That’s how it is for Mike and Carly at MooseCat Recording, a private boutique recording studio.

• They wanted to be able to connect with potential clients faster
• As a 2-person team, handling emails manually was keeping them away from more important tasks
• Now they’re getting 1-2 more booking each week and saving countless hours

About MooseCat Recording

Industry: music

Employee count: 2 + contractors

Use case: lead generation

Product used: Woodpecker Cold Email

Challenge: expand the clients list

As a professional recording studio/music company, the MooseCat crew has their eyes set on one goal: to get their company in front of as many artists, managers, producers, and music supervisors as possible.

“It’s very much a “boots on the ground” endeavor that requires us to reach out directly to these colleagues in order to introduce ourselves and see if we are a good fit to work together,” explains Mike Post, MooseCat’s producer and engineer.

They’ve been using email to spark these conversations for a while, but – as you can probably imagine if you’ve ever sent cold emails by hand – it quickly became too tedious.

“It was time-consuming and took away from our other work to run the business,” says Mike.

Solution: switching from manual to automated cold email

Adding a cold email tool into the equation seemed an obvious route to take.

As many small businesses that use cold email do, they were looking for an inexpensive platform that was easy to use.

“It sounds simple but harder to find in practice,” says Mike. “Being that we were fairly new to this space, we needed something straightforward and easy to use mostly”.

After testing several cold email products, they weren’t impressed. Why? “They worked but were bulky and we weren’t getting as much help as desired on the customer service front.”

Then, they stumbled on Woodpecker which turned out to be a perfect fit.

“Right from the start with Woodpecker, we could tell it was an easy platform to use and the team at Woodpecker was more than willing to help us put our best foot forward to start. We still want to make a personable impression, so we do vet those that we are reaching out to beforehand, and Woodpecker makes it easy to make sure we aren’t coming across as spam or impersonal.”

Being a small team means you can’t afford getting bogged down with menial tasks. “And Woodpecker makes it so that we can spend more time on other more important aspects of our business,” adds Mike.

Results: 1-2 more bookings each week

That curated approach to list building is one of the things that brings MooseCat high open and reply rates. But how do they translate into new business?

With about 50-100 more responses a week than before, they get 3-5 more meetings and 1-2 more bookings a week.

According to Mike, using Woodpecker gives them a major leg up on the competition.

“Most companies similar to us are spending lots of time sending emails and sorting through data, while Woodpecker helps us save time and money reaching out to potential leads,” he says.

What’s up next for MooseCat Recording

Right now, they’re looking to continue to grow their client base, and are hoping to open a second location for their recording studio.

And using Woodpecker brings them closer to reaching these goals. 😉

Want to try Woodpecker out yourself? Sign up for the trial and you’ll get to test the tool for free for a week:

Well, in the case of Ecom Capital, an e-commerce growth business, that’s exactly what happened when they started using cold email for lead generation.

• their goal was to get clients for their $7,000/month service
• they went from setting zero meetings to making 2 qualified sales calls per day
• the first deal was closed 21 days after sending the first cold email

About Ecom Capital

Industry: e-commerce growth

Employee count: 11-50

Use case for Woodpecker: lead generation

Product used: Woodpecker Agency

Challenge: validate the offer & create a consistent stream of leads

Ecom Capital set out with two goals:

• validate their higher-priced service, and then
• validate a predictable, consistent and sustainable method of cold outreach to bring in business

They kicked it off with cold calling, but it didn’t do the trick. When they put their sales team on phones and gave them massive lead lists to contact, not a single deal came out of that for 3 months.

Michael, their Head of Operations, explains why that didn’t work for their business: “People who pick up the phone want more information, and it would be very difficult to convey that information over the phone just from a cold call ‘cause what we’re doing is quite technical.”

So Michael started looking for other options, and stumbled onto cold emailing.

Solution: the powerful cold email

To do it right, Michael went through cold email training programs and resources – including the Woodpecker Academy and a lot of the articles on Woodpecker’s blog.

First, they had to take care of the technical backend set-up, like the marketing and sales process for outbound prospecting. 

When that happened, satisfying results started trickling in. 

So much so that, in fact, they had to pause their cold email campaigns since they quickly got more customers than they expected.

“From the day we hit GO on sending emails – we started seeing results after about 21 days,” says Michael.

Results: more clients than they can serve

The team had to put their brakes on since they started getting more clients for the premium service than they could handle at that moment. 

When they were fully prospecting, though, Michael was hopping on 2 qualified sales meetings per day for their $7,000/month offer.

Here’s how he described their 2-stage process:

The team members who were sending cold emails would go on 15-minute discovery calls, and when the leads were “discovered” – meaning they were suitable for the offer – they’d get passed on to Michael as the head sales person in the company and the (then) head of Client Success.

Michael would then get on a call with them to discuss and close the deal.

Choosing a tool that suits their needs – Woodpecker

“We had maybe 4 people prospecting for, I’d say, an equivalent of maybe 20 working hours per day for the team combined,” describes Michael “and we were sending about 100 emails a day to new prospects collectively as a team. From that I was running about 2 sales calls per day when we were at peak outreach.”

When he was looking for the best solution and comparing his options, Michael had his team in mind.

The team saw Woodpecker was the best for what they needed.

“And the experience has been great,” says Michael “It’s simple to use. The interface makes sense. It makes it easier to control the follow-up process. You type in an email in a document, copy it, and bam! You’ve got it done. You don’t need to worry about following up and any of that manual process.

