‍João Simões, still remembers the day he shut down his work laptop and decided he was done with a safe nine-to-five. “I’d been itching to build something of my own,” he said. Cold email fascinated him: the idea that a well-timed note from a brand-new domain could land in an executive’s inbox and spark millions in pipeline. So, late in 2021, he walked away from the salary, found his new agency Virtus Medium, and told himself, “Let’s see how far we can push outbound if we focus on quality over spray-and-pray.”

He did not have investors, a marketing budget, or an existing brand. He only had this belief: if your email reaches the right inbox with the right offer, you can start real business conversations without paid ads or social buzz. That belief turned into Virtus Medium’s mission: “Send clean, relevant emails that open doors for B2B companies.”

Their agency is currently serving clients in the United States and Europe—roughly 70 percent of the accounts target U.S. buyers, the rest target both U.S. and European leads. Cold email is the first channel they try because it is fast, cheap, and easy to measure—if messages land in the main inbox.

The Early Tool Choice—and the Friction That Followed

Like many new cold-email shops, João started with number of free platforms. While the tools were helpful, they were too basic to satiate his needs as a solo founder: connect an inbox, paste a list, write a short sequence, click send.

That worked for ten or twenty thousand emails a month, but as Virtus Medium added clients, João ran into three problems:

1. Limited automation. They did not give him the API access he needed to pull stats into his own dashboards or to trigger tasks in other tools.
2. Deliverability dips. Once send volume climbed, he saw more bounces and more messages stuck in spam.
3. No clear “mission control.” Each client sat in a separate workspace. To check replies João had to click through dozens of browser tabs, which slowed him down and caused him to miss a few important leads.

The final straw came when a Fortune-500 prospect replied to a campaign, and the message got buried in spam for three days. By the time João found it, the busy executive had moved on. That lost deal convinced him he needed a platform built for serious deliverability.

Testing Smartlead—And Moving Every Client Over

João heard about Smartlead from other agency owners who said the tool offered deeper warm-up, easier domain rotation, and an active support community. He ran a small test with three domains and two campaigns. The open rates improved, bounce rates dropped, and replies flowed into a single inbox he could monitor without clicking through ten pages.

During the pilot, Smartlead’s onboarding chat walked João through SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks he’d skimmed over before. That ten-minute audit bumped deliverability right away. The built-in warm-up also simulated realistic back-and-forth emails, which helped brand-new domains gain trust faster. 

Five months after he started his agency, he moved every client to Smartlead. He has stayed for more than two years. João remembers thinking, “If the tool handles the boring stuff, I can finally focus on copy and strategy.”

The Numbers Smartlead Helps Produce

Virtus Medium tracks one core outcome: qualified sales meetings. An email counts as a win only when it becomes a calendar event for the client.

• From January through April of this year (four months) the agency generated 427 meetings across all accounts.
• Meetings included brands like EA Sports, Ubisoft, and The New York Times.

These numbers are not typical for every agency, but they definitely prove that cold email can still reach enterprise buyers when the sender controls deliverability.

João also points out that the 427 figure breaks down to roughly 26 meetings per week—enough to fill multiple SDR calendars without any paid traffic. His best-performing client averaged a 12 percent positive-reply rate on highly targeted VP-level lists, proof that volume plus tight targeting beats mass blasts.

How the Team Uses Smartlead Day to Day

Ask João why he’s still with Smartlead after two years, and he won’t rattle off a marketing brochure. But he definitely shared stories—little moments where the platform saved the day.

1. Single dashboard check-in 

Each morning, João opens Smartlead and looks at the domain health signals. If he sees a yellow or red status on an inbox, he pauses that account, reviews DNS settings, and reroutes sends to a fresher address until the issue is fixed.

2. Automatic warm-up for new domains

They are onboarding new clients almost every week now. Smartlead warms up each sending address by sending slow, human-like exchanges with other inboxes. João no longer needs to babysit daily limits or write fake back-and-forth messages.

3. Merge tags and quick personalization

Prospect lists come in with fields for industry, job title, and a recent trigger (for example, “Series A funding”). Campaign builders drop those fields into the copy so emails feel hand-typed even though most of the text is templated.

4. Auto-stop on reply

Once a lead answers, Smartlead pulls them out of the sequence so they do not get another automated nudge. João or the client steps in to run the sales conversation.

5. Reply view in one place

Every answer from every campaign funnels into a master inbox. That simple layout removed the tab-hopping that made João miss messages on his old tool.

