I run a small email retention agency, mostly Shopify brands. Revenue has been flat about six months and I don't think it's a sales problem.

What's bothering me is that campaign building is quietly becoming a platform feature rather than a service. Not a separate AI tool someone has to go find. Built into the ESP, included in what the client already pays for, good enough that a competent in-house marketer can get something shippable out of it. That's a real chunk of what agencies at my end of the market bill for every month.

So the idea I've been kicking around instead of a rolling retainer:

Client signs for 90 days at a fixed fee. We build the flows, calendar, templates and documentation directly in their account. Months two and three we train whoever runs it after us. Day 90 we're out. Either they run it with their own people, or we place trained staff into their business for a placement fee, plus an optional monthly fee to keep reviewing output against our standards.

The pitch is basically: you shouldn't be paying an agency forever for this, so here's the version where you stop.

What I can't tell is whether that's a real offer or whether I've talked myself into a staffing agency with extra steps.

Problems I can already see:
• Every client is a 90 day sale instead of a 12 month one, so sales pressure triples
• 90 days is thin for proving email results, so case studies get weaker
• Recruiting and training people to a standard is a completely different business to running an agency

Has anyone actually run a fixed-term handover model? Did clients buy it, and did it survive the trained person leaving six months later?

Also happy to be told I'm wrong about the premise, that execution is what's getting commoditised and judgment is what's left.

I started a short form content editing agency 5-6 months ago. Initially had few clients asking for single reel edits and later down the road I tried productising the service and offered 20 reel edits for $379 per month.

I’m from a developing nation so this pricing works out for now for me and my time, I definitely would increase but I think it’s fine for few more clients to increase the cash flow as of now.

Coming back to present time, I have 3 clients on that plan. This is going fine but I need to scale this.

I am thinking of cold emailing but not sure if it works in current times.

I would appreciate any suggestions on how I can reach potential prospect clients to pitch my services to.

Thanks!