I like how you can customize it. And the support is exceptional. I spoke to Damian a lot, and whenever there were things that weren’t working, he’d come in and help me with messages like: Here’s your action task, if you need help, I’ll be there. Especially important with the technical stuff no one seems to get.”

What’s the next goal?

Ecom Capital’s next objective is to bring on board a consistent level of clients, averaging about 1 per week for that particular higher-priced service.

Why do our customers like Ecom Capital succeed?

Looking at customers of ours like Ecom Capital, we see that some of the things that help them skyrocket their growth using cold emailing is a well-defined target and ICP, a solid lead qualification process, and confidence that goes along with a proven track record of being able to deliver on their promise.

When it comes to the cold emailing strategy and execution, a well-defined target and ICP are one of the first things you need to have figured out before you start.

Another is picking a cold email tool that’s right for what you need. Automating the whole process is crucial if you want to grow. It will allow your team to save time that can be invested back into working with your prospect.

And what tool will do the job? Well, I might be biased… so try Woodpecker for yourself and see if it’s the right cold email tool for you.

If you run a software house, take a peek at their strategy – you might find some useful ideas that will improve the results of your outbound campaigns.

Let’s jump into the interview.

Who is Startup Development House? What do you guys do?

SDH is a custom software and product development company based in Warsaw, Poland. 

Since 2015, we are all about supercharging tech-based businesses. Our mission is to deliver all-around support for startups at all stages of development. Our crafted set of services is particularly beneficial for startups at the early stage and for scaleups. 

So far, we’ve partnered on more than 70 projects across 5 continents.

We provide end-to-end product development services: ideation, prototyping, UX/ UI design, app & web development, scrum team augmentation, quality assurance, and product management. 

How did you start your company?

The story has begun while our founders – Alexander Stasiak, Marek Pałys and Jakub Krajewski, were running their first company. 

At that time, they were in high need of finding an external company that will help them with their digital product development. 

The problem that has arisen was that the market research showed there is no such company that understands startups’ needs and has a focus on users at the same time. 

That is why they decided to start Startup Development House – a company that works in accordance with MVP and Lean Startup methodologies, offers services that allow for validating ideas quickly and testing prototypes with real users, but more importantly, gathers experts who are passionate about what they are doing.

 The first clients appeared quickly. They were mostly friends and referred companies who knew that our founders have the knowledge of how to validate the business hypothesis within a limited budget. 

The idea turned out to be a great success. 

Who are your ideal customers?

We have four ideal groups of customers. 

The first two groups consist of startups at an early stage of development. The first one is a startup that has an idea, secured initial funding and needs to validate the concept with real users. At this stage, we offer Product Discovery Workshops. 

The second group are startups that have tested their prototype and are ready to develop MVP. 

The third group are scale-ups that need an extra boost – here, we offer our product teams. 

The last group are big corporations that aim to innovate faster.

What do you use Woodpecker for?

We use Woodpecker for automated campaigns for our prospects, especially for those that require a few consecutive messages. We also find Woodpecker helpful for sending ‘Thank you’ messages after our webinars.

We feel Woodpecker is particularly useful and efficient for campaigns in which we offer Product teams. 

And how were you solving this problem before?

We’ve started our adventure with email campaigns with Woodpecker. We have not been using anything similar before.

How do you personalize your emails?

We love the snippet option. Most frequently, we use name, company, and one snippet created by us – for example Job position/platform/event.

How many prospects do you usually have in a single campaign?

Usually, we have around 200 contacts in one campaign.

What value do you see in following up with prospects? What’s your following up strategy?

Sometimes it might be easy to overlook some messages, they can disappear in the mailbox. Our strategy is to do 3-4 follow-ups. Sometimes one communication might not be encouraging, whereas the content in the 3rd message will make the recipient want to contact us immediately.

Do you A/B test? What do you A/B test?

We are not using A/B tests yet.

What results do you get with Woodpecker?

We are very satisfied with the results we are getting with Woodpecker. Our response rate is pretty high.

Our best reply rates are somewhere between 40-50%, and for one campaign it was even over 80%. 

What we value the most is the relation of time and effort to results. It is more than satisfying.

Why did you choose our tool?

We decided to use Woodpecker because of the number of available functionalities, the possibility of personalization and the easy-to-use interface.

What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

Precious time. We can focus on other activities when Woodpecker contacts our desired customers. 

If you were to pick one thing that you like the most about Woodpecker, what would it be?

Convenience! Woodpecker allows us to schedule when exactly the mail will be sent and remembers to do the follow-ups.

Last week I had an insightful conversation with Miles Veth, CEO of Veth Group, one of Woodpecker’s partners. 

We dug deep into their process of creating effective cold emails, the results the agency gets for their clients, and how Woodpecker fits into their daily workflow.

So let’s cut to the chase — who is Veth Group?

About Veth Group

Veth Group specializes in growing the outbound and inbound demand for their b2b clients’ offerings. They mix empathy, creativity, technology, and analytics to determine the highest ROI messages and mediums for business growth.

They are based in the US.

How do you approach demand testing & generation?

We see the space of demand generation as being very fluid.

In any given market there are different variables, and they change for each company. 

If you’re using an automation tool like Woodpecker to email 3,000 people 8 times, to then go back the next week and do it 8 times again, it might work less effectively than asking them to be on a podcast or running a Facebook ad at them, or posting on LinkedIn and tagging them.