They do this thing called a "reply-rush" twice a day—at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.—where someone quickly scans the inbox and pushes any hot leads into the client’s CRM. João says this two-hour reply hustle isn't just for show, ​​it has actually helped them lock in way more calls.

Favorite Features—In João’s Plain Words

• “Everything under one roof: I can see campaigns, leads, and domain status without leaving the platform.”
• “Founder is active: V, the Smartlead founder, posts updates about deliverability changes inside the Slack group within hours of new Gmail rules.”
• “Warm-up that I can forget about: The system ramps send volume on its own, which frees my time.”
• “Smart Delivery and Smart Servers: I’m still testing, but early results suggest they help brand-new domains inbox faster.”
• “One-click Export: With one click I can pull all “Interested” or “Book a Call” contacts for any date range—handy when a client’s sales team wants proof of pipeline before month-end.”

Areas That Still Need Work

João’s loyalty doesn’t stop him from critiquing his favorite platform. Here’s what he’s asked Smartlead to tighten up:

• Reply tracking bugs. Now and then, incoming messages show up late. When that happens, he has to send logs to support and wait for a fix.
• Too many new features too fast. He wants the core—sending and reply capture—to stay rock-solid before extra tools roll out.
• Global analytics wish. Right now, he is exporting metrics to Airtable with manual scripts. A rebuilt-report screen inside Smartlead would save hours.
• Integrations: João also hopes for tighter HubSpot and Pipedrive integrations. Automatic two-way sync would remove another layer of Zapier logic and lower their running costs.

Results for Clients—A Quick Look Without NDAs

Most Virtus Medium clients sign NDAs, so João could not share exact revenue numbers. He, however shared a few of these broad outcomes:

• 427 meetings were booked in four months across all accounts.
• Multiple clients won intro calls with large enterprises within their first sixty days of working with Virtus Medium.
• One agency client booked deals with three well-known gaming companies, which turned into ongoing retainers.

These results show that outreach can still beat paid ads when copy, targeting, and deliverability line up.

Lessons for Anyone Who Sends Cold Email Today

1. Deliverability is the gate

All the best copy in the world fails if Gmail does not trust the domain. That means:

• Verified SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
• Slow warm-up.
• Consistent daily limits.
• Low spam-complaint rates (below 0.1 percent).
• Clean lists—no scraped addresses, no catch-all domains that bounce.

2. Volume without insight is a gamble

Most businesses send too few emails to see clear trends. João suggests two options:

1. Join strong communities so you can compare your data to a larger sample.
2. Hire a specialist agency if you cannot spend hours per week studying deliverability updates.

3. Speed to reply counts

A warm lead loses interest fast. Smartlead’s auto-stop and single-inbox tools shave hours off response time.

4. Stick with one channel until it works

Virtus Medium does not spread itself thin. They use cold email as the first touch, then add LinkedIn or phone follow-up only when the email side is stable.

João also reminds teams to test from the recipient’s perspective. He sends every new sequence to a seed list of personal inboxes (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail) to spot formatting glitches or trigger-word spam flags before real prospects see the copy.

Word from João to New Senders

“Cold email changes every month. Your messages will miss the inbox if you do not follow the updates. Use a tool that cares about deliverability first, track real outcomes like meetings, and keep learning from people who send more than you. That’s how we grew.”

He adds that patience matters: the first domain he ever warmed with Smartlead sat at 20 emails per day for a week before ramping. Many founders rush to 500 a day and then wonder why they’re in spam. “Let the domain earn its trust badges,” João says.

Final Summary—Why Smartlead Stayed at the Center

João left corporate life to build an agency on cold outreach. Two years, dozens of clients, and hundreds of high-value meetings later, he still considers Smartlead to be the backbone of his growth. Before settling in for Smartlead, João tried about half a dozen outreach tools. Each one fell short once he needed scale and inbox reliability. Smartlead gave him:

• A clear dashboard for dozens of accounts.
• Built-in warm-up.
• Domain rotation and volume control.
• Fast help from a founder who follows deliverability news.
• Stable enough sends to book more than four hundred meetings in four months.

Virtus Medium is planning to double its client base this year, and João’s betting on Smartlead to pull it off. If your team depends on outbound and you are tired of messages dying in spam, João’s journey should make it obvious: keep your tools simple and your focus on real prospects, not on fixing broken platforms!

Your next wave of wins doesn’t need complicated tools. If you’re ready to stop battling your email tool and start growing, we’ve got your back. Start your Smartlead journey today and make every email count.

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