Show Them Their Own Ad, Marked Up
Every PPC agency knows the audit opener works. But there's a gap between telling a prospect their campaigns are leaking budget and showing them — a screenshot of their own live ad, with a red box around the broad-match headline and a one-line note in the margin: "this query match is costing you roughly 30% of spend." Text claims get skimmed; a marked-up image of something the prospect recognizes as theirs gets stared at.
Lemlist is the tool that makes that opener systematic instead of artisanal. Its personalized images drop per-prospect screenshots into every email, its liquid syntax merges the matching observation into the copy, and its per-prospect landing pages give the curious somewhere to see the rest of the teardown. ColdRelay is the infrastructure underneath — the secondary domains, mailboxes, and dedicated IPs Lemlist actually sends from. This guide covers how to wire the two together and run evidence-first outreach at real volume.
Why Run Lemlist on ColdRelay Infrastructure
Lemlist is a sending and sequencing platform — it sends from whatever mailboxes you connect to it. It doesn't provision the domains or guarantee the deliverability of the mailboxes themselves; that's the infrastructure layer's job.
That's where ColdRelay fits. Instead of standing up workspace seats and hand-configuring DNS across a handful of domains, you order dedicated mailboxes on isolated Azure tenants with dedicated IPs, fully DNS-configured (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and ready in about an hour. There's no warmup waiting period before you can send — warmup runs continuously as part of each mailbox's send budget — so the batch of annotated screenshots you prepared this morning can be in a live campaign this afternoon.
The pairing is additive, not competitive: ColdRelay is the infrastructure, Lemlist is the personalization and sending layer on top. You keep Lemlist's image personalization, liquid variables, multichannel sequences, and campaign reports — you just point them at mailboxes built to land. For evidence-led outreach that matters more than usual: an annotated ad teardown that lands in spam is an audit nobody ever sees, and the hours you spent capturing screenshots are wasted at the filter, not at the prospect.
Visit Lemlist →Connecting ColdRelay Mailboxes to Lemlist
Provision mailboxes on ColdRelay
Order secondary domains adjacent to your agency brand — never the domain you use for client reporting. ColdRelay supports 100-150 mailboxes per domain; agencies running evidence-heavy campaigns typically start with 50-100 mailboxes on 1-2 domains, since annotated lists are smaller and better qualified than spray lists. Everything provisions on isolated Azure tenants with dedicated IPs in about an hour, with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC already configured.
Connect the mailboxes in Lemlist under email accounts
Export your mailbox credentials from the ColdRelay dashboard, then add each account in Lemlist's email accounts settings via SMTP/IMAP. Each ColdRelay mailbox connects as its own sender so Lemlist can rotate campaign sends across the pool. Skip lemwarm — ColdRelay's continuous warmup already covers it, and double-warming the same mailbox from two systems muddies the sending pattern.
Cap daily sends to match the ColdRelay budget
Set each connected account's daily sending limit to 2 outbound emails per day, mirroring ColdRelay's per-mailbox budget of 4 sends/day total — 2 outbound + 2 warmup. Evidence-led campaigns fit this budget naturally: the constraint on volume is how many ads you can capture and annotate, not how many sends the pool can absorb.
Build the annotated-image template with liquid variables
Capture each prospect's live ad from the Google Ads Transparency Center or Meta Ad Library, mark it up — one box, one margin note, one waste observation — and store the image URL in a custom field on the lead. In Lemlist, drop that field into a personalized image block so every email renders the prospect's own ad, and use liquid syntax in the copy to merge the matching observation: {{adWasteNote}} in the sentence, the marked-up screenshot right below it. The image and the sentence must describe the same thing — that's what makes it read as an audit in progress rather than a mail merge.
Add the landing page and LinkedIn steps, then watch campaign reports
Attach a Lemlist per-prospect landing page hosting the fuller teardown — two or three more annotated frames and a calendar embed — so the email only has to earn a click, not a meeting. Layer a LinkedIn visit and connect step after the first email for prospects who opened but didn't reply; the profile visit puts a face behind the screenshot. Then let Lemlist's campaign reports tell you which annotation type pulls replies — search-term waste, landing page mismatch, or creative fatigue — and capture more of the winner.
The PPC Agency Lemlist Playbook
One annotation per image, and make it falsifiable
The marked-up screenshot fails when it tries to be the whole audit. Box one thing — the broad-match headline, the ad clicking through to a homepage, the same creative running 90+ days — and write a margin note the prospect can check themselves in two minutes. A falsifiable observation ("this ad points at your homepage, not a landing page") earns trust precisely because the prospect can verify it; a vague one ("your account has issues") reads like every other agency email with a picture stapled on.