So what we’re trying to do in demand testing is figure out what the different levers that drive new business are, and how we can pull on those levers and coordinate them over time so someone ends up making a lot of money off it.

What were your best results so far?

The best one we had recently was when a client paid us about $20,000 to generate a $450,000 deal.

In terms of appointments, in some cases with Woodpecker we’ve gotten over 150 in a given month for a client for half the cost of an SDR.

That’s the high water mark. On average we’re trying to get about 20 appointments a month for a few thousands of dollars per month, so half the cost of an SDR. 

And this depends. Some markets are much harder than others, the deals are different, but in general that’s been our sweet spot.

And what are your best open and reply rates?

About 65% open rates for campaigns at scale, and the highest reply rate I’ve seen recently was 27%.

What’s your follow-up strategy?

I usually do 4-5 email sequences with 3 days apart in between them. It depends, but usually I’ll see the most of the responses with the first 3 emails, and #4 and #5 taper off a little.

I like your creative approach to writing emails. What’s your process to craft messages?

The biggest thing is to figure out what’s already in all of our heads.

Many times people try to create attention for their brand or for a concept that’s not already in our heads. 

I might come up with a new word for my product, like “email digitization”. Then I’m trying to create lots of attention about email digitization. But the thing is, no one’s ever heard of it.

If we were to instead talk about Star Wars’ Mandalorian, everyone already knows what baby Yoda looks like. So I’d much rather talk about Yoda and tie it to email digitization than just start from scratch.

Whether it’s poetry or music, or ice cream, or books, or celebrities, I’m much more fascinated with how you can take advantage of what’s already embedded in our minds and link to it so it creates an analogy.

Imagine if I were to target only females who know what EOS chapstick is. I could say “just like using EOS chapstick is one of the best feelings in the world, an even better feeling would be 85 appointments coming in for you”. And then I’m tying the analogy of you already knowing what it is to how I can help in a visceral way.

I think this is a lot more effective than the business jargon most people are using.

What kind of data do you use to build these analogies?

So if I were to do this for Woodpecker, I’d ask myself two questions. 

What am I moving someone towards with Woodpecker?

More time, more appointments, more revenue, more simplicity, making them look good in front of their boss.

What am I moving them away from?

Manually sending from spreadsheets, having a hard time tracking blacklists — and then I would think of an analogy. 

You guys are in Poland, so I’d say “Just like Lewandowski can glide up the field faster than anyone, we can glide in and out of people’s inboxes even faster. Would you want to learn how?”. The secret is simplicity. That’s how you get to the core concept.

I’m always looking for the analogy with your attention.

I’ll give you a story. I was at a baby shower a couple weeks ago and a stranger I’d never met asked what I do, and after I explained, he said, “Recently I got this amazing email about offering a steak lunch from a local restaurant”. He started telling me all about it, and he didn’t even know it was our company.

The bottom line is that people will still remember it if you mention the soccer player and the Mandalorian 3 or 4 days later, whereas most emails are just bland and boring.

So it’s the well-written and creative emails that win.

Yeah, exactly. And that’s where a lot of people say “That would never work in our industry”, and then they close that $450,000 deal, and they see it does work.

We’ve been using other channels, like podcast interviewing and LinkedIn brand, to support what we do with you guys at Woodpecker, but we’ve been super impressed with your platform and how well it works.

We set up about a 1,000 appointments a month with Woodpecker, so it’s pretty amazing what you do for us.

Which features are the most useful for your agency?

One of the great things about Woodpecker is that it lets you pull all your customers in one central place for billing, and everything to do with account logistics, which has really streamlined our experience for our clients.

You’ve built something very similar to an actual email inbox, and it’s got lots of functionality, but at the same time is simple. 

It really is just phenomenal how you’ve mixed simplicity and functionality.

Which Woodpecker feature is your favorite?

You guys do an amazing job with customization, split testing and threading emails.

The analytics you give and how it can be streamlined with tools like Zapier right back to a client’s inbox is amazing.

What’s your biggest challenge right now?

Operationalizing the creative process as we scale.

We’re about 11 people now, about double the size that we were even 3 months ago. We’ve grown really quickly, very much thanks to you guys.

***

What do you think about this creative approach to writing cold emails? Do you think it would work for you? Feel free to let us know at blog@woodpecker.co.

On a different note, if you’re interested in how Woodpecker Agency works, go here for details.

Patrick shared strategies that help them start, grow and scale their customers’ outbound sales efforts.

Read the interview below.

About Nerdwise

Nerdwise implements technologies and marketing systems alongside the processes and best practices to make them all work together. 

They’ve successfully helped more than 500+ businesses work smarter and grow faster by removing the legwork and quickly implementing these technologies and systems.

They’re based in the US.

Who is Nerdwise? What do you guys do?

Nerdwise is a globally distributed team of marketers and customer success professionals dedicated to growing our clients’ businesses. 

We are on a mission to help companies work smarter and grow faster by leveraging the latest technologies, processes and best practices. 

In many ways what we do is considered digital transformation.

How did you start your company?

There’s a lot to the story, but a major turning point was when the CEO of a major energy company asked how I was able to acquire so many customers so quickly, and if we could do the same for his sales team. He’s still one of our largest customers.

How has Nerdwise developed since then?

We now offer solutions for almost every stage of the buying process, from initial outreach and lead generation to helping our clients nurture pipeline and stay engaged with their warmest prospects. 

