Week 1 Report | Search For Hire x Dopamine Digital

Overview

What this covers

The results have been held back by the sending accounts, and that is now fixed

The honest headline is this. Results so far have been modest, and the cause was the sending accounts rather than the offer or the list. The original campaign ran on 36 mailboxes hosted on .info domains. That extension carries a poor reputation with the inbox providers, so a large share of those emails were filtered before anyone read them. We have retired that campaign and those mailboxes rather than keep pushing volume through them.

Everything now sends from .co domains that have been warmed the proper way. Two campaigns launched on 7 July, 519 emails went out in two days, and seven people replied. One of those, Anton at JustWeb Agency, asked for his report, has had it, and we are speaking with him again today. That is a 1.35 percent reply rate on the first real sample from clean infrastructure.

Behind the sending we built two new lead engines. The first is an automation that continuously scans Indeed, LinkedIn and the applicant tracking systems for companies advertising SEO, paid and performance roles. It finds the brand-new listings and the ones sitting open beyond thirty days, works out roughly what that empty seat is costing them, and opens with that number. That is 658 companies who already know they have the problem. The second is a scrape of the specialist agency directories, Clutch and DesignRush, for another 158 agencies that hire this exact profile.

The Numbers

This week's send

Both campaigns launched on 7 July and send only from warmed .co domains. Every figure is pulled live from Instantly for the window 2 July to 9 July 2026, day by day. Nothing is carried forward from last week.

Campaign	Status	Emails sent	Replies	Bounced
US General SEO Agencies	Live 7 Jul	260	4	1
US Legal SEO Agencies	Live 7 Jul	259	3	2
Total		519	7	3

What this tells us

519 emails produced seven replies, a 1.35 percent reply rate, and one of those replies turned into a live conversation inside the same week. Bounces came in at three out of 519, well under one percent, which says the lists are clean and the new domains are landing. This is a small sample over two days, so treat it as an early signal rather than a trend. What matters is that mail is now reaching the inbox, which was not true before.

The Opportunity

A live conversation, week one

Positive reply

Anton JustWeb Agency

Replied 8 July. Contacted via cold email on the US General SEO Agencies campaign.

Report sent

★★★★★

Their Search Hiring Economics Report ↗

Positive replyReport sentSpoke briefly by phoneFollow-up call today

What they said

Hey, sure! Thanks

Where it stands

7 July: opening email sent, asking whether we could run JustWeb Agency through the tool and send the report across.
8 July: Anton replied asking us to send it.
8 July: his personalised Search Hiring Economics Report was built and sent.
9 July: we reached him by phone but he was in the middle of something, so we kept it short.
9 July: calling him back later today to pick the conversation up properly.

The honest read

This is a real conversation with a warm prospect, and nothing more than that yet. He has asked for the report and taken a phone call, which is further than most cold contacts get in week one. He has not yet had a proper conversation with us and he is not a qualified call. A call counts as qualified once it has actually been held and it clears all five criteria we agreed: decision maker, buyer rather than candidate, US or UK, a real hiring need, and genuine interest. Today's call is where we find that out.

New This Week

The job-signal engine

The strongest time to reach a company about a search hire is while the role is sitting open and costing them money. So we built an automation that finds exactly those companies, every day, without anyone doing the looking.

658

Live job signals found

656

Distinct companies hiring

Boards scanned

Daily

Refresh cadence

How it works

Scan

The automation sweeps Indeed, LinkedIn and the applicant tracking systems for live SEO, paid and performance marketing roles, matching on the specific keywords that describe the profile Search For Hire places.

Filter

It keeps two groups. Brand-new listings, where the pain is fresh and no agency has called yet. And listings over thirty days old, where the role has clearly stalled and the cost of the empty seat is compounding.

Approach

We open with the number. This is roughly what the open seat is costing you. Would you like a quick call where we show you how we could fill it in a few weeks, with all of our guarantees behind it.

Where the signals come from

Source	What we pull
Indeed	Live SEO, paid and performance role listings, with posting age
LinkedIn	Company job posts and the hiring manager behind each one
Applicant tracking systems	Roles posted straight to company career pages, which rarely reach the job boards

Why this changes the conversation

A cold email asks a company to imagine a problem. This one describes a problem they are already living with, in pounds, using their own job listing as the evidence. Every one of the 658 companies has told the internet they need someone. The campaign is built and loaded, ready to launch behind the warmed inboxes.

The Pipeline

Lead lists built and loaded

Four lead lists are now built, cleaned, checked against the do-not-contact list, and loaded. Two are sending, two are ready to launch.

List	Leads	Where they came from	Status
US General SEO Agencies	537	Agency directories and search	Sending
US Legal SEO Agencies	398	Legal search vertical	Sending
Job-signal companies	658	Indeed, LinkedIn and applicant tracking systems	Built, ready to launch
Specialist agency directories	158	Clutch (82) and DesignRush (76)	Built, ready to launch
Total	1,751

The plan is to test, then double down

These four lists are four different bets. Agencies who hire search talent, the legal search vertical specifically, companies with a role open right now, and the specialist directories. We run them in parallel, watch which one produces replies and booked calls, then move the sending volume behind whichever wins. That is why the lists are deliberately kept separate rather than merged into one pool.

Deliverability

What's actually ready

This is the real ready picture, counted from actual warmup age on domains we would genuinely send from. The 100 mailboxes on .info domains are excluded because they are not usable, and they are the reason the earlier campaign underperformed.

100

Inboxes cleared to send

Domains live

Still warming

10/day

Hard send cap each

Clean infrastructure, and more warming behind it

100 mailboxes across 50 dedicated .co domains have cleared the full fourteen day warmup and are cleared to send. Another 56 are warming now and come online on a rolling basis. We are buying more domains this week so there is always a batch warming in the background and warmup never becomes the thing that caps growth. Every inbox stays hard capped at ten emails a day. We scale by adding inboxes, never by pushing more through each one, which is exactly what protects the domains that are working.

The Plan

Recommended actions

Today: Call Anton at JustWeb Agency back and pick the conversation up properly. If it clears all five criteria it becomes the first qualified call of the engine.
Done: Retire the 36 .info mailboxes and the campaign running on them. All sending now happens on warmed .co domains.
This week: Launch the job-signal campaign to the 658 companies with live search roles, opening with the cost of their open seat.
This week: Launch the Clutch and DesignRush directory campaign to the 158 specialist agencies as a parallel test.
This week: Ramp sending across the 100 warmed inboxes and buy the next batch of domains so warmup keeps running in the background.
Ongoing: Watch reply and booked-call rates per campaign, then move volume behind whichever of the four lists converts best.