What makes outbound different for an ecommerce agency?
Your client is a business, but its storefront is public. Before you write a word you can see the platform, the theme, the apps, the speed on a phone, how search behaves, how many products are listed and how the checkout feels. Few B2B services get that much information about a prospect for free.
That changes the job. The first email should not describe your agency. It should describe their store, with one finding they can verify in thirty seconds. Brand owners get a steady stream of messages from agencies and app developers; the ones they answer point at something real on their own site.
The second difference is the calendar. For most retail brands the fourth quarter decides the year. A brand will not replatform in November, and nobody reads a migration pitch during Black Friday and Cyber Monday week. Timing is half of ecommerce agency prospecting.
Which brands are ready for an agency?
In Startories terms these are tech stack changes, hiring, funding, business expansion, complaints about a competitor (here, the brand's current agency or platform) and people looking for an alternative. Stores still running Magento 1, which Adobe stopped supporting in June 2020, are an extreme but real example of the first row.
| Signal | Where it shows | What they likely need |
|---|---|---|
| An older or self-hosted platform under visible strain | Technology lookup tools, slow pages, a broken mobile layout | Replatforming, often to Shopify or Shopify Plus |
| A wholesale or B2B channel appears | A trade login, a wholesale pricing page, a stockist announcement | B2B storefront setup, ERP and inventory integration |
| Hiring an ecommerce manager or a Shopify developer | Job posts | Interim support, or build work the new hire will maintain |
| Funding for a consumer brand | Funding news, founder posts | Rebuild, conversion program, retention marketing |
| International expansion | A currency selector, a new country site, an expansion announcement | Multi-market storefronts, translations, local payment methods |
| Public frustration with the store | Founder posts about checkout drop-off, app bloat or a developer who vanished | Audit, cleanup, a new agency relationship |
| A request for an agency | "Looking for a Shopify Plus agency for a migration" in a community | A shortlist is being built right now |
Read the store before you write: a ten-minute audit
Do this for every lead that passes your profile. It produces the first line of your email and tells you whether the deal is worth pursuing at all.
Platform and apps
Look the store up on BuiltWith or Wappalyzer to see the platform, theme and detectable apps. A long list of overlapping apps (three review widgets, two pop-up tools) points to a cleanup project and a slow site.
Mobile speed and layout
Open the home page, a collection page and a product page on a phone. Note what loads late, what jumps around and how long the add-to-cart button takes to settle.
Search and navigation
Search for a product with a typo and with a synonym. Poor results on a catalog of several hundred products is a clear, fixable problem.
Checkout
Add an item and go as far as the payment step. Count the fields, the surprise costs and the payment options. Do not place an order.
Catalog and activity
Count products, look for recent launches and check whether the brand runs ads (the major ad platforms publish public ad libraries). An active advertiser with a weak product page is paying for traffic it loses.
Pick one finding
Choose the issue that is most visible and most tied to revenue. That becomes your first line. Keep the rest for the call.
Who decides at an ecommerce brand?
Founder or owner
At small and mid-size brands, decides alone, watches revenue daily and has been burned by at least one developer. Responds to a specific issue on their own store and a clear price. Many share numbers and frustrations in public on X.
Head of ecommerce or digital
Owns the site, the conversion rate and the agency relationships at brands large enough to have the role. Judges you on platform depth and on how you behave around peak season. Write about a technical or conversion finding, not about design taste.
Ecommerce manager
Runs the store day to day and feels the app bloat and the manual work. Usually not the budget owner, but the person who will champion you internally. A good entry point when the head of ecommerce does not reply.
Operations or finance lead
Comes in when the project touches inventory, ERP, wholesale or fulfillment. For B2B and wholesale builds, involve them early or the project stalls at the integration stage.
CMO or growth lead
Owns paid acquisition and retention. The buyer for conversion work, landing pages and email or SMS programs; rarely the buyer for a replatform.
