How a 14-person ad agency adds email without hiring anyone

Concept project: fictional brand, built to show our process. We won't invent client results, so we show the whole process instead. No client data was used. Every brand number below is invented and labeled as such, every benchmark is sourced, and every outcome is a target, never a claimed result.

Meet Halyard Growth

Halyard Growth is an invented 14-person performance agency running paid social, Google and creative for Shopify DTC brands. It has 22 active clients on retainers of $4.5K to $12K a month, and it only works with Shopify DTC. Its email history is a wound: two freelance contractors in 18 months, one who ghosted mid-build and one who shipped a broken discount code that Halyard's brand had to answer for. Three clients have asked for email three quarters in a row. "We'll add it next quarter" is no longer survivable.

The four pains

• Clients keep asking for email. Fix: it goes on the menu for real, with a pricing card for Halyard's sales deck and the audit as Halyard's own lead-in offer.

• An in-house email team is a $25K+ a month commitment. Senior hires take 8 to 12 weeks. Fix: pack pricing replaces headcount, and onboarding takes days.

• Referrals leak the retainer. Referring out loses the retainer and the relationship. Fix: the whole retainer stays under Halyard's invoice.

• Freelancers ghost. Fix: the contract. NDA, non-solicit, response-time SLA, replacement guarantee, no lock-in, and data portability on exit.

How the partnership works

• NDA first. Mutual, signed before any client name or dashboard access.

• Non-solicit. Swyftlabs does not approach Halyard's clients during the term plus 12 months.

• Zero overlap. No competing clients, with proactive disclosure if overlap ever appears.

• Work lives in the client's own Klaviyo account. It is never a Swyftlabs asset.

• Everything carries Halyard's brand. Reports, Loom walkthroughs, file names and HTML metadata. Zero Swyftlabs footprint.

• Approval flow. Swyftlabs drafts, Halyard approves, the client sees.

The money

Under the pack model Swyftlabs invoices Halyard $2,250 a month per client for 8 campaigns, 5 flows maintained and a monthly report. Halyard invoices the client $4,000 to $4,500, which leaves about 50% margin. Compare that with the $25K a month it would take to hire the same capability. A paid five-day audit goes wholesale at $750 and retail at $1,500, and a five-flow foundation build goes wholesale at $1,800 and retail at $3,500. Volume pricing takes 10% off from the third active client.

Benchmarks: white-label wholesale runs $800 to $3K a month per client, and typical agency margins on white-label sit at 20 to 40%, with well-structured retainers at 40 to 60%.

What we'd show

The one-page partnership map of client, Halyard and Swyftlabs, with every guarantee tied to its clause. A client-view versus agency-view spread. A pack scope sheet. A monthly report carrying Halyard's brand. An add-on pricing card for Halyard's deck. A contract summary card.

What we'd measure

All of these are targets, not results. Three pilot clients enrolled in the first 90 days would add roughly $5.5K to $6.7K a month in margin for Halyard, with no new headcount, and email would stop being the place referrals leak.

How to read this

Three kinds of numbers appear on this page. Invented numbers are part of the fictional brief. Benchmark numbers come from published sources and are attributed. Target numbers are what we would design toward. When we have real client results, they get their own pages, held to the same standard.

What a real engagement looks like

For agencies, we deliver the same work white-label, under your brand. Tell us about your roster and we'll show you how the partnership would run.

Talk to us