This is the cold email plan we'd run for a full-service agency that serves one industry. Think law firm marketing agencies and credit union marketing agencies. Your best prospects are firms that need a whole marketing department and don't have one.
Your market is every firm in your industry big enough to need real marketing and too small to staff a full team. In many industries that middle is where most firms sit.
These are the signals worth looking for.
LinkedIn shows who works there. A firm with dozens of employees and nobody in marketing is running on referrals and luck.
A job post for a marketing manager means the seat is empty right now. An agency can start before a new hire would.
An old website and a dormant social page and a stopped newsletter and no ads running. One of those is a gap. All of them together is a missing department.
A new branch or a new office or a merger. Growth needs marketing behind it and the firm knows it.
At credit unions the CEO or the head of marketing decides. At law and accounting firms it is the managing partner. At senior living operators it is the owner or the head of sales and marketing.
One page showing their website and search and ads and email and social next to their two nearest competitors with plain notes on each.
It works because it shows the whole picture at once.
Walk through it on a 20 minute screen share. What to fix first depends on which service lines they want to grow and they'll know that. Fixing the whole picture is exactly what a full-service agency does.
What an in-house team would do in its first 90 days at their firm written specifically for them.
It works because it shows them what having a marketing department feels like.
Go through it on a call so they can move the priorities around. The retainer is that department.
Run one campaign for one service line free. For a credit union that could be auto loans. For a law firm it could be one practice area. They cover any ad spend.
It works because they see several channels working together on something they care about. The retainer runs everything that way.
It starts with a 20 minute call to pick the service line and the goal. Launch within three weeks of that call.
Each segment gets its own email because a specific email gets more replies than a general one. Split each segment by sub-industry too so the examples in the email fit the reader.
Keep each email under 100 words with one reason for writing and one line of proof and one offer and one question. The proof lines are examples of the kind of result to use. Swap in real results of your own before anything goes out.
Lead with the job post and a faster way to keep things running. Ask for a call directly.
Hi {{first_name}},
Saw {{company}} is hiring a {{job_title}}.
We run all of marketing for {{industry}} firms and can keep everything moving while you hire or instead of hiring. One client that paused the same search with us brought in more new business in the next six months than in the year before.
Worth 15 minutes to see what that would look like?
{{sender_first_name}}
Lead with the biggest gap from the snapshot. Offer the full snapshot.
Hi {{first_name}},
Put {{company}}'s website and search and social next to {{competitor}}'s on one page.
The biggest gap is {{biggest_gap}}.
A firm we took on in the same spot doubled its website inquiries in its first six months with us.
Want me to walk you through the full page?
{{sender_first_name}}
Lead with the gap between their size and their marketing. Offer the 90 day plan.
Hi {{first_name}},
{{company}} has {{employee_count}} people on LinkedIn and nobody with marketing in their title.
Wrote the plan an in-house team would follow in its first 90 days at {{company}}.
A client that started with the same plan had its first full campaign live in five weeks and booked 48 appointments from it.
Want me to walk you through it?
{{sender_first_name}}
Lead with the new branch or office. Offer the free campaign.
Hi {{first_name}},
Saw {{company}} is opening {{new_location}}. Congrats.
Happy to run the launch campaign for it free across search and social and email. You'd only cover the ad spend.
The last opening we ran this way hit its first year target in five months.
Interested?
{{sender_first_name}}
Send two follow ups in the same thread three to five days apart.
Each reply should end in a booked meeting that actually happens. The lead magnet and the offer get delivered on that call and never go out as a file to read later.
The replies below cover the three ways people say yes.
They asked for the snapshot. The call ranks the fixes by what they want to grow.
Hi {{first_name}},
Happy to. What to fix first depends on which services you want to grow this year. Twenty minutes on a screen share is enough to go through the page and rank the fixes.
Does Tuesday at 10am or Wednesday at 2pm work?
{{sender_first_name}}
They want the free campaign. The call agrees the goal and the budget.
Hi {{first_name}},
Great. I need 20 minutes with you to agree the goal and the budget for the launch. The campaign goes live within three weeks of that call.
Does Thursday at 11am or Friday at 3pm work?
{{sender_first_name}}
They said yes to a call. Tell them what they'll leave with so they show up.
Hi {{first_name}},
Perfect. I'll bring what we'd keep running while you hire and what that costs next to the salary. You'll leave able to compare the two properly.
Does Monday at 1pm or Tuesday at 9am work?
{{sender_first_name}}
Results aren't guaranteed and nobody honest can promise a number before the first emails go out. A few things decide how a campaign does.
The first few weeks show how the market responds. The list and the copy and the offer get sharper from there.
We build and run this campaign for one agency per industry.
This page is a starting point and a strategy we'd happily test ourselves. Working together gives us more context on your agency. That context lets us add better strategies and build better lists and offers and automations for you.
Thirty minutes on your market and how we'd reach it.