Sizing the deal from what you can see
You cannot see a brand's revenue, but you can see enough to tell a $3,000 theme tweak from a migration plus retainer. Use visible proxies: catalog size, number of markets, active advertising, a wholesale channel, retail stockists, team size on the company page and the roles being hired. A worked example, with assumed numbers:
| Line | Example | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Migration project | WooCommerce to Shopify, 900 products, two markets | $45,000 |
| Post-launch retainer | Development and conversion work, 12 months at $4,500 | $54,000 |
| Peak readiness sprint | Speed fixes, app review and promotion setup before Q4 | $8,000 |
| Year one total | One client | $107,000 |
Reach companies with a reason to buy this week
Startories finds the buying signal, verifies the decision-maker and runs the outreach until they book a call.
Sample sequence for a brand hiring a Shopify developer
Fictional example: a home goods brand on Shopify posts a job for a Shopify developer. The theme is heavily customized, product pages are slow on mobile and the store runs about twenty apps. The sequence goes to the head of ecommerce.
Day 0: the observation
Subject: the Shopify developer role at Hearthware. "Hi Claire, I saw Hearthware is hiring a Shopify developer. Before that person starts, one thing worth a look: on mobile, your product pages load the reviews widget and two pop-ups before the add-to-cart button settles, so it sits below the fold for a few seconds. We fix this kind of issue for Shopify brands. Would a short write-up of what's causing it be useful?" The offer is a small, free piece of work tied to one verifiable problem.
Day 3: the write-up
Three bullet points: which apps load first, which could be removed or deferred, and what the theme does with images. Only what you can see from outside. No pitch.
Day 8: the bridge offer
"A new developer usually needs weeks to learn a custom theme. We can take the speed fixes and the holiday promotion setup now, document everything and hand over to your hire." This answers the real worry: if a hire is coming, why an agency?
Day 15: close
"I'll leave it there. If Q4 gets busy and you need extra hands on the theme, my notes on your store are ready." Then stop.
First emails for two other signals: an aging platform and a new wholesale channel
The hiring sequence is one pattern. These two openings start from other rows of the signal table, and each is built on something the store itself shows. The brand and the people are fictional.
A brand on an aging platform
Subject: Larkfield's product pages on mobile. "Hi Dana, Larkfield's store runs on a self-hosted platform version that no longer receives updates, and on a phone the product pages take a few seconds before the size selector responds. With 600 products and their reviews, the move itself is what most owners worry about, so our migrations start with a URL and data map you can check line by line. Want me to send the outline we would use for your catalog?"
Two facts the owner can verify in a minute, the main worry named before they raise it, and a small deliverable instead of a call. Mention redirects and search traffic only if you checked them; the SEO agency playbook explains why migrations put rankings at risk.
A brand opening a wholesale channel
Subject: the new stockist page. "Hi Sam, I saw Larkfield now lists stockists and a trade login. Wholesale orders bring needs a retail store was not built for: tiered prices, minimum quantities, payment terms for trade accounts. We set up B2B storefronts on Shopify and connect them to the inventory system so stock stays in sync. Is wholesale run from the same store today, or from email and spreadsheets?"
It shows you know what changes with wholesale, and the closing question is easy to answer either way. When Sam replies, bring the operations lead into the thread, as the buyer section above suggests.
The ecommerce agency's prospecting calendar
Retail peaks shape when brands buy services. Many brands freeze major site changes from late October through the holidays to protect peak sales, so a project not signed by the end of summer usually waits until January. Plan outbound accordingly.
- B2B and wholesale brands follow a different rhythm, tied to trade shows and buyers' ordering seasons. Run them as a separate campaign if you build wholesale storefronts.
- Brands that missed the summer window and had a rough peak are the best January prospects. Keep notes on stores that struggled in November, and write in early January with what you saw.
- A funding round or an expansion announcement can override the calendar; a brand entering a new country often has a fixed go-live date of its own.
| Months | What brands are doing | What to pitch |
|---|---|---|
| January–February | Reviewing peak results, setting the year's budget | Replatforming, rebuilds, new agency relationships |
| March–May | Building what was approved; spring launches | Development capacity, new collections and landing pages |
| June–August | Planning peak; last window for big changes | Peak readiness sprints, speed, conversion tests, promotion mechanics |
| September to mid-October | Final changes, then lockdown | Small fixes, peak support retainers |
| Late October–December | Code freeze, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, holidays | Little pitching; book January discovery calls |
Objections brand owners raise
"We're on Shopify, so we don't need developers."
