Cold outreach to Agencies companies
The buyer is a marketing agency director, primarily measured on client retention rates. They respond to outreach that highlights how your service can directly enhance client satisfaction, such as improving project turnaround times or optimizing campaign performance metrics. Demonstrating a clear understanding of their current client challenges will capture their attention.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 558 agencies company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- client retention issues
- project delays
- budget constraints
- negative client feedback
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent client churn
Search for agencies that have reported recent client losses or churn on industry forums or news articles. Use this information to tailor your outreach, addressing how your solution can help prevent further churn and improve client retention.
- 02
Pinpoint specific campaign struggles
Look for agencies that have recently launched campaigns but received negative feedback or poor results. This can often be found in client reviews or social media discussions. Mentioning these challenges in your outreach shows you understand their pain points.
- 03
Connect through industry events
Identify upcoming industry events or webinars where agency leaders will be speaking or attending. Use this as a reason to reach out, suggesting a brief chat to discuss insights from the event and how your expertise aligns with their current focus.
- 04
Address common budget constraints
Acknowledge that many agencies are facing tighter budgets. In your outreach, offer insights or case studies that demonstrate how your solution can provide a strong ROI, making it easier for them to justify the investment.
- 05
Follow up post-initial outreach
If you don’t receive a response, wait about 5-7 days before following up. Reference your previous email and ask if they had a chance to consider how your solution could help address their specific challenges.
Can agencies companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 558 agencies companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 16.8% of 1–10-person companies against 55.4% of the largest — 39 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Improving client satisfaction
- Tackling project delays
- Boosting retention rates
Questions
- Why do marketing agency directors ignore cold outreach?
- Many marketing agency directors receive a high volume of outreach and may prioritize messages that demonstrate a clear understanding of their specific challenges. If the outreach doesn’t quickly convey how it can directly benefit their agency, it may be overlooked.
- What common objections do agencies have to new services?
- Agencies often cite budget constraints, skepticism about ROI, and potential disruptions to current workflows as common objections. They need to see clear evidence that any new service will not only fit within their budget but also enhance their existing processes.
- How can I better understand an agency's current challenges?
- Researching recent client feedback, industry news, and social media discussions can provide insights into the challenges an agency is facing. This information can help you tailor your outreach to address their specific pain points.
- What timing is best for reaching out to marketing agencies?
- Reaching out at the beginning of a quarter or after major industry events can be effective. Agencies often reassess their strategies and budgets during these times, making them more open to considering new solutions.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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