When we started it was more focused on upfront lead generation.

Who are your ideal customers?

We love working with any B2B sales team that’s still operating the hard way, cold calling and manually prospecting. It’s extremely satisfying to transform a sales organization in 6-8 weeks and watch their productivity skyrocket. 

Lately, we’ve been working with a lot of IT and Cybersecurity companies, ranging anywhere from 20-200 employees. There is a huge need for their services, so we won’t pass up on the opportunity to take them to market.

What do you use Woodpecker for?

Woodpecker helps us manage prospecting and lead generation on behalf of our clients.

Let’s take a look at TechAdvisors, a mid-sized IT firm, and MSP with a 4 person sales operation. 

Prior to Nerdwise, TechAdvisors relied on an SDR and Account Executive model where new prospects came from manual research and some lists from local organizational memberships. 

SDRS would reach out 1:1 via email and phone, set appointments for the CEO and Account Executives. It was a working system, but not generating the levels of growth Randall East, the CEO, wanted to reach in 2021. 

Within a week, Nerdwise organized and prioritized TechAdvisors go-to-market strategy including leveraging their existing database of prospects and aligning them with the markets they’ve had the most success with. 

Each sales rep:

• approves their prospect lists
• approves their outreach messaging
• connects into Woodpecker via Nerdwise 
• gets a fully automated prospecting system

Over a 6-week period, Nerdwise warmed up the TechAdvisors domain and email accounts with a steady ramp-up of outbound emails. The team earned enough credibility through high open and engagement rates, that now two TechAdvisors reps are automatically engaging 100+ prospects daily. They see an average open rate of 50% with an average reply rate of 15%. That’s a lot of replies.

Within 60 days, TechAdvisors scored dozens of meetings, won one big piece of business with over 1,000+ devices, and submitted two RFPs for huge projects.

Nerdwise continues to support the TechAdvisors team with a completely automated outbound marketing engine, driving qualified upfront meetings and opportunities.

How do you personalize your emails? What custom snippets do you use?

Messaging always starts with the audience. Once we know who we’re reaching, we can think about ways to customize our messaging for them. 

As far as snippets, I think we mostly use First Name, Last Name, and Company.

How do you get a contact base? And how many prospects do you usually have in a campaign?

It depends on the target prospect/ideal contact. In general, we’ve found that it’s best to define your target(s) first by industry, company size, titles, and location… then decide the best source data to locate those companies. 

From there, we have found human researchers with strong quality assurance steps is the most complete way to build a list.

What’s your follow-up strategy?

Following up is a critical step in getting a response and a meeting, so the value is extremely high. We do a number of things to ensure we’re following up with the most valuable prospects. 

It’s always a good idea to leverage Woodpecker’s “send as reply” capabilities for email, and to dig into your analytics to identify top engaged prospects for further follow-up via LinkedIn, calling etc.

Do you A/B test? What do you A/B test?

Yes, we A/B test regularly, and perhaps, surprisingly, most of our split testing is around our clients’ go-to-market strategy. 

We like to know which markets perform the best or better than others, and of course, we’ll test various calls-to-action and other content as needed to drive performance. 

What are your best open and reply rates?

We have one client with literally 95% open rates and another with 45% reply rates. Our target for each client is 50% open rates and 10-20% reply rates.

How long have you been using Woodpecker? 

A little over 1 year.

And why did you switch to our tool?

We like the no-frills and simple approach Woodpecker has taken. Many tools come with everything and the kitchen sink, and the last thing our clients want is another dashboard, another tool, etc. 

What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

Woodpecker is the glue allowing our outbound sales process to scale up. I would guess 90% of the leads we get are enabled by Woodpecker at some level.

If you were to pick one thing that you like the most about Woodpecker, what would it be?

Our partnership with you all. The tool is great and the performance is on-point, but it’s the people behind Woodpecker and our partnership that’s been exceptional for us. We’re big fans and grateful for your partnership and support.

In this customer case study Eric Brodeur and Ty Leisher, a film & tv duo specializing in horror and thriller, share their strategy for reaching the right people: agents, managers, distributors – and others who can help them get a movie produced, promote it, or buy their scripts.

They get up to 42% reply rate, and nearly 100% open rate. Impossible? In some industries, with a small list of carefully selected contacts, if you follow up, test & optimize – this can be done. How?

Lights, camera… Action!

About Exit 44 Entertainment

Co-founded by Eric Brodeur and Ty Leisher, Exit 44 Entertainment – in their own words – creates mind-bending horror stories that leave your head spinning as the credits roll. 

Eric Brodeur has a history with horror as the lead assistant editor on the films Sinister 2, The Grudge, Ouija, The Nun, and others. Ty Leisher’s experience in film distribution provides a unique ability to develop and position their films to market. 

In addition to writing and directing their own projects, the duo also represents independent horror and thriller films for sale.

They’re based in LA – which is reflected in the company name, taken from the 405 Freeway exit.

How did you start your company?

We formed the company in late 2017 when we were developing our first feature film together and have continued to grow it since then. 

Eric and I have known each other going back about ten years now. We originally met through Twitter, back when it was in its infancy, and Eric organized a filmmaker meetup group that brought a lot of folks together. We hit it off and stayed in touch, eventually creating a short film together in 2015 called Stranded, and as time went on we decided that it was time to take our aspirations to the next level and make them a reality. 

