I cold emailed agencies in 20+ countries. here's what i learned about each region.

after pitching 149 marketing agencies globally in a single session, some clear patterns emerged. not all regions are equal for cold outreach.

email scraping success rate by region:

finding a contact email from an agency's website varies wildly. some countries put their email right on the homepage. others hide behind contact forms with no visible address.

pakistan: 100% — every agency had an email on their site. easiest region to scrape.
ireland: 85% — most had emails on contact pages
singapore, india: ~75% — solid hit rate
uk, australia: ~60% — many use contact forms only
us: ~40% — larger agencies especially hide behind forms and sales funnels
japan: harder — many sites are in japanese even for agencies that serve english clients

takeaway: if you're building a prospect list and want volume, start with south/southeast asia and ireland. if you want bigger budgets, grind through the US/UK contact forms manually.

response speed by timezone:

sent everything on a saturday morning AEST (friday evening americas, saturday morning asia, saturday morning europe).

fastest responses came from hong kong and malaysia — business hours on saturday. got replies within 2-3 hours. meanwhile uk/us/au agencies won't see these until monday.

if you're doing outreach and want quick validation that your pitch works, target asian timezones first. you'll know within hours if your email resonates.

SEO scores by region:

ran every agency's site through my scanner before pitching. interesting patterns:

australian agencies: 82-95 (solid overall)
uk agencies: 77-98 (widest range)
south african agencies: 72-95 (some surprisingly low)
singapore agencies: 72-100 (adverdize scored a perfect 100)
pakistani agencies: 85-100 (websouls scored 100)
nordic agencies: 75-91 (most clustered around 85)

the sweet spot for pitching is agencies scoring 75-88. high enough that they understand SEO, imperfect enough that your findings feel relevant. pitching an agency that scores 100 is awkward — "your site is perfect" isn't a great opener.

what i'd do differently next time:

skip agencies scoring 95+ — no compelling finding to reference
double down on asia-pacific — faster response times, growing markets, english widely spoken in business
send during their monday morning, not saturday
personalize the city reference — saying "500 restaurants in mumbai" is way better than "500 businesses in your area"

the scanner i use to generate these findings is free on gumroad: https://vemtraclabs.gumroad.com/l/seo-analyzer

anyone doing cross-border outreach? what regions are converting best for you?