How One Automated System Replaced a Full-Time Data Entry Role for an Outbound Agency Sending 4.7 Million Cold Emails a Month

Introduction

Our client is an outbound agency that sends cold emails on behalf of their customers. They have around 30 active customers and send between 3 to 5 million cold emails every month using Instantly.ai. Their main goal is to reach potential prospects and book meetings for their customers.

The Challenge

Because they run thousands of cold email campaigns across four different Instantly accounts, it was very hard for them to see all their data in one place. They needed answers to questions like:

• Which campaigns are performing best?
• Which campaigns need improvement?
• How can we easily track campaign performance by client name or campaign name?

Instantly.ai has a master dashboard, but it does not allow filtering by campaign names or client names across multiple Instantly accounts. This made it almost impossible to make data-driven decisions or get an overall view of how their cold email campaigns were doing.

Why It Matters

In cold email outreach, knowing what is working and why is the most important step. By tracking open rates, reply rates, and other key metrics, you can quickly see which campaigns need changes. The top 0.1% of outbound agencies always look at these numbers and adjust their strategy based on data. Without this, it is easy to waste time and money sending emails that do not convert.

Our Solution

We built an automated system that pulls data from the client’s four Instantly accounts into a single Google Sheet. Here’s how it works:

1. Combine Data from All Instantly Accounts We gather campaign information (like emails sent, replies, leads contacted) from all four accounts.
2. Use an Unofficial API The official Instantly API has strict rate limits and does not provide all the data we need. By using an unofficial API, we are able to capture all the data our client cares about.
3. Send Data to Google Sheets, Then to Looker Studio Once the data is in Google Sheets, we connect it to Looker Studio. This allows the client to filter campaigns by name, client, account, and date range. They see all their metrics in one place and can immediately spot what’s working or not.
4. Automate Daily Updates We run this process every day at 12:01 AM to pull the previous day’s data. This ensures they never miss a single data point. It also saves them from hiring a full-time employee to copy and paste data from multiple accounts into a spreadsheet.

Tools We Used

• Google Apps Script to collect and paste the cold email campaign data into Google Sheets.
• n8n to schedule and log each time the script runs, so we can track the automation process and fix any issues quickly.

Results and Benefits

• Single Source of Truth: All campaign data (3-5 million emails each month) lives in one easy-to-use Google Sheet and Looker Studio dashboard.
• Informed Decisions: The agency can see how each campaign is performing and make changes based on data rather than guesses.
• Time and Cost Savings: No need to hire someone to do constant data entry. The entire data-gathering process is done automatically.
• Scalable Process: As they grow, the system scales with them. Adding more accounts or campaigns does not require extra manual work.

Conclusion

By combining data from multiple Instantly accounts and centralizing it in Google Sheets and Looker Studio, we replaced the need for a full-time data entry person. Now the agency has a clear view of all their cold email campaigns, can make better decisions faster, and has the freedom to focus on improving their outreach instead of juggling spreadsheets. This is a real example of how the right automation can help a business scale without losing sight of the numbers that matter most.

Service we provide: We will automate and systemize your business operations, enabling your existing team to handle 20 times more work without hiring additional staff - If you're interested, email me at [email protected]

Visit our website: Twomarkup.com to learn more.