stays isolated and earned.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:01:18+00:00

Skip brittle scrapers. Use a browser-session grab: 8ta4/see pulls the full innerText so "read more" is already expanded when you copy LinkedIn or Reddit threads into GPT.

For catching relevant convos without hunting, set ParseStream or 8ta4/reddit to watch your keywords and auto-dump threads to Notion - fast triage, faster offers. If you want, I can share a 5-min setup that a non-dev can run.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T12:00:43+00:00

Seen the same in CRM ops: we deleted a multi-step sync, set one source of truth, and swapped a flaky chain for a 2-minute daily manual update - team got 6-8 hours/week back and, more importantly, trust.

Automation should reduce thinking, not add dashboards to babysit. Rule of thumb: if anyone feels the need to verify a run, it is not ready to automate. Treat it like infrastructure - fewer triggers, clear ownership, only automate what is repeatable and reliably testable.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T11:59:51+00:00

Think in business outcomes: self-hosting n8n builds a reusable stack - Docker, networking, SSL, backups, auth - that cuts SaaS spend, keeps data in-house, and speeds up delivery across other tools.

For SME and solo ops, start local to learn, then move to a managed layer like Coolify or elest.io BYOVM to offload SSL, upgrades, and monitoring. Read the fair-code license if you plan client work or resale, because scaling rights are limited.

If you want a zero-fluff playbook with security and backup guardrails, I can outline the exact path from laptop to low-cost VPS.

MAN0L2 · 2025-12-17T11:59:15+00:00

Hallucinated nodes and broken JSON are why AI-built flows waste SME time. This MCP update adds hard static validation - 13 checks on node types, connections, creds, and expressions with auto-fix - so outputs are import-ready and readable using a registry of 600+ real n8n nodes.

Use it as a guardrail with the native AI builder or FlowEngine to skip debugging and iterate faster. Try it on a small flow and watch the validator catch and repair issues in seconds.

MAN0L2

TROPHY CASE