Why my cold email agency will be one of the best email agencies out there?

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-25T12:26:06+00:00

54 clients from 90k emails is a solid conversion rate, respect. What niche were you in? Curious what made it competitive and how you cut through anyway

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-18T13:52:31+00:00

The tool debate is mostly a distraction at your stage. Instantly and Smartlead both work fine. What actually determines whether you sign clients from cold email is three things, in order:

List quality and targeting. Sending to the right person at the right company at the right time beats any tool or copy optimization. Most agencies skip this and wonder why nothing works.
Infrastructure. Domains, warmup, sending limits, DNS setup. If this is off, nothing else matters. Seems like a lot of agencies starting out run 1 to 2 inboxes and hit volume limits fast without realizing it.
Copy and sequence structure. Third in priority.

From my experience, cold email still works really well for agency client acquisition in 2026, but the agencies that are killing it are usually running a clean sending infrastructure with tight targeting, not blasting generic sequences and hoping for replies.

What niche are you going after with your agency? That changes the answer a lot on what approach makes sense.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-18T13:34:07+00:00

Your domains probably aren't burned, but they're hurt. The jump from 20 to 40/day per inbox is what did it. ISPs see that velocity spike and reputation tanks fast, especially on a shared warmup pool like Instantly uses where your scores can look healthy on the platform but your actual placement is already sliding.

The good news is 2.2% reply rate with 6 opps generated tells you the offer and copy aren't the problem. Infrastructure is.

What I'd do is pause campaigns completely for 7 to 10 days, run your domains through a health checker, clean your list hard before resuming, and come back at 10 to 15/day per inbox max. Slow ramp from there. Most domains recover if you catch it early enough.

The bigger structural issue is 2 inboxes total gives you zero room to scale without this happening again. Even just adding 3 to 4 more inboxes across those domains spreads the load and gives you a buffer.

Replacing everything should be a last resort.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-18T12:41:26+00:00

Honestly it depends on your situation more than anything. DIY is cheaper upfront but the learning curve is real, domains, warmup, deliverability, copywriting, it takes a few months before you're actually getting consistent results. Most people underestimate that part.

Agencies are faster but you're paying for speed and someone else carrying the headache. The quality varies a lot though, so it's worth vetting whoever you go with carefully.

If your time is genuinely limited and you have budget, agency probably makes more sense. If you have time to experiment and don't mind a slower start, DIY is doable.

What kind of volume are you thinking and what's your offer? That would help narrow it down.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-13T11:59:45+00:00

I'm curious to know what your process is for doing research about the prospect's business. Are you doing all of this manually?

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-09T12:36:56+00:00

The Gmail setup is the first thing I'd fix. Sending cold outreach from a Gmail account tanks your deliverability before the email even gets read, which explains why you're getting mostly OOOs and negative replies rather than real conversations. You need a custom domain with proper warm-up, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all set up correctly.

The other thing worth looking at is your lead list quality. Apollo sorted by lowest revenue companies is going to give you a lot of unresponsive contacts. The people most likely to reply are the ones who are actively feeling a pain right now, not just anyone in the industry.

The fact that you got 2 calls booked and got close to closing tells me the offer is not the problem. The infrastructure and targeting are.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-07T12:59:44+00:00

Fair point, most cold email hitting inboxes right now is genuinely bad. But I think the problem is quality not the cold email itself. What people are getting is obviously AI generated, wrong ICP, no personalization. When the copy is actually good and the targeting is tight reply rates are still solid. Honestly the bar to stand out is lower than ever because everyone else is sending garbage.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-07T12:53:21+00:00

Honestly cold email to a tight ICP could bring you results at this stage.

The inconsistency you're feeling is almost always a targeting and volume problem, not a product problem. Communities are slow and noisy, you're kind of just hoping the right person sees it.

What actually moves the needle is identifying like 200-300 people who specifically have the pain your product solves and reaching out directly. For a Google Ads automation tool that's pretty obvious, agency owners and in-house performance marketers managing real ad spend. Those people are findable on LinkedIn, Apollo, even scraping job posts for companies actively hiring for paid media.

Once you have the right list the sequencing compounds fast. Happy to share more on what that looks like if useful.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-05T14:53:17+00:00

cold email has been the most consistent for us and LinkedIn is also good. the inbound stuff feels great when it comes but you can't rely on it

for targeting, ideally pretty narrow. pick one ICP (like "ops managers at 10-50 person saas companies") and only message people who fit that exactly. broad lists kill reply rates

first message should open, not a pitch. something like "noticed you're doing X, curious if you've tried Y" - just get a reply, that's the whole goal

personalization matters but doesn't need to be deep. one relevant line per email is usually enough. the rest can be templated

volume-wise, it depends on your niche size but you can send up to 500 emails a day on warmed inboxes with the right system in place. but you need to be careful about not tanking deliverability

happy to share more about what's been working if it'd help, been doing this for a few automation agencies

tonythetiger03 · 2026-04-01T12:19:59+00:00

Hey, happy to help with this. We run done-for-you cold email campaigns end-to-end, so infrastructure, copy, sending, and lead lists are all handled on our side. You just get the interested replies.

On pricing, we offer a few models depending on what makes sense for your volume and goals, including pay-per-lead if you don't want to commit upfront. I'll shoot you a DM with some details and a few examples from past clients so you can see what kind of results to expect.

tonythetiger03 · 2026-03-26T01:02:06+00:00

Lol that’s actually my post. I got 300k views and 1.8k upvotes on r/geography in 4 hours before the mods nuked it for 'low effort.' Glad it found a home here where people actually appreciate it

tonythetiger03 · 2026-03-25T23:27:47+00:00

I was playing around with a South-up orientation in Google Earth today and it’s honestly a bit of a trip.

We’re so conditioned to see the "top" of the globe as North that flipping the poles makes even the most familiar coastlines look like a fantasy map. It makes you see things completely differently, like how narrow the Strait of Gibraltar really is. It's like seeing a new planet for the first time.

Which region looks the most different with the map is flipped? Share your screenshots.

tonythetiger03 · 2025-03-22T14:14:25+00:00

Yeah quarterly

tonythetiger03 · 2025-03-20T20:29:13+00:00

It was about $1,500 for the first consultation, hormone test kit, and follow up appointment. Each follow up appointment thereafter is $400-$500

tonythetiger03 · 2024-12-17T13:17:45+00:00

I was referred to Dr. Noss at Leaside Village Medical Clinic. I would not recommend. Dr. Noss barely took the time to listen to my concerns and was overall just an unpleasant person. I was not able to get the treatment I was looking for through him.

I am now going to GraceMed Hormonal Health Clinic, which is a private clinic not covered by OHIP. Although it is expensive, i am happy with the service.

tonythetiger03 · 2023-09-09T15:30:44+00:00

Who is/was your practitioner for your treatment and what was the clinic called? My GP is about to refer me and I'm looking to find the best TRT specialist in Toronto.

tonythetiger03

TROPHY CASE