Most agency portfolios are unverifiable numbers next to logos you cannot call. We would rather show you how we actually build a campaign and let you judge the craft. Everything below is the real structure we use.
Every touch has to earn its own reply. Resending the same ask in a new wrapper is how sequences get marked as spam. The example below targets a VP Engineering on behalf of a development agency — the shape stays the same whatever you sell.
No compliments, no "hope you're well". Open with the specific thing that made this account worth contacting today, then make one inference from it. If we cannot name a trigger, the account does not belong in the list.
The reason they did not reply is usually a thought they never typed. Touch two names it out loud and removes it, then lowers the ask.
New value, new framing, and an explicit permission to say no. Offering a concrete artifact instead of a call converts a percentage of people who were never going to book from a cold email.
The last touch reliably outperforms touch two or three, because it costs the reader nothing to answer. It also keeps the relationship intact for the re-touch three months later.
Your domain and your reputation are attached to every one of these. The standard is simple: would a competent buyer find this worth 20 seconds?
This is the checklist that separates a channel which lasts years from one that burns out in six weeks. It is also the part most agencies skip, because the client cannot see it.
Cold volume goes out on separate registered domains. Your primary domain never carries a campaign, so your team's email stays unaffected whatever happens.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured and verified on every sending domain, with a custom tracking domain so links do not resolve to a shared provider address.
Fourteen to twenty-one days of graduated volume per inbox before a single prospect is contacted. No exceptions, no matter how urgent the quarter is.
Two passes of verification with a bounce target under 2%. Catch-all and risky addresses are held back rather than sent to and hoped for.
After launch, placement and reputation are checked daily and sending volume is adjusted before a problem becomes visible in the reply rate.
Open rate is not on this list. Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection it has been unreliable enough that optimising against it makes campaigns worse.
Sent minus bounced, cross-checked against placement testing. If this moves, everything downstream is noise until it is fixed.
All replies, positive and negative, split by segment and by touch. The negatives tell us more about targeting than the positives do.
Replies that meet the criteria you set at kickoff. A high reply rate with a low qualification rate means the list is wrong, not the copy.
Confirmed meetings, plus the show-up rate. This is the number the engagement is judged on, and it is the one we open the weekly review with.
Book a call and we will sketch the account profile, the trigger signals worth targeting, and the first sequence angles — on the call, for free, whether or not you hire us.