And which business goals does Woodpecker help you with?

We use Woodpecker for business development and contact outreach. A lot of getting a film produced is outreach to agents, managers, financiers, and more. 

In addition to outreach for projects in development, we use Woodpecker for press relations and influencer marketing. 

Lastly, for our film sales division, we use Woodpecker to reach out to distributors, set up pitch meetings, and follow up as the sales process progresses.

What problem does Woodpecker help you solve?

Woodpecker helps us track who we have reached out to and who requires a follow-up. In film, it’s never a no until it’s a no, so we are constantly trying to follow up and track who might still be interested. 

We’ve found that many people are just caught at the wrong times when they get an email and they aren’t ignoring us but they are busy and receive tons of emails every day. Woodpecker helps by sending out the follow-ups for us so we have more time to develop new projects and reach out to more business partners.

How were you dealing with it before?

We solved that problem in the past through a ton of spreadsheets with conditional formatting and manually sending follow up emails. It was a nightmare.

How do you personalize your emails? What custom snippets do you use?

We write all of our emails from scratch each time. However, we do personalize each one by using snippets, such as recent projects that we’re fond of, recent news articles that the recipient should be proud of, or how we might already know the contact from past projects. 

How do you get a contact base? And how many prospects do you usually have in a single campaign?

We keep our campaigns limited instead of blasting it out to a huge list of companies because with film, someone who produces comedy is not the same as those that produce horror. So we niche way down. 

We get our contacts through the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) which catalogs most of the companies and does a great job of tracking who works on what type of projects. We keep most of our campaigns to under 100 prospects at a time. After each campaign, if we want to continue that aspect of our business development, we’ll make some changes to improve on what we’ve learned. 

We also find prospects by keeping up with industry trade publications, and try to reach out to potential business collaborators anytime there is news that is relevant to the genres and projects we work on.

What value do you see in following up with prospects? What’s your following up strategy?

The follow up is the most important thing to our strategy and our business development. Our campaigns run around 6-7 emails total and most folks tend to reply after 5 or so follow-ups. It’s so critical that you follow up to ensure that you are getting proper responses.

What elements do you A/B test?

We do A/B tests with both the subject line and the content. Normally with us, it’s how we pitch our projects and how we describe the emotions and comparable films. We’ll vary our one-line pitch, known as a logline, as well as the length of the email. Some emails will be three lines while others go into more details about why we think the project is important. 

What are your highest open and reply rates?

We get near 100% open rates, which is unheard of really, but because of the follow up it leads to us getting those open rates. We have around 42% reply rates. Such response rates are really exciting as well because each response is a potential ally in our attempts at getting a project picked up and produced.

How long have you been using Woodpecker? Have you been using other tools before picking ours?

We came from Nutshell and Rebump, but have only been using Woodpecker for maybe two months. Woodpecker has been a game-changer for us in our business development and I don’t see us going to any new service.

What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

We’ve had 40+ professional allies, ranging from small boutique management companies to large film studios, reach out and respond positively to our latest feature film. 

Scripts can sell for millions, and to be able to reach people that can help us reach a sale like that has huge value for us.

If you were to pick one thing that you like the most about Woodpecker, what would it be?

The one thing I love the most about Woodpecker is that everything runs through your own email. Most apps that work like this have their own ecosystem that requires us to check in or operate in a Customer Management System that we don’t need, just to ensure we are paying attention to replies. With Woodpecker, it’s like magic when a campaign goes out and we start seeing the replies flood into our inbox without having to lift a finger.

***

Would you like to be featured like this, too? Let us know at blog@woodpecker.co.

Spoiler: no, it’s not.

I was thrilled when Tom Potanski, the founder and CEO of DevsData LLC, reached out to us, saying he’d love to write a case study for the Woodpecker blog. I was even more thrilled when I learned that the folks at DevsData use our tool not only for starting conversations that they hope will end in finding clients, but also for getting quality backlinks for their website to drive more traffic.

A while ago I wrote an article about link building email outreach, so I was keen on talking to one of our customers who uses Woodpecker in that exact scenario.

Here’s what Tom had to say about their lead generation strategy, most satisfying open & reply rates, and what the key to a successful link building outreach is for them.

About DevsData

DevsData LLC is a boutique software agency in the US with Google-level engineers and a vast network of senior expert contractors. The company was founded in 2016 by Tom Potanski, whose strong connection to the best programming talent and business decision-makers from around the globe gave him an edge in starting his own software consulting business.

They’ve been using Woodpecker for about 10 months now. Interested in what their approach to finding new clients and link building looks like? Keep reading.

First things first – who is DevsData? What do you guys do? What’s your company’s mission?

DevsData LLC is a software consulting agency in the US, with employees in both the US and Europe.

We focus on mobile & web apps, complex back-end systems, Big Data solutions, and Data Analysis. Our developers are particularly experienced at TypeScript/JavaScript, React, Vue, Node, Python, AWS, Google Flutter, and React Native. DevsData delivers a wide range of other tech services as well.

How did you start your company?

DevsData LLC started as a small startup project that I created in 2016.

Programming is my lifelong passion, but I have never coded just for the thrill of it. I’ve always been looking for a way to make an impact with my software. That is why I’ve decided to found my own company.

At DevsData LLC I consult with clients on turning over 60 years of research into business value. We’ve proven time and time again that applied software brings profits within different industries – such as construction, finance, the military, stock trading, or advertising.