Let the screenshot carry the proof so the copy can stay short
Most audit emails are long because text has to do the convincing. With the prospect's annotated ad doing that work, the copy above it can drop to three sentences: what you noticed, what it's roughly costing, and the ask. Use liquid variables so each of those sentences is built from the same fields as the image — the campaign name, the waste estimate, the platform — and resist adding a credentials paragraph. The screenshot is the credential.
Make the landing page the second half of the teardown, not a brochure
The per-prospect landing page should continue the evidence, not switch modes into agency marketing. Lead with two or three more annotated frames from the same account — the search terms report pattern you'd expect, the landing page the ad actually hits — then a single calendar embed. A prospect who clicks through from their own marked-up ad and finds their own funnel continued on the page is already in the audit; a prospect who finds your team photos and service grid just left one ad for another.
Run the LinkedIn step as the second look at the same evidence
Lemlist's multichannel sequences let you follow the email with a LinkedIn visit, connect request, or comment. Use them to reinforce the artifact, not to repeat the pitch: the connection note references the screenshot ("sent over a markup of your search ad on Tuesday — worth two minutes"), and a comment on the prospect's recent post keeps your name adjacent to the teardown sitting in their inbox. Opened-no-reply prospects are the segment where this pays — they saw the image; the LinkedIn touch is the nudge to act on it.
Typical PPC Agency Outbound Benchmarks (Lemlist + ColdRelay)
| Metric | Benchmark | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox placement rate | 95%+ | Dedicated IPs and isolated tenants outperform shared Google/Microsoft pools |
| Reply rate, annotated-screenshot openers | 5-9% | A marked-up image of the prospect's own ad outperforms text-only audit claims |
| Landing page click-through from opens | 10-20% | Per-prospect teardown pages convert curiosity the email itself can't close |
| Outbound capacity per mailbox | 2/day | 4 sends/day total per mailbox — 2 outbound + 2 warmup |
| Time to first campaign | Same day | ~60 minutes to provision, plus image template and campaign setup in Lemlist |
What It Costs: Lemlist + ColdRelay
You pay per mailbox per month for the infrastructure, with volume tiers that drop as you scale (see the table below). DNS, dedicated IPs, and isolated Azure tenants are included.
Lemlist is billed separately on its own subscription for personalized images, landing pages, liquid variables, multichannel sequences, and campaign reports — priced per its current plans.
Infrastructure cost scales with mailbox count; Lemlist's cost scales with seats and plan tier. Evidence-led campaigns tilt the math favorably — because annotated lists are smaller and replies come at a higher rate, most agencies need fewer mailboxes per booked call than a volume play would, and can put the savings into capture-and-annotate time instead.
| Mailboxes | ColdRelay price / mailbox / month |
|---|---|
| 1–199 | $1.00 |
| 200–999 | $0.85 |
| 1,000–4,999 | $0.70 |
| 5,000+ | $0.55 |
Each mailbox sends 4 emails per day — 2 outbound to prospects + 2 warmup. ColdRelay provisions mailboxes on isolated Azure tenants with dedicated IPs; Lemlist handles the sending, sequencing, and inbox rotation on top.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does ColdRelay replace Lemlist?
No. They're complementary layers doing different jobs. Lemlist handles personalization — images, liquid variables, landing pages — plus multichannel sequencing and campaign reports. ColdRelay provides the underlying domains, mailboxes, and dedicated IPs that Lemlist sends from. You use them together: infrastructure below, personalization and sending software on top.
Should I use lemwarm if my mailboxes come from ColdRelay?
No — leave warmup to ColdRelay. Every ColdRelay mailbox runs continuous warmup as part of its send budget: 4 sends/day total, split 2 outbound + 2 warmup. Running lemwarm on top of that double-warms the mailbox and distorts its sending pattern. Point Lemlist at outbound sends only and let the infrastructure layer handle reputation.
Do personalized images hurt deliverability?
Not meaningfully when the infrastructure underneath is sound. ColdRelay mailboxes send from dedicated IPs on isolated Azure tenants with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC pre-configured, which is what placement actually rides on. Keep the email to one image with real text around it — a short plain-text-style note above the screenshot — rather than a fully designed HTML blast, and the annotated-ad format lands fine at 95%+ placement.
How do we produce annotated ad screenshots at scale?
Treat it as a daily production pass, not per-email artisanship. Pull each prospect's live ads from the Google Ads Transparency Center or Meta Ad Library, apply one annotation from a short menu of waste patterns — broad-match bleed, homepage landing, stale creative — and store the image URL plus the matching observation text as custom fields on the lead. Lemlist's personalized image block and liquid variables assemble the email from those fields automatically, so a list of 40-50 annotated prospects per day is one person's morning, and at 2 outbound sends/day per mailbox a 50-mailbox pool keeps pace with exactly that throughput.