Problem / Context

Most agencies spend time thinking about who they should reach out to.

That part matters. If your targeting is wrong, the rest of the message will not save you. If the company has no reason to care, no clever subject line or personalized opener will fix it.

But even when agencies get the targeting right, they often miss the next part.

They show up with a weak offer.

“We’d love to connect.”

“We admire your brand.”

“Would you be open to coffee?”

That is not a strong enough reason for a busy executive to stop what they are doing. Their inbox is already full of people asking for time, attention, and access. If your message feels like one more ask, it becomes noise.

The Signal

In a recent CMO Journeys interview, I asked Dil Fernando, Chief Marketing Officer at Freeosk, whether cold outreach had ever actually cut through for her.

One example came to mind. It was from a firm in the insights space. No hard sell. No capabilities deck. Just a data point that was genuinely relevant to her world.

She has a name for outreach like that.

She calls them gifts.

And her bar is high: the insight has to be truly original and truly relevant. Original means she hasn’t seen it anywhere else. Relevant means it speaks to her business, not your portfolio.

Then she said something that stuck with me. The same move, she pointed out, works for managing up. A great nugget — an insight, a data point — is exactly what she’d drop into her own leadership’s inbox.

That’s the real test of a gift: would the recipient forward it internally?

If a CMO sends your outreach to her CEO, you’ve created value. If she’d archive it, you’ve created noise.

Why It Matters

This is where many agencies get proactive outreach wrong. They assume personalization is enough.

It is not.

A good signal: a leadership change, funding event, job posting, or product launch tells you when someone is more likely to care. But timing only gets you so far. You still have to show up with something worth receiving.

An audit. Proprietary research. A case study that reframes a problem. Access to peers through a small roundtable.

The common thread: you are giving before you’re getting.

And the gift cannot be a disguised sales pitch. A capabilities deck is not a gift. A generic case study is not a gift. Run it through the forward test. If they wouldn’t pass it along, it doesn’t qualify.

The Smarter Move

Before sending proactive outreach, ask one question:

“What are we bringing to the party?”

If you showed up at someone’s house, you would not arrive empty-handed. The inbox works the same way.

That does not mean giving away the farm. It means designing a repeatable offer that creates value before the sales conversation starts.

How to Use This

One more thing Dil was honest about. The gift didn’t win that firm a contract. It earned a stop. Then curiosity. Then a conversation.

That’s the honest ladder of cold outreach: stop, curiosity, conversation. The gift gets you on the first rung. Nothing gets you to the top in one email.

Signals tell you where to pay attention.

The gift is how you earn the right to stay in orbit.