How to run outbound for your clients

For outbound and AI automation agencies running done-for-you cold email. Keep one business in Otto per client, find your own clients with the agency campaigns, mark the meetings you book, send each client a read-only report link, and bill per meeting.

Updated 2026-10-31

If you run cold email for other businesses, as an outbound agency or an AI automation agency, Otto can be the tool you run it with. This article puts the pieces together. Cold campaigns work only when they are switched on for your Otto server, and nothing is ever sent without its campaign's approval in Reviews.

One business per client

Give each client their own business in Otto, and run their campaigns from there. A business keeps its own:

• sending domain, cold email domains and mailboxes, so one client's sending never touches another's;
• postal address, which goes in every email, so each email says the client's name and address;
• Do not contact list, replies and Replies inbox;
• credits.

To make one, press Start a new one in the business menu (see how to start a new business). One account can have 10 businesses. If you also sell Otto to your clients under your own brand, New client account in reseller mode makes the business, invites the client and makes you an owner of it (see how to sell Otto Business to your clients).

To move between them, open the Workspace menu at the top and pick the business. With more than one, All businesses shows them side by side: what is waiting on you, contacts and workflows on, in each.

Built a setup you like, such as workflows or message templates? Copy it to a client's business (see how to copy your setup to another business). Cold campaigns and saved cold campaign templates are not copied, but the ready-made campaigns are there in every business.

Find your own clients

Run your agency's own outreach from your own business. Four ready-made campaigns are made for this: they offer done-for-you outbound to staffing firms, web designers, marketing agencies or IT firms. Start from one in a draft campaign, or test several against each other with a niche test to see which kind of firm replies interested most.

Run a client's campaigns

In the client's business:

1. Setup their sending domain (see how to send email from your own domain), or add look-alike cold email domains for them under Domains and mailboxes.
2. Make a campaign. The ten ready-made campaigns for businesses that sell to local businesses (AI receptionists, web design, ads, SEO, IT, bookkeeping, recruiting, field-service software, cleaning, insurance) are a quick start: change the offer to the client's. Not sure which customers to aim at? Run a niche test for them.
3. Find and keep businesses (see how to run a cold email campaign).
4. Try a practice run to see how long it takes and what the first emails look like.
5. Press Ask to start. Every campaign needs its own approval in Reviews of that business. Approving one campaign never approves another.

Mark the meetings you book

Meetings are usually what a done-for-you service is paid for. When a reply turns into something, open it under Replies and choose What came of it: a meeting booked, won or lost (see how to answer replies to cold emails). A campaign counts a meeting for each person marked meeting booked or won, and so do niche tests and reports. Otto never marks these for you, so only what you mark is counted.

If you bill the client per meeting, each reply you mark as a meeting also goes on the campaign's meeting list under Client billing, once, for the client to confirm as held or no-show (see how to bill a client per meeting).

Send your client a report link

Press Copy client report link on a campaign or a niche test and send it to your client. It opens a read-only page; your client does not need to sign in.

• A campaign's report shows how many businesses were written to, replied, replied interested and booked a meeting, the reply rate and the interested rate. Below that it lists the people who replied interested, newest first (up to 200): their name, their business and the day they replied. It never shows their messages.
• A niche test's report shows the test's verdict and, for each campaign, how many were written to, interested and booked a meeting, with the interested rate and its 95% range. It lists no people.

The figures are as of the moment the page is opened. Anyone holding the link can open it, so send it only to your client. Search engines are asked not to list it.

To stop a link, make a new one. The old link stops working at once and says it was replaced or removed. Removing a niche test stops its link too.

Credits

Each business has its own credits, and a credit spent in one client's business is never taken from another. One credit is one email delivered. Finding and keeping addresses is free, a bounce gives the credit back, and credits never expire. See how credits work.

Buying credits opens when billing is switched on. Until then, Otto's team adds them for you: ask for them for the client's business by name.

Charge your client

Nothing in cold email charges your client. To charge a setup fee and then only for the meetings that happen, set Client billing on the campaign: Otto keeps the meetings, lets your client confirm each one on their report page, and works out each month's statement for you to send (see how to bill a client per meeting). Billing is not switched on, so you send the statement and collect the money yourself, for example from your own business's Invoices. In reseller mode, Your clients keeps what you charge each one a month.