Who are your ideal customers?

DevsData mainly targets corporate clients, as such companies usually have very well-specified requirements as to what type of software they need and what are their expectations. Thus, we are able to deliver them a customized solution, specifically tailored to their needs.

However, if a small or mid-size company reaches out to us with a project idea, we also eagerly follow such an opportunity.

What do you use Woodpecker for?

We mainly use Woodpecker to find leads/potential clients. We run multiple cold emailing campaigns at the same time in order to maximize the search results.

We’ve also found that Woodpecker is extremely useful in getting backlinks for our website.

What’s your secret for a successful link building outreach?

At DevsData we believe that a personal approach is key.

That is why each time we create an automated campaign, we make sure to customize it as much as possible with the available customization fields in Woodpecker.

Also, we categorize our recipients into narrow batches – that way we are able to personalize the outreach as much as possible, even though it is a cold, automated one. As a result, we get satisfying conversion rates.

We usually send a sequence of 3 emails.

In the opening email we say who we are (we keep it short) and how our message is relevant to the prospect. We always include a CTA at the end as well.

The first follow-up is somewhat similar to the opening email, and the second one is a “break-up email”.

How do you get a prospect base? And how many prospects do you usually have in a single campaign?

We get our prospect base from websites like clutch.co and toptal.com.

As mentioned above, we tend to send small campaigns as this allows for better customization. On average our campaigns have around 100 prospects. From time to time, we run bigger campaigns as well.

When it comes to segmenting out prospects, we experiment a lot. We categorize them e.g. by the size of their companies or their job titles.

What value do you see in following up with prospects? What’s your following up strategy?

Following up is a must! We’ve observed that actually a lot of prospects get back to us after the second or third follow up. This is due to the fact that these people are usually busy doing business and might have overlooked/ignored our first message. Thanks to follow-ups our emails appear again on top of their mailboxes and they decide to reply to us.

Regarding our follow up strategy, we experiment a lot and do not have one specified approach. Nevertheless, we always try to personalize the follow-ups as well.

Let’s talk about personalization – what custom snippets do you use?

We always make sure to include the person’s first and/or last name, and the company’s name. Those 3 snippets are a must in our campaigns.

When it comes to other custom snippets, we tend to use them when we want to include the topic of our campaign or mention where we have come across the prospect’s contact information.

What are your most satisfying results? (open and reply rates)

Our top results are almost 85% open rate for one of the campaigns (finding affiliates) and a 67% reply rate for another one (link building).

How long have you been using Woodpecker? If you’d been using other tools, why did you switch to Woodpecker?

It’s already been 10 months since we’ve started using Woodpecker. Before that and in the meantime, we’ve been experimenting with other tools (Gmass, Vocus.io, Rebump, Yesware), but each of them had some drawbacks/missing features that stopped us from using them.

Some of these tools did not allow for scheduling campings between specific hours; sent all emails at once, not in batches; offered only basic personalization fields; did not detect if a given prospect has already been contacted in another campaign, etc.

Woodpecker, on the other hand, allows for all of that and has a very intuitive UI, and that in the end determined why we decided to stay with Woodpecker.

What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

First of all, Woodpecker made it so easy for us to reach out to our potential clients. It is so fast to create a personalized campaign and get in touch with desired prospects. This saves us a lot of time, as before we’ve been sending out emails to each prospect individually.

What’s more, thanks to Woodpecker we can track the campaign’s success, analyze them, and see which approach worked, and which did not.

This allows us to improve our outreach so that the next time we can get even better open and response rates.

What do you like the most about Woodpecker?

We like that it is very intuitive. When we first started using it, we had no problems with understanding how it works, how to create a campaign, how to add custom snippets and prospects. Moreover, Woodpecker has all the features that we need. It is brilliant for small scale email campaigns.

If you’d like to find out how they combine various channels to get these outstanding results, what unique snippets they use and what their follow-up approach is based on – keep reading.

About We Are Team Rocket

We Are Team Rocket is a marketing automation agency that helps businesses to generate leads and expand their sales pipelines. They’ve been driving prospect conversations, meetings, briefs and opportunities on behalf of their clients since 2013.

They’re based in the UK with a second office in Sri Lanka.

1. Who is We Are Team Rocket? What do you guys do?
What’s your company’s mission?

We Are Team Rocket – a company by Edmeades & Simpson, is a growth marketing agency, specialising in B2B outbound marketing and social selling done with a human touch.

Clients come to us to automate their top of the funnel lead generation. They rely upon us to rocket leads directly into their inboxes. Plus, outsourcing lead-gen to a company like ours carries a lesser cost and risk than the alternative of an internal hire.

Custom data-lists, human data enrichment, hyper-segmentation, hyper-personalisation and creating messages that will deliver engagement and response are at the heart of all that we do. Ultimately it’s this ground-level data enrichment grind that fuels the success of the outreach activity that we craft and execute on behalf of our clients.

2. How did you start your company?

Back in 2013, I (Tom Simpson) and my co-founder Daniel Edmeades were both working at a leading UK promotional marketing agency (Hive IP). We’d both been there for a number of years progressing the ranks, running their new business development drive. It was at this juncture we decided to pitch our then-employer.

Our intent was to formulate our own standalone business ‘Edmeades & Simpson’ (later to become We Are Team Rocket) – so that we could, in theory, hand in our notice and embark on a journey to utilise the skills and knowledge we had acquired during our careers there to help fuel the growth of a portfolio of like-minded tech businesses and agencies.

