Cold emailing can help you land big clients, but it’s tricky to get right. You’re reaching out to people you don’t know, so it takes a smart approach to grab their attention. To be successful, you need to research your audience, write compelling messages, and offer real value. On top of that, you have to test, tweak, and follow up consistently.
It’s a lot of work, but the good news is, it doesn’t have to be.
With the right cold email outreach tool, you can create the perfect email, send it to the right audience at the right time, or gently nudge them if they don’t respond. This means less busywork for your team and more time to build relationships and close deals.
Ready to streamline your outreach? This guide reviews the 5 best cold email tools for agencies like yours.
- Instantly
Instantly is a rising star in the cold email space, built for high-volume campaigns. It offers tools like a lead database, advanced email deliverability, and site visitor tracking to boost your inbound efforts.
Its AI-powered engine handles emails and follow-ups for you, pulling data from its own database or your CRM to craft personalized, human-like messages. With a 99% deliverability rate, Instantly makes sure your emails land where they belong—your prospect’s inbox.
Cool Features:
- AI-powered email warmup: Ensures high deliverability and boosts sender reputation.
- Unibox: Makes it easy to reply to all your email accounts and campaigns in one place.
- Unlimited email accounts: Allows you to scale your efforts without restrictions.
- Lead Finder: Solves the challenge of finding accurate and relevant leads by verifying information directly, not relying on third-party tools.
- Analytics: Provides insights into key metrics like emails sent, opens, replies, and link tracking for smarter campaign decisions.
Pricing:
- Growth Plan: $37 per month/1000 uploaded contacts and 5000 emails
- Hypergrowth Plan: $97 per month/25,000 contacts and 100,000 emails.
- Light Speed Plan: $358 per month/100,000 contacts and 500,000 emails.
- Free trial available.
- Snov.io
Snov.io makes it easy for agencies to find and contact leads. It brings email marketing, CRM, lead generation, and sales automation together in one simple platform.
But before you sign up, keep in mind that it can get pricey as your agency grows. This is because Snov.io works on a credit system. Each email search, verification, or API task costs one credit, which means scaling up could mean paying more.
Cool Features:
- Email Finder: Find your prospects’ and leads’ emails instantly using the Snov.io Email Finder Chrome extension.
- Email Verifier: Cross-checks emails with trusted sources to deliver verified addresses with 98% accuracy.
- AI email warm-up assistant: A guided process to improve email deliverability rates.
- Real-time tracking: See who opens, clicks, and replies to your emails as it happens.
Pricing
- Trial plan: includes 50 monthly credits.
- Starter: $39 per month/1,000 credits.
- Pro: $99 per month/5,000 credits.
- Mailshake
Mailshake is great for agencies looking to streamline their cold outreach. It lets you send personalized emails, automate follow-up messages, and manage everything from one simple dashboard. With an AI writing assistant, crafting email templates is faster than ever, and it even includes cold-calling features. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot.
That said, Mailshake has its limits. Advanced personalization and customization options are missing, and there’s no free trial or free plan. So, if you want see whether it fits your agency’s needs, you’ll have to commit to an annual plan.
Cool Features:
- Send emails based on link clicks: Automatically follow up when prospects engage, like sending a reminder after they register for an event.
- A/B testing: Test different message options to see which performs best.
- Chrome extension: Automate LinkedIn tasks like sending connection requests, messaging, and viewing profiles.
- Upload prospect lists: Easily import lists to streamline your outreach efforts.
Pricing
- Starter: $29 per month per user.
- Email Outreach: $49 per month for two users.
- Sales Engagement: $99 per month for five users.
- Apollo
Apollo.io is an agency-friendly cold email tool trusted for its massive lead database of over 270 million contacts. You can easily engage leads within the platform and build multichannel email sequences tailored to your audience. Tracking performance is simple with detailed analytics.
But there are some downsides. Apollo.io has its drawbacks. Exporting large amounts of data for external use is limited, which can frustrate some users. The Free plan isn’t practical for agency use, making it less appealing as a no-cost sales automation tool.
Cool Features:
- Advanced filters: Pinpoint your ideal customers using filters like buying intent, company technologies, and more.
- List management: Add thousands of prospects to organized lists for efficient large-scale outreach.
- Contact database: Apollo.io gives you access to detailed contact data for 275 million prospects and 73 million companies. However, not all of these contacts are guaranteed to be verified or up-to-date.
Pricing
- Free plan: Unlimited email credits.
- Basic: $49 per month/60,000 credits per user a year.
- Professional: $79 per month/120,000 credits per user a year.
- Organization: $119 per month/180,000 credits per user a year.
- UpLead
UpLead is a great tool for agencies focused on outbound sales and lead generation. It’s simple to use and works well for small to mid-sized sales and marketing teams.
Many users love its accurate data, easy interface, and helpful customer service. But some have raised concerns about billing issues, limited real-time support, and how credits are used.
Cool Features:
- Database access: Search through over 1 million B2B contacts to find the right leads.
- Advanced filters: Use 50+ filters like job title, company size, revenue, location, and tech stack to define your ideal customer profile (ICP) and save lists for future use.
- Lead enrichment: Upload lead lists to fill in missing details like emails, phone numbers, and company info. Bulk enrichment is available on all paid plans.
- Chrome extension: Capture contact data directly from LinkedIn and company websites with real-time verification and one-click CRM integration.
Pricing
- Free: 7 days with 5 credits.
- Essentials: $99 per month/170 credits.
- Plus: $199 per month/400 credits.
- Professional: Custom pricing.
Final Thoughts
Cold outreach doesn’t have to be hit-or-miss. With the right cold email platform, you can target the right leads, send smarter emails, and close more deals without overloading your team.
Of the tools we reviewed, Instantly stands out for agencies that want to scale fast without hitting common roadblocks like limited email accounts or poor deliverability.
No matter your campaign size, take the time to explore your options, match them with your agency’s goals, and invest in a tool that makes outreach easier.