True for a simple store. Point at the specific limit they have hit: app bloat slowing the site, a theme they cannot change without breaking it, or the B2B features they asked about. If none applies, they are right, and you should move on.
"Our last agency broke the site during peak."
Explain your release process: a staging theme, freeze dates written into the contract, a rollback plan. Offer a small first project well before Q4.
"A freelancer is cheaper."
Often true per hour. Compare coverage instead: who answers during a Black Friday outage, who documents the theme, who covers when the freelancer is on vacation.
"Send us an audit first."
Send a short one, limited to what you can see from outside, as in the sequence above. A full audit with analytics access is paid work or part of a proposal.
"We're too small for an agency."
Sometimes that is the right answer. Recommend a theme or a freelancer and stay in touch; brands grow, and they remember who was honest.
Where to find brands beyond your inbound leads
- Shopify's partner ecosystem. As a Shopify partner, a listing in the Partner Directory is an inbound channel if you qualify. Read competing listings too: they show which niches are crowded.
- Technology lookup lists. Tools like BuiltWith can list stores by platform, app and country, which helps build a replatforming list, for example stores still on an end-of-life platform version.
- Communities. Founders discuss agencies, apps and platform choices on X, in Reddit's ecommerce and Shopify communities and in founder groups. Startories watches public posts on Reddit and X for requests, complaints and switching intent.
- Launch sites and directories. New brands and new Shopify apps appear on Product Hunt and in startup directories. App developers can be clients too, if you build for them.
- Search results for your niche. A category plus a region, or a category plus a phrase such as "free shipping", surfaces brands that are missing from every database.
Partners who see brands before you do
Some businesses meet a brand at the moment it outgrows its store, but do not build stores themselves. A clear referral arrangement, and a promise not to sell into their service, turns them into a steady source of warm introductions.
- App developers and their support teams hear when a store has outgrown its theme or its app stack, and need someone to send custom work to.
- Fulfillment and inventory providers onboard brands that are scaling, and a new warehouse often means a new integration.
- Email, SMS and paid media agencies work with the same brands but rarely touch the theme or the checkout. Our marketing agencies playbook shows how they find their own clients.
- Product photographers and content studios see new collections and relaunches weeks before the site changes.
Using Startories as an ecommerce agency
Startories brings brands to you with a reason attached. It detects tech stack changes, hiring, funding, expansion, complaints and searches for a new agency or platform in public sources, matches each signal to the brand behind it, checks it against your profile (platform, catalog size, market, category) and explains the score. It then finds the founder or head of ecommerce, verifies the business email and drafts a first line that cites the signal, which you can sharpen with your own store finding.
Messages are sent from separate domains with warmed-up inboxes and daily limits, so the domain your clients reach you on is never at risk. Replies are sorted and answered in draft for your approval. If you also sell web design or SEO to brands, the web design agency and SEO agency playbooks cover those offers.
Start on Starter ($99 a month, first project $1 for a 3-day trial) with one funnel, such as brands hiring ecommerce roles. Move to Growth ($499) to run hiring, replatforming and community requests together, ideally switched on in early summer and again in January. See pricing.
Frequently asked questions
How do Shopify agencies find new clients?
Look for brands with a visible reason to change: an older platform under strain, a job post for a Shopify developer, a funding round, international expansion or a founder complaining about checkout. Audit the store for one specific issue and lead with it.
When is the best time for an ecommerce agency to prospect?
January and February for replatforming and rebuilds, early summer for peak readiness work. From late October through December many brands freeze site changes, so use that period to book January discovery calls rather than pitching projects.
How can I tell if an ecommerce brand can afford an agency?
Use visible proxies: catalog size, number of markets, active advertising, a wholesale channel, stockists, team size and open roles. A small store with a few products and no ads usually needs a freelancer or a theme, not an agency retainer.
Should I send a free audit in my first email?
Send one finding, not a full audit. A single observation the owner can check in thirty seconds earns a reply; a long list feels like a template. Offer a short write-up if they want it, and keep deeper audits for paid work.
Does Startories contact the shoppers of these stores?
No. Startories is B2B only. It contacts decision-makers at brands, such as founders and heads of ecommerce, at verified business emails. It does not target shoppers or any other consumers.