I sent 43 cold emails with my own tool. 17 replied. 1 paid. Here’s the unofficial launch.
A month ago I posted here about SignalsHunt - a tool that finds local businesses that actually need your help and writes the first message for you. 7 people signed up, 6 ran their first search. Thank you. Today I want to share what happened when I became my own most demanding user.
The test: does this thing actually land clients?
I run a small web agency (dricomm.com) alongside building this. Finding clients has always been the worst part of the job - not the work itself, the hunting. So I pointed SignalsHunt at my own agency and committed to actually sending what it generated.
The numbers, fully honest:
• 43 emails sent (over ~3 weeks, 5-7 per day, personal Gmail)
• 17 replies - most were “no thanks” or “not right now,” and that’s fine. A reply means the message landed as human, not spam
• 1 became a paying client - a $230/month SEO audit for a local business
Is $230 life-changing money? No. Is it proof the loop works - find the right business, reference something real about their site, get a conversation going? Yes. And one audit client is how retainers start.
The philosophy that made me build this
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about finding clients: there are no guarantees either way. You can wait on Upwork and get nothing. You can send cold emails and get nothing.
But the probability is not the same. When you actively hunt - when you pick businesses that visibly need what you sell (outdated site, no booking, invisible on Google) and open with that specific observation - you’re not pitching strangers. You’re starting a conversation they were already half-having with themselves.
I’ll say it plainly: I’d happily spend $1,000/month on prospecting if I knew it reliably surfaced $10,000 worth of clients. The math has always worked. The problem was time - 30-40 minutes of manual research per lead. That’s the part I automated.
Where the product actually is (unofficial launch honesty)
SignalsHunt is still raw. This isn’t a polished Product Hunt launch with confetti - it’s me, building in public, with a tool that already does the core thing: paste your site → get up to 20 real businesses from Google → each analysed (site issues, contact email found) → each with a 3-message outreach sequence written for you.
Free plan gives you 1 run with 5 real leads - no card, no catch. Enough to see if the messages feel sendable for your niche.
4 Pro spots left
From my first post, I gave away 10 free months of Pro. 6 are taken - 4 left. Same deal: sign up through the link in the first comment, and if you’re one of the next 4, you get a full month of Pro (unlimited runs, 20 leads each). All I ask: come back to this thread and tell me honestly what worked and what didn’t.
If you’ve been waiting for clients to find you - maybe try hunting for a week instead. Worst case, you’re exactly where you are now. Best case, someone replies.
Link’s in the first comment. 👇
Link: https://signalshunt.com/register?promo=ih1
First 4 signups get a full month of Pro automatically.
Happy to answer anything about the numbers above — including the 16 "no"s.
I want to try it right now! But the idea is really cool!
Thank you! I would appreciate your feedback!
Nice)
Thank you
Is this a system to use or is it all from the browser side? It sounds like a very good idea. But there is little mentioned about how it runs. Even ifnit is just a little bit, I feel like it will help someone on the fence.
Great question — it's a real hosted system, not a browser tool. Here's how it runs under the hood:
When you paste your site, everything happens server-side: an AI reads your homepage and builds your ideal client profile, then it queries Google Places for real matching businesses in your area. For each one, the system actually visits their website, checks for signals (outdated copyright, slow load, missing features), and pulls a contact email where it can find one. Then a second AI writes a personalized 3-message sequence referencing what it found on their specific site.
You just log in, paste your URL, pick a niche — and ~30-60 seconds later you get the leads with messages ready to copy. Nothing runs on your machine, no extension to install, no setup. It's all handled on our servers.
The one thing it deliberately doesn't do: send the emails for you. You copy and send from your own inbox — that keeps you in control and keeps deliverability in your hands (and honestly, keeps everyone on the right side of cold-email rules).
Happy to answer anything more specific — and if you want to just see it, the free plan gives you 5 real leads with no card. Sometimes that answers "how does it run" better than I can. 🙂
Appreciate the breakdown — that's a solid setup, especially keeping the actual sending in the user's inbox for deliverability. Good luck with the launch.
This looks interesting. I like products that help people find signals earlier instead of just guessing what to build or market next. The hard part is usually filtering noise from real intent, so if SignalsHunt can surface patterns that are actually actionable, that is a strong use case. Curious how you are ranking or prioritizing the signals, by volume, recency, source quality, or some kind of relevance score?
We have about 10 criteria we use to select relevant queries that are highly likely to result in a response to our message!
Wow, there is a lot to learn here
Thank you!
This hits home. I'm in the "getting the first paying one" phase right now too, and "start a conversation they were already half-having with themselves" is exactly it — a reply just means you sounded like a person, not spam.
