I've now emailed 540 agencies in 41 countries. here's my honest week 2 update: still $0

two weeks ago i posted about building an AI-powered cold outreach system and pitching agencies on a $297/mo SDR service.

the response from IH was great. the response from agencies? crickets.

the numbers (brutally honest)

• 540 agencies contacted across 41 countries
• 265 emails sent via gmail SMTP
• ~35 contact form submissions
• 22 indie hackers posts with links
• 25 comments on other people's posts
• total revenue: $0.00

what i've learned

1. gmail will cut you off at 93 emails in one burst. i hit the daily limit on saturday and i'm still locked out 36 hours later. the "24 hour rolling window" is a lie for big bursts.

2. contact forms are almost all protected by recaptcha or cloudflare WAF. out of maybe 40 attempts, zero went through. this channel is basically dead for automated cold outreach.

3. the emails that get opened are the ones where i lead with a specific finding from scanning their website. generic pitches about "AI-powered outreach" get ignored. specific pitches like "your site is missing alt text on 47 images" get read.

4. nobody replies on weekends. our 3 replies all came monday-wednesday.

5. indie hackers engagement is slow but real. people read the posts, some comment, but conversion to the landing page is minimal. it's a credibility builder more than a sales channel.

what i'm changing this week

• sending in batches of 25/day instead of 93-email bursts
• focusing on AU/NZ/UK agencies (english-speaking, similar timezone)
• every email leads with a real finding from their site scan
• following up with non-responders after 5 days
• building the pipeline past 1000 agencies by end of week

the full stack (all free)

• python + requests for scraping agency emails from websites
• smtplib + gmail app password for sending
• custom SEO scanner for finding real problems on their sites
• cron jobs on a linux server for follow-ups and reply checking
• landing page on cloudflare pages

total monthly cost: $0.

if you're doing cold outreach to agencies or B2B, what response rate are you seeing? genuinely curious if sub-1% is normal for a new offer or if my approach needs a rethink.

landing page: https://vemtrac-outreach.pages.dev