Why would any sane employer be ok with losing their new business engine? Well, we mitigated the risk of our new joint venture by taking on our existing employer as our first retained client.

We promised to deliver the same KPI’s for them, whilst at the same time saving them in costs by not being internal heads on the payroll – a promise we up-held by continuing to drive them leads in our first year apart, equating to £3m in additions to their new business pipeline and £1m extra in sales.

7 years on, in 2020, our old employer and first client still find themselves on our retained roster – joined by a plethora of diverse B2B businesses that simply share the commonality of having ambitious growth plans.

3. Who are your ideal customers?

Our Ideal Customers are ambitious businesses looking to ramp their growth and automate their top of funnel lead inflow.

Our current roster is an eclectic mix of billion-pound Tech & FMCG businesses, high-growth startups, and long-stead agencies looking to revitalize their roster.

The sweet-spot for whom we can help the most are businesses with high ticket values (at least £5K+). This is where we deliver ROI in the upper echelons of positivity.

4. What do you use Woodpecker for? What kind of campaigns do you run for your clients?

We were early adopters of Woodpecker, switching over at the time from a different tool. Loving the usability and deliverability of the platform, we were quick to invest in a white-labeled version of Woodpecker so that we could have a central agency panel from which to execute all of our clients’ email campaigns in silos.

On behalf of our roster of clients, we ideate, strategise and compose B2B sequenced email campaigns – all of which are then executed via our white-labeled Woodpecker platform.

For each and every one of our clients, we tend to have two sequenced emails running simultaneously each month. One overarching campaign is sent to their entire custom-mined and verified prospect universe. It’s usually 5-8 parts long, running over the course of 3-4 months.

The second campaign is, then, conversely hyper-targeted and hyper-personalised. It takes advantage of human enriched segments of data our team has researched and mined, and combines that with the ability to use personalised custom snippets within the Woodpecker platform.

We find this dual campaign approach the optimum to feed a steady drip flow of leads from the overarching campaign, combined with quick-win results and maximum levels of engagement from the hyper-targeted campaigns.

5. How do you get a prospect base?
How many prospects do you usually have in a single campaign?

We have a large in-house data and research team, who ahead of each and every planned client email campaign: mines, cleanses, expands, enriches, segments and double-verifies the optimal prospect base to power that specific campaign.

Our overarching, long-running, sequenced campaigns tend to feature 1000-4000 prospects, whilst our enriched, hyper-personalised, hyper-targeted campaigns tend to run to 50-200 prospects.

6. How do you personalize your emails?
What custom snippets do you use?
Where do you get the prospect info from?

This is a section that I could end up writing a dissertation on, and in fact, for the past few months, I’ve been researching and penning a mammoth skyscraper content piece that is intended to be a guest blog post for Woodpecker. It’s about the merits of human data enrichment, hyper-segmentation, and hyper-personalisation via the use of custom snippets within B2B outbound emails. Outside of the bog-standard, use of {Company}, {JobRole} & {FirstName}.

Here are some examples of a few that have been working wonders for us and our roster of clients here at We Are Team Rocket.

🚀 Quoting {Locality} – Distance From Us To You
🚀 Quoting their {Competitor’s Name}
🚀 Quoting The Name Of Prospect’s {Last Blog Post}
🚀 Quoting The {Trending Word} On Their Profile
🚀 Quoting Their {Manager’s Name}

We’ll reveal the A/B test results these have generated in our upcoming guest post.

7. What do you A/B test?

A/B testing is a critical element of every method of outreach we employ.

Without constantly reviewing campaign analytics both on the fly and post-campaign, as well as A/B testing to the hilt, it would not be possible to continually improve and – most of all – stand out in the cluttered inboxes of this age.

We A/B test everything imaginable when it comes to B2B outreach, anything and everything that we believe could make a difference in improving deliverability: open rates, click rates, response rates, leads > meetings… You get where I’m going.

This could be from the likes of comparing and contrasting:
🚀 Email subject lines
🚀 The complexity of an email signature
🚀 The number of featured links in an email
🚀 CTAs
🚀 The combination and number of steps in a multi-channel outreach cadence

And the list goes on and on – as it should if your profession by trade is an outbound marketing specialist within a growth marketing agency.

8. What value do you see in following up with prospects?
What’s your following up strategy?

Creatively planning and penning a multi-part sequence email campaign that will inform, engage, surprise, delight and even amuse your prospect audience is absolutely critical in gaining positive lead responses, referrals and in turn, moving them through one’s sales cycle.

Our follow-up strategy here at We Are Team Rocket – honed over years of A/B testing and developed through aggregated learnings from sending millions of emails and testing all manner of outbound and inbound channels in combination – is one of a multi-touchpoint, multi-channel approach. All these methods work in unison to deliver the maximum levels of awareness, engagement, and response.

The follow-up strategy we devise, promote and tailor for our clients is one of drip-fed hyper-personalised sequenced emails, intermixed with social selling and audience rapport building (particularly via LinkedIn – ‘done for you’ manually with a human touch) and finished off with a re-targeting strategy to close the engaged but un-responded prospects.

9. What are your best campaign results?

When we’re talking about B2B COLD EMAIL OUTREACH and campaigns that include at least 200 prospects, the average open rates for our email campaigns tend to be between 45-60%, with average reply rates tending to be in the range of 4-8%. This is when talking across the board, across our clients, covering all types of industries.

