They Got Acquired - How this niche agency grew

April 4, 2023
​Read on web​

Emilio Ousset-Paciulli just wanted a way to pay for law school.

So he started a freelance business in a unique niche: real estate photography. A friend who was a realtor gave him his first chance to photograph a listing.

Turns out this service was in demand; within six months, Ousset-Paciulli hired someone to share the workload. From there, he hired administrative staff and more photographers, all while he was still in school.

The company stood out in the Quebec market by doing three things:

📸 Offering the latest tech: “I was one of the first companies to introduce drone photography,” the founder said.

📸 Becoming a preferred photography partner for Airbnb: They photographed model homes for developers, and created 3-D models and virtual tours for both realtors and developers.

📸 Acquiring competitors: They reinvested the company’s revenue to grow. One of those acquisitions was Agento Marketing, which became the company's new name and brand.

When Ousset-Paciulli decided to sell the agency, they had grown to 12 employees and two contractors. The business had about 500 customers and they'd photographed about 5,000 homes per year.

Here's how he found a buyer and what the deal looked like:

​How one founder grew a niche photography firm through acquisitions before selling his own company​

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Behind the business

One way we're experimenting with growing our email list is through a tool called SparkLoop.

SparkLoop has a bunch of features for email growth. They're perhaps best known for their referral program, whereby you can reward your audience when they recommend your newsletter to others.

But we're using a different feature, their partner program. It allows other newsletters to share a link to ours, and we pay them for each subscriber they send.

Newsletter operators can also work this from the other side, earning money when they send new subscribers to other newsletters. Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit (the email service provider we use to send you this email) explains that here:

Nathan Barry @nathanbarry Creator industry trend I'm watching right now: Creators sponsoring newsletters through @SparkLoopHQ's Partner Network at ~$2 per subscriber, then sending them into an email automation pitching a paid product. I expect we'll see creators get to a 30-45 day payback period. March 21st 2023 5 Retweets 49 Likes

At They Got Acquired, we use SparkLoop mostly to pay others to send us new subscribers. Here's why we like it:

✅ You can start with a small spend.

If you wanted to grow your newsletter list through Facebook ads, you might spend thousands of dollars with an agency to run the campaign.

With SparkLoop, we spend just $1,000/month. We pay $3 per subscriber, so we get about 330 new subscribers for that $1,000.

✅ You don't need an expert to run the campaign.

To run paid social ads, you'd have to either spend hours learning to do it yourself, or hire an agency or freelancer. Then you've got to pay them on top of covering ad costs.

With SparkLoop, you just set it up, and it runs.

✅ You only pay for engaged subscribers.

This is the best part: you can build an automation in your ESP that unsubscribes anyone who doesn't open the first couple of emails. And then SparkLoop doesn't make you pay for them.

Now, this platform isn't perfect, nor does it work for every newsletter.

Here's what I find challenging about it:

❌ It can be tricky to set up. I've had other newsletter operators tell me SparkLoop was confusing to set up, and that's been my experience, too.

However, the founders are willing to hand-hold when they need to. And as this is a new startup, I have no doubt their onboarding will improve over time.

❌ New subs might affect your open rate.

In my experience, the quality of the subscribers isn't as high as organic.

You can mostly accommodate for this by unsubscribing anyone who doesn't open in the first 14 days. But you've gotta stay on top of this to ensure open rates don't drop.

Overall, if you're looking for creative ways to grow your email list (and/or monetize your list), I recommend checking out SparkLoop. That's our affiliate link, so if you join through us, we may get a small commission.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​
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🙌 How we can help

Here's what we offer for founders looking to sell in the next year:

- Help choosing an advisor or broker you can trust

- M&A coaching if you have a potential buyer or want to approach buyers on your own

- A sounding board (free call) if you're not sure where to start

- Reports full of case studies and data about other founders who sold

- Posts covering the basics of how to sell your business​