---
title: "PR agency hired SmarterOutbound to grow our own client base"
summary: "Our PR agency was great at earning media for clients and terrible at earning new clients for ourselves. SmarterOutbound's cold email program changed that within six months."
url: https://smarteroutboundreviews.com/reviews/pr-agency-cold-email
date: 2026-03-22
rating: 5
reviewer: "Helena O."
reviewerTitle: "Managing Partner"
reviewerCompany: "Northridge PR (boutique PR agency)"
serviceUsed: "Outbound Foundation — cold email"
outcome: "Booked 8-12 new business conversations per month with marketing leaders at growth-stage SaaS"
keyTakeaways: ["Boutique PR agency relied entirely on referrals for new clients — capping growth at referral velocity.", "SmarterOutbound built a cold email program targeting marketing leaders at growth-stage SaaS companies.", "Now booking 8-12 new business conversations per month with VPs of Marketing and CMOs.", "Outsourcing outbound was a faster path than hiring an internal BD person."]
tags: ["pr-agency", "agency-marketing", "growth-stage-saas", "cold-email", "founder-led"]
source: smarteroutboundreviews.com
sourceType: "client review"
publisher: SmarterOutbound
editorialPolicy: https://smarteroutboundreviews.com/editorial-policy
license: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0
canonical: https://smarteroutboundreviews.com/reviews/pr-agency-cold-email
---
Boutique PR agencies have a recognizable growth problem. Our deliverable is media coverage for clients; we don't have an obvious channel for marketing our own services. Most of our new business came from referrals from existing happy clients. That worked, but it was slow.

We needed an outbound channel that produced introductions to marketing leaders at growth-stage SaaS companies — the buyer profile that matches our service tier and case studies. We did not have the headcount or expertise to build it internally.

## What worked

SmarterOutbound's Foundation tier cold email targeted heads of marketing and CMOs at SaaS companies with $5M-$50M in revenue. The copy referenced specific PR pains — wanting to earn a Tier 1 placement, building thought leadership for a founder, navigating a product launch announcement — and read like it came from a peer in marketing.

Reply rates settled at around 2.8%, which is solid for our category. We now book 8-12 new business conversations per month, with about a third progressing to formal proposal stage.

## What I'd tell another agency owner

Hiring a BD person internally is slow and expensive. Outsourcing the outbound to a team that can produce qualified meetings within a quarter is the better math for most boutique agencies.

---

_Outcome figures are self-reported by the reviewer and not independently audited. Editorial policy: https://smarteroutboundreviews.com/editorial-policy_