I sent about 40 emails and have one reply with 30% interest.
I am looking at email copy and asking B2B and agencies 15 minutes of their time.
It seems like no one uses email or no one replies from agencies?
Any tips and suggestions for this indie founder?
Try going smaller first!
For context I worked for an online apparel retailer that had a lot of images and the site was hosted on Shopify.
The first solution chosen by the team was imgix, which was chosen because it had a very simple API, so integration effort was minor. The internal pitch to the business was we can reduce page load time by optimising the images. It received quick approval because it's a quick win and the costs seemed okay.
As the site got larger and our bills got greater than $1,000-$2,000 someone from imgix reached out and offered to sign us up to a contract for a better rate. I don't recall actual numbers but we ended up paying approx. $2,000 a month despite our growth in usage.
At the same time, competitors would approach us mentioning cheaper fees, sometimes half. However, all pitches failed because even at 50% off, the cost to the business was so insignificant as to not warrant the dev time. In addition to that, most replacements failed to be simpler to integrate than imgix.
The team did eventually move off imgix when Shopify introduced their img_url filter that actually did less than imgix - but was free. For the team the motivation to move was reduce a dependency and completely cut ongoing costs associated with a 3rd-party service.
Coming back to your question I think there are two approaches you can take:
1. Find slow, image heavy, sites and pitch them your product. If you are first in the door you could have an advantage. When working with e-commerce most founders start from nothing and you can just search for "founder of X" and should be able to find a name on LinkedIn. The pitch here is use us = your site faster = more revenue.
2. Offer agencies really competitive affiliate kickbacks. My observation of e-commerce is that many agencies receive kickbacks for recommending tools. Shopify themselves provide an affiliate program for referrals. As long as your service is easy to use and reliable, the agency won't care too much about other factors as long as its profitable. The pitch here is use us = more profit.
3. Content market to developers by showcasing how easy it is to use your app and clearly demonstrating benefits. The goal is to catch developers that are looking for solutions and doing some kind of market analysis or prototype. The pitch here is use us = get job done fast.
My strategy in a general sense will be to:
* re-listen to all the Indie Hackers podcasts and take notes
* stay patient
And, in the beginning, anything more than a 0% interest in your product is great.
In short, a lot of the advice is....plan to keep working at it for a long time. If you can achieve that, there is a good change that you will be successful. Most people give up way too soon.
Mark Cuban says this a lot, too.