I've sat across from a lot of agency owners who are frustrated with their email results. Open rates are average. Replies are rare. New business from email campaigns is basically zero.
The first thing most of them want to talk about is the writing. Subject lines. Copy length. Tone. How to make it sound less salesy.
And I get it. That feels like the problem. But in almost every case I've seen, the writing isn't the issue. The structure behind the campaign is.
This edition breaks down what that actually means, and what to do about it.
What I see most often
Here's what most agency email campaigns look like in practice. A list of contacts built over years, loosely segmented if at all. A campaign drafted and sent to the broadest group possible. A few opens. Almost no clicks. A week later, the same process repeated with a different email.
From the sender's side, it feels like activity. From the recipient's side, it's irrelevant content hitting their inbox from an agency they half-remember.
The fix isn't better copy. It's building the structure that makes relevance possible in the first place. Three things specifically:
What this looks like in practice
We worked with an agency last year who had around 2,800 contacts in their CRM. Most were stale. Poorly coded. Some had changed jobs, some had invalid emails, most were sitting in one or two broad categories with no useful segmentation.
Their open rate was 28%. They assumed it was a content problem.
We ran a full rebuild. Verified emails, complete hiring team coverage at target companies, LinkedIn connections imported and coded, contacts traced when they'd moved roles. The database went from 2,800 to over 13,000 usable, relevant contacts.
The content stayed the same. The open rate went to 76%.
Before: 2,800 stale, poorly coded contacts. Open rate: 28%.
After: 13,000+ verified, coded, segmented contacts. Open rate: 76%.
Same campaigns. Different data.
How to approach it
You don't need to rebuild your entire database before you can run a better campaign. Start with one clearly defined segment of 100 to 300 contacts. Two or three data points: seniority, sector, company size. The test is simple: if you sent one email to this group, would it feel relevant to all of them? If not, the segment needs tightening.
Once you have a well-defined group, lead with value. Not a pitch, not a hot candidate of the week. A genuine insight or observation that speaks to something they're likely dealing with right now. Frame it through a problem they'd recognise before you introduce what you're offering.
Most people won't reply directly. That's normal. The value comes from the click. When someone engages with your content, you have a reason to follow up with context. That's what turns a passive read into a real conversation.
Where to start this week
Run a quick database audit
Pull your last 500 contacts. How many have verified emails? How many are coded by role and sector? How many contacts do you have at your top 20 target companies? You need this baseline before anything else.
Define one segment properly
Pick one clear group: a specific seniority level in a specific sector. Aim for 100 to 300 contacts. Verify the emails before you touch the copy.
Write one value-led email for that group
Short. Problem-led. One trackable link to something genuinely useful. No pitch in the first email. Build familiarity before you ask for anything.
Follow up on clicks, not just opens
Open rates tell you the subject line worked. Click-throughs tell you what your audience cares about. Every click is a follow-up opportunity with real context.
The next level
The agencies I see running genuinely effective email programmes aren't doing it through sheer effort. They've built the infrastructure to make precision sustainable. Segmentation happens automatically as contacts are added. When someone clicks, a follow-up task is triggered without anyone having to remember to do it. Engagement data feeds back into the CRM so the next campaign gets sharper.
That's not a complex or expensive setup. It's a workflow decision. And it's the difference between a campaign that requires constant manual effort and one that runs and improves on its own.
At Hume Scope, we've been working with agencies to map exactly this: where their current email and CRM processes are creating friction, and how to set up automation that makes the whole approach scale without adding to the team's workload.
Contacts coded and sorted automatically as they enter the CRM. No manual tagging required.
Engagement signals create follow-up tasks automatically. Warm leads never fall through the cracks.
Engagement history sits alongside contact records. Every follow-up conversation starts with full context.
Each send feeds data back into the next. The more you run it, the sharper it gets.
Our Automation and Tech Advisory service maps your current workflow and builds the infrastructure to make precision email sustainable, without adding to your team's workload.
To wrap up
Email is one of the highest-leverage tools a recruitment agency has. Direct access to your entire database of clients and candidates. No algorithm deciding who sees it. No platform changes to worry about.
But it only works when the data behind it is structured well enough to make relevance possible. Volume without precision is just noise. And most agencies are generating a lot of noise.
The upfront work to fix the structure is real. But it compounds. Once the system is in place, every campaign gets better, every follow-up is warmer, and the effort required to run good email goes down, not up.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. We'll walk through where your campaigns are losing ground and what to fix first.
Always happy to have a chat,
Ez Khan