Funny thing: I'm applying the same hunting logic one step later in the money flow. Instead of hunting for new clients, I'm building for Shopify B2B stores chasing invoices that are already 30/60/90 days overdue (Termpilot). The signal's already there — the customer bought, the money's just not in yet. Same "don't pitch strangers, reference something real" idea, just pointed at getting paid instead of getting found.
Curious: of your 17 replies, did the specific observation about their site do the heavy lifting, or was it more about timing? Trying to figure out how much of the win is signal quality vs. luck.
Luck and a signal - and the SignalsHunt assistant is everything!
I like that you shared the numbers instead of just saying "it worked." One thing that stood out was 17 replies from only 43 emails That's a much stronger signal than the single sale. Have you noticed whether personalization had a bigger impact than targeting, or was it the combination of both?
Thanks for the messages! I've noticed that it's important to communicate the client's pain and problem directly! That increases their chances!
That's a great point. It seems like people respond when they immediately feel understood rather than when they're pitched a service. Have you found that mentioning a specific issue on their website performs better than talking about the business in general?
Of course, SignalsHunt doesn't just report the problem; it says something like, "I can't message you—something on your site probably isn't working."
If you tell a client that their website is bad and that you'll make it better—that just doesn't work )))
Exactly. Nobody likes being told their website is bad. But if you point out a problem that's already costing them customers, it feels less like a sales pitch and more like useful advice. That shift in framing makes a huge difference.
I confirm that!!!
The reply rate is encouraging, especially considering the volume. It suggests the targeting is getting people to engage instead of ignoring the email.
I did try the tool, though, and ran into an issue. With a few different search terms I kept getting "No prospects found for this query. Try a broader niche or different city." It wasn't obvious whether my inputs were too narrow or if there just wasn't enough data.
It might help to suggest alternative queries or automatically broaden the search instead of ending at that message. That would make the first experience much smoother for new users.
Thanks for your feedback! We'll fix it!
great work . a bit of luck and opportunity always favors hardwork
Thank you!
Congrats on the launch and the results so far wishing you the best with it!
The official launch hasn't happened yet! But thanks for the comment!
I've been thinking about marketing lately and there are many options. Would you tell me, why cold email?
That's the easiest thing to do! How else are you going to contact a client for the first time? You can call, but you absolutely must know what to say! Messages are designed to grab their attention and highlight a real error on their website (for example)! It's not going to work if you just call them and say, "I create websites and need clients! Be my client!"
That's my opinion!
Being your own most demanding user is the best QA a sales tool can get, and the $230 retainer matters more than the amount: proof of loop beats size of win. One caution from years of running agency outreach: that 40 percent reply rate lives and dies on your 5-to-7-a-day volume from a personal Gmail, and the moment users scale it to 50 a day the channel becomes deliverability management, not copywriting. Build sending guardrails into the product before your best customers burn their domains.
This comment is gold. Thank you
No one sends emails directly through our product! Please read the rules on the website! This is legally dangerous and difficult to do correctly, so we only create text messages and send emails manually by our clients! We can't impose restrictions on them!
The honest funnel math is the most useful part of this: 43 sent, 17 replies, 1 paying. Most people only post the win, and then everyone else wonders why their 40 emails produced nothing but silence. A 40 percent reply rate on cold email is unusual, and I suspect your "reference something visibly broken about their site" opener is doing all the work there.
I'm validating a product for the same audience you're selling to (freelance marketers and small agencies), and I landed on the same principle from the other direction: leading with something concrete beats describing features every time. My landing page's whole pitch is a readable example of the end product rather than a feature list, for exactly the reason your emails open with the 2019 copyright year. Specificity reads as human.
Question about the 16 no's: did any of them tell you WHY? I'm curious whether it was mostly timing, no budget, or already-have-someone. That breakdown would tell you a lot about whether the targeting layer needs tuning or whether the no's are just the base rate of the channel.
Thanks for the comment! I've gotten responses like, "Not interested, thanks, we'll think about it, we already have a webmaster." I created a feature that shows how likely I am to get a response from a potential client! And it worked!
Great point. I've been researching this exact problem — involuntary churn from failed payments costs most SaaS companies 5-9% of MRR every month. I'm offering free 90-day payment audits if anyone wants to see their actual numbers. DM me.
Hi there! I built a fully automated system using the Gemini API to boost my own sales.
My stats for 1 week: 30 emails, 10 replies, 3 in progress, 1 sale. The client was a Turkish streamer, and I built a link-sharing platform and YouTube automation for them.
Ultimately, I couldn't scale it because I lacked follow-up sequences and email warming, and API costs started adding up. The system is outdated now and needs a complete overhaul to start finding the best weekly leads again.
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