Lemlist vs Instantly for PR Agency New Business, Not Pitches

Journalist outreach runs on a short, carefully maintained list and individual relationship-building, not on sequencing software built for sales volume. Using the same tool, or worse, the same domain, for both media pitching and new business prospecting risks a reporter's spam complaint damaging the domain an agency also needs for winning clients.

An agency's new business list, brand marketers and communications leads at target companies, is a legitimate use case for a personalized sequencing tool. Lemlist's landing pages and image personalization work well for referencing a prospect's recent campaign or public communications moment, and a LinkedIn step reaches marketing leads who are often more active there than in a cold inbox.

A larger agency running new business development across several verticals sometimes needs volume Lemlist wasn't built for, testing which industries or company sizes respond best before narrowing focus. Instantly's rotation across warmed inboxes suits that first pass, provided it's entirely walled off from anything touching journalist or media contacts.

Cold outreach to brand marketers behaves like any other B2B sales motion: sequences with three to five follow-up steps get meaningfully more replies than a single email sent once and never followed up on¹. Since a PR agency's new business pitch is really a sales pitch for the agency itself, treat the reply and follow-up mechanics the same way any other services firm would.

Say a twelve-person PR agency currently sends media pitches and new business outreach from the same domain, because that's how the original email setup happened to get configured years ago. The fix here isn't choosing between Lemlist and Instantly, it's separating the domains first, since a single spam complaint from a reporter on a shared domain can quietly damage deliverability for the new business list that funds the agency's actual growth.

Set up a second domain specifically for new business prospecting, run it through a normal two-week warmup, and move all media relationship work back onto the original domain and whatever lightweight process the team already uses for that, a personal inbox, a small CRM, individual outreach rather than a sequencing tool. Only once that separation exists does it make sense to pick a tool for the new business side.

Agencies that skip this step and go straight to comparing sequencing platforms often end up solving the wrong problem: the tool wasn't what put the domain at risk, the shared sending identity was, and no amount of personalization in Lemlist or rotation in Instantly fixes a domain that's already been flagged by journalists comparing notes about unwanted pitches.

A safe order of operations for a PR agency's new business outreach:

1. Separate the sending domains first, keeping one for new business and a different one for anything that touches media contacts.
2. Keep journalist outreach on a much smaller, manually managed process instead of sales sequencing software.
3. Use Lemlist for a short, personalized list of brand marketers and communications leads, or Instantly for a broad first pass walled off from media contacts.
4. Build new business sequences with three to five follow-up steps rather than a single email.
5. Run a steady, modest cadence each month instead of a sporadic burst followed by months of silence.

A new business email is selling the agency's services to a company that might hire it, and it can reasonably use the same sales mechanics any services firm would: a follow-up sequence, a clear ask, personalization aimed at converting a reply into a call. A media pitch is asking one specific journalist to cover one specific story, on their own editorial judgment, for an audience that owes the pitching agency nothing at all.

Treating a new business prospect the way you'd treat a journalist, overly cautious, apologetic, light on any actual ask, tends to undersell the agency's own value. Treating a journalist the way you'd treat a new business prospect, sequenced follow-ups, volume-oriented copy, tends to get the agency's media contacts blocklisted within a news cycle or two. Keeping these two mental models distinct, even when both technically involve sending a cold email, is worth reinforcing with anyone new to the team before they touch either list.

A small agency doesn't need to run new business outreach constantly to see results; a steady, modest cadence, a few dozen new prospects a month with proper follow-up, usually outperforms a sporadic burst of two hundred sends followed by months of silence. Consistency matters more than volume here, since a prospect who isn't ready to switch agencies today might be in six months, and only shows up on the radar again if the agency's name has stayed visible in the meantime through a steady, well-spaced presence rather than one loud push.