Cold email marketing agencies can generate hundreds of leads for their clients. The secret to their success lies in a combination of fundamentals, an understanding of their clients’ ideal customers, and the right cold email stack. With the proper setups, any business can replicate its wins. 

Instantly is an automation platform built for cold email marketing—from the fundamentals down to advanced deliverability features. It’s made with all the tools you need to scale winning cold email campaigns, whether you’re a small business, an enterprise, or an agency. 

In this guide, we’ll show you how cold email agencies in our community build campaigns that convert. You’ll see their step-by-step process for writing copy that gets replies, enriching and qualifying lead lists, and structuring campaigns that consistently win clients. 

What’s Included in a Cold Email Marketing Agency Tech Stack?

Most agencies stick to the fundamentals and scale what works. But making fundamentals work still requires the right tools in your tech stack. Here’s a look at what most top agencies use to scale their cold email marketing campaigns:

• Instantly for cold email marketing automation 
• Apollo or Instantly B2B Lead Finder for lead generation
• Email verification tools
• Clay for lead enrichment
• Close for CRM

It’s also important to note that you must do technical setups for alternate domains, have tools that automate the warmup process, and continuously monitor deliverability with seed tests, inbox placement reports, and DMARC/Postmaster dashboards (monitors Gmail performance).

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If you want everything under one roof, Instantly has you covered. You can get DFY domains, automate personalization, find leads, enrich lists, manage prospects, and access deliverability features that ensure your email lands in the primary inbox. 

Winning Strategies Cold Email Marketing Agencies Use to Scale

One of the main reasons why cold email marketing agencies are so effective at generating leads is scalability. When they find a winning strategy for their client, all that’s left to do is increase the volume. Here’s a look at their strategy and how to replicate it yourself. 

Setting up the Fundamentals of Cold Email Marketing

Agencies can easily scale campaigns for their clients because they understand cold email marketing fundamentals, such as technical setups, warmups, and deliverability checks.

Dozens of services can do this for you. Some agencies even outsource to third-party vendors.

Some cold email agencies would do technical set-ups at scale in-house by automating the entire process using API calls. But if you want to streamline everything and focus on the actual campaign, Instantly offers a Done-For-You (DFY) email setup service (you can also get pre-warmed accounts). 

Spintax is a Deliverability Essential

Personalization is a must in cold emails. However, personalization won’t be enough if the rest of the emails you send follow the same template.

Spintax fixes this issue by providing semantically related words, phrases, and sentence variations in an email. Here’s an excellent spintax strategy from a cold email marketer from Reddit. 

Using the strategy (along with proper technical setups and warmups), he got over 90% email open rates. You can choose to do it off the dome like he did. Or, you can use Instantly’s AI Spintax Writer tool to automate the process for you. 

Sending Volume Strategies Have Changed

For the past few years, the consensus has been that a warmed-up email account can safely send up to 50 emails daily.

But this year, many have complained about deliverability rates dropping. As a response, cold email marketers have started changing their sending volume. 

Instead of doing a 20/30 split, marketers are now practicing a 50/50 split between warmups and cold emails. The key is understanding when it’s safe to start ramping up, which often involves constant monitoring of deliverability rates.

What Metrics are Cold Email Marketing Agencies Tracking?

The most crucial cold email marketing metrics to track are the ones that move the needle for your clients. And in most cases, that’s the reply rate, which is why most agencies disable email open tracking. 

Enabling open tracking inserts a code that email service providers might flag. But that doesn’t mean open tracking shouldn’t be considered.

High email open rates mean you’ve got a solid subject line. But if the reply rates are still low, you might need better email personalization.

Automate Personalization at Scale Using Enriched Lead Data

Clay + Instantly is a match made in heaven and is one of the most used combinations for many cold email marketing agencies that need enrichment and outreach automation.

If you’re unfamiliar with both tools, here’s a quick workflow summary that could work for you:

For tip #2, you have several lead generation options. Apollo and LinkedIn work great for specific cases. But remember to validate the lead lists you build using tools like MillionVerifier or Neverbounce before uploading them to Clay. 

If you want to streamline the process, Instantly SuperSearch provides pre-verified leads so you don’t have to verify using a third-party tool. Plus, SuperSearch integrates natively with Clay. After you’ve built your list, you can export directly to Clay. 

The Sales Process Doesn’t Stop at Emails

Email is only part of the sales cadence. Booking a meeting can take five or more touchpoints. That’s why automating a bulk of the cold email and follow-up process is essential. Then, you also include other channels in your cadence for a holistic approach.

Key Takeaways

Any business can do what a cold email marketing agency does with the proper setup and guidance. The best part is that their winning strategies can be scaled up or down depending on your needs. Remember, successful agencies build on top of the fundamentals, such as:

• Setting up alternate domains, warmups, and deliverability checks before sending at scale
• Using a complete cold email tech stack (automation, lead finding, verification, enrichment, CRM)
• Applying spintax to create natural variations and avoid template fatigue
• Monitoring reply rates over open rates to judge campaign success
• Adjusting sending volumes based on inbox placement and performance data
• Automating personalization by enriching lead lists with tools like Clay and Instantly
• Building multi-touch cadences beyond email (calls, LinkedIn, social touches)

If you want a tool that’s focused on building on fundamentals, there’s no better choice than Instantly. Learn why Instantly is the top choice for cold email marketers. Start your free Instantly trial.