In terms of standout best performers when it’s a B2B cold outreach email to a grouping of at least 200 prospects, our best performers are:

OPEN RATES
81.6% – In a hyper-personalised email campaign to 200+ leading UK beauty brands.

71% – In an email campaign to 200 Unilever Brand and Marketing Managers. This particular campaign led to 10 Face-To-Face Meetings being booked for our Tech client, with 10 different Unilever brand teams within a period of just a few weeks.

REPLY RATES
17.9% – In an email campaign to decision-makers in the petroleum space.

16.7% – Via a hyper-personalized email campaign to 1000+ UK business directors for an energy-saving comparison company.

If we were talking smaller, hyper-hyper-personalised mailers, to small groupings of 20-80 prospects, or to warm leads opposed to cold, then we have seen reply rates as high as 79%.

10. How long have you been using Woodpecker?

We have been using Woodpecker as our solus platform of choice to execute all of our internal and external client campaigns for just over 2 years.

Previous to that we had been using a different app for a number of years, but as the years passed it was clear they were unable to maintain the deliverability rates that we had become accustomed to.

After researching and trialing a number of different alternatives, Woodpecker came out a cut above the rest. Why? Because of the levels of deliverability and open rates that it could deliver when fed with quality data – thanks to its ability to mimic human-like sending. And it was this that we were looking for most in our platform of choice.

The added benefits were the platform’s usability in terms of the interface, its more advanced analytics dashboard and – most pleasing – that it could seamlessly integrate with a wide variety of email hosts.

11. What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

Woodpecker is an integral part of our stack. We have grown from a 5-man to 22-man team since we began using the app.

Knowing that we could rely upon Woodpecker for our email automation execution – so long as we were feeding in quality, verified and where ever possible custom enriched data – allowed us to put our focus into growing out a team of researchers, data-miners and B2B content writers.

We knew full well that by having standout content, double-verified and enriched data, Woodpecker would be the final piece to the puzzle in ensuring our campaigns stand to deliver and engage at the optimal levels.

12. What do you like the most about Woodpecker?

A difficult question to answer, as there are so many things we love about Woodpecker.

Ultimately, if it all boiled down to one word, it would be ‘Deliverability’. When it comes to deliverability, Woodpecker towers above its competitors.

We also love the way the platform is built and designed, Woodpecker’s immense Customer Success team and thought leadership advice blog that ensures a Growth Marketing/Lead Generation Agency like Rocket always gets the maximum out for the platform, across each of our clients and each of our campaigns.

To sum up

What are the ingredients of a successful outreach campaign? For We Are Team Rocket it means combining various channels to reach out to prospects – without losing the human touch in the process.

Extreme personalization, double-verified prospect data and hyper-targeted campaigns sent to the right prospects are the methods that work best for them. How about you – have you tried them yet?

Keep reading to get an insight into how they approach their prospective customers.

About Pearl Lemon Leads

Pearl Lemon Leads is a lead generation agency created in London with a diverse team of professionals working remotely from all over the world. It was founded in 2014 by Deepak Shukla.

Deepak’s experience in search optimization and his entrepreneurial spirit – as well as dissatisfaction with the results he was getting from an external agency – was what led him to start an agency of his own.

Could you tell us what you do at your company?

My name’s Deepak Shukla. I’m the founder of the Pearl Lemon Group – a lead generation and SEO agency based in London with a globally distributed team working to help our clients grow their companies.

How did you start your company?

I started my company from a spare room in my mum’s house, where I moved back at 30 years old, after a failed application to the British Special Forces.

I decided to start a lead generation agency. I haven’t planned on running that kind of business, but after hiring several agencies and freelancers I got fed up with the results I was getting, so I decided to try it myself.

My goals with building an agency were to prove to myself that I could do it, to build something that I was proud of, and to move out of my mum’s house.

What do you use Woodpecker for?

To manage our clients’ lead generation activities. We run cold email campaigns for several clients, but we also like to experiment and run various tests. So we use it for reaching out to prospects on:

• job boards,
• classified ad sites,
• LinkedIn (where we target Executives)
• directories (where we search for Agencies), and more.

The UI is superb and easy to use, and the stats board reports are excellent for keeping our clients up-to-date. They let us stay on track as well.

Who are your ideal customers?

Anyone who wants to have B2B appointments booked into their calendar in any Western English speaking market. We work with several app-developers who got some great results – one client just landed a 50k contract.

Furthermore, many of our clients are looking for Fortune 500 B2B leads. We even have some B2C lead gen agencies as clients.

How do you get a prospect base?

We use tools to create prospect lists. Typically, we build them with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and a variety of in-house data mining tools, and by looking at public databases such as AngelList and Crunchbase.

How many prospects do you usually have in a single email campaign?

We add no more than several hundred prospects in one email campaign. A bigger prospect base becomes difficult to truly personalize, as then you’re basically using the same message each time.

Of course, our prospect list depends on the total addressable market size of our client. We work with an SEO agency that doesn’t have strict criteria for choosing clients, so the numbers can rise. But generally, we like to keep it small.

Do you send follow-ups?

We always send follow-ups. 3 is our minimum, but sometimes we send up to 7 follow-up messages.

What about personalization?

It’s critical – most people don’t get this part right. The scaled email that reads exactly the same just doesn’t work. We have dedicