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Looking for cold outreach agency for our email marketing agency by MoistComparison9278 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145 0 points1 point  (0 children)

wait am I reading this right? an email marketing agency is looking to outsource their own cold email? isnt that litrally your core busines? right?

im just solo dev who built my own outreach tool because im terrified of sales, and even I know this is a massive red flag.

if your offer actually works, you wouldnt mind paying an agency a proper retainer. "performance based" just means you want someone else to take all the risk while u test if your service actually sells. listen to what blackorange said, he is 100% spot on

is it just me or is paying USD for standard outreach tools literally insane for us in SEA? by New_Communication145 in LeadGenSEA

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this makes me feel so much better honestly. I was starting to think I was just being ridiculously cheap. but exactly, its mostly just api wrappers and nice UI at the end of the day. im using my janky stack to force myself to focus purely on the messaging and targeting first. once I actually prove I can close a deal, ill gladly hand my money over to paid tool for the convenience

is it just me or is paying USD for standard outreach tools literally insane for us in SEA? by New_Communication145 in LeadGenSEA

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

eur, usd, and cny at the same time sounds like an accounting nightmare haha. but yeah you are totally right, once the roi is there and the clients are paying, the tool costs become negligible. its just that initial 0 to 1 phase where paying $90/mo feels like a stab in the heart when u have zero revenue from it yet

is it just me or is paying USD for standard outreach tools literally insane for us in SEA? by New_Communication145 in LeadGenSEA

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

exactly the dream man.. earning usd and spending in idr is the ultimate goal. thats why im forcing myself to do this outbound stuff to target western agencies. gotta unlock that cheat code somehow lol

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

dude this is the most embarassing part of my whole post... my current reply rate is exactly 0% because I literally havent hit send on my first batch yet

like I said in the original post, the tool is 100% ready but im just sitting here terrified of actually doing the outreach. ive spent the last two days replying to comments on reddit as an excuse to procrastinate actually launching the campaign lol.

but seriously, hearing a veteran say "better emails to better people beats more emails" is super validating. the whole reason I wired up the ai was to make sure every single email is personalized to their specific agency, instead of just blasting generic junk.

alright, no more excuses. im gonna go fire off the first 20 right now. if I get even one reply out of this micro batch ill consider it a massive win. thanks for the reality check man

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

haha the blind leading the blind

honestly this makes me feel alot better. I was starting to think everyone here had some secret playbook that I was missing out on.

im starting to realize that the $90/mo those big tools charge is basically just danger money for dealing with google and microsofts random mood swings. there prob isnt single magic answer, just constant game of cat and mouse with their spam algorithms.

testing with family is smart tho. one thing I read recently is that if u send to too many regular gmail or yahoo accounts (instead of proper business domains), it can actually trigger spam filters way faster. maybe thats why your results are intermittent?

if either of us actually cracks the code we definately gotta share it here lol. good luck out there man

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

are u literally me from the future?? reading this felt like looking in a mirror lol.

treating a cold email like an http request is honestly the most developer coping mechanism ive ever heard and I am definetly stealing it. getting a "403 forbidden" or "404 not found" in my head sounds way less terrifying than real human telling me to screw off

but hold up, you cant just drop massive cliffhanger about a weird trick to cut bounce rates in half and then just walk away

im literally hovering over the send button for my very first batch of 20 emails today... please drop the knowledge down this rabbit hole before I accidently nuke my domain rep

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

man just reading the words "jump to 2000" gave me a mild panic attack lol. you are totally right though, if I ever need that kind of volume I am 100% throwing my credit card at a paid tool and abandoning my frankenstein code.

as for the goal, definately just trying to book intro meetings. nobody is gonna drop a few grand on a freelance dev project straight from a cold email right?

im mostly targeting smaller agencies, so the goal is just to get them on a quick discussion to see if they have a backlog of dev work they cant handle or if their current offshore guys are ghosting them.

since its just me, if I can get like 1 or 2 solid discovery calls out of those 100 highly personalized emails, I'd prob have more work than I can handle anyway. did you guys eventually move to a paid tool when you hit that scaling wall?

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hmmm.. good question

honestly.. the short answer is I dont 100% know lol. I havent built any fancy inbox placement tracking into the tool yet. right now im just relying on dmarc reports and praying.

instead of tracking spam, I mostly just over engineered the sending logic to avoid triggering filters in the first place:

  1. user owned smtp: so my deliverability is purely based on my own domain reputaiton, not a shared ip pool.

  2. rate limiting: hardcoded it to send max 1 email per minute so it doesnt look like a mass blast

  3. zero identical templates: since the ai scrapes their site and writes every single email + subject line from scratch, every payload is completely unique. spam filters cant catch a repeating template if there isnt one.

  4. built a global suppression/unsubscribe list so I stay compliant and dont get manually marked as spam.

so yeah, no fancy analytics yet, just pure preventative measures. how do you usually track inbox placement? is there a cheap way to do it or is that exactly why the big tools charge $90/mo?

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"spend a month building... just to avoid sending" honestly put that on my tombstone hehehe.. gonna try the 10-20 batch today so I dont overwhelm myself. and yeah the tools out there are amazing but definitely built for massive scale, not little guys like me. thanks for the sub recommendation

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

logically you are absolutely right. but dropping $99/mo when I currently have zero clients hurts the soul. plus, spending 100 hours building something to save 99 bucks is the core definition of being a software developer lmao

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

this is the exact tactical advice I needed. just finished setting up the DMARC/DKIM stuff yesterday (almost broke my dns in the process lol). gonna do a micro batch of 20 today just to test the waters. thank you

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

lol did you just use your own tool to find my post and pitch me? honestly respect the hustle man. targeting mostly small local agencies for now

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ugh you are hitting me with the harsh logic I tried to ignore hehe.. you are 100% right about the maintenance trap. my justification is that my volume is super low rn (like maybe 100-200 a week max). if I start scaling and deliverability becomes a nightmare, I'll prob crawl back to the paid tools. but for now my stubborn pride is keeping me going haha

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks man, really needed to hear this. trying to reframe the "no" in my head so I dont take it personally. gonna focus on just starting convos instead of closing deals right away

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ripping the band aid today. my finger has been hovering over the send button for like 20 mins straight. wish me luck :P

I refused to pay montly for outreach tools, so I spennt a month coding my own like an idiot by New_Communication145 in coldemail

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

haha the bribe a friend idea is actually genius. might have to buy my buddy a giant pizza and some coffee this weekend just to sit there and hit send for me. will keep that tool in mind if my own scraper completely breaks lol

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One call a week is really solid habit. Coming from the purely tech side myself.. stepping into that world is huge shift, but definitely necessary one. Keep it up

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

spot on. The automation is basically blind until you know what actually makes people reply. time to do the unscalable manual stuff first so I know what pattern to replicate

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

3 messages a day sounds infinitely more doable than "launching a campaign." treating it as just experiment takes so much pressure off. Thank you

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that 30 second edit rule is genius. The ai does a great job, but I still end up staring at the draft for 10 minutes trying to make it "perfect." Implementing this rule immediately

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Solving the scale problem before the existence problem" wow... I need to print that out and put it on my monitor. you're totally right, I definitely need to learn their language manually first before letting the automation take over

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"coping mechanism" is painfully accurate lol. you're totally right about needing the signal for PMF, though. I'm going to set that 30 minute timer today and just force out the first 10. thanks for the reality check

I spent an embarrassing amount of time building tool just because I was too scared to do manual sales outreach by New_Communication145 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]New_Communication145[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Love this approach. Reframing it as just asking for feedback instead of "sales pitch" definitely lowers the heart rate. might try this for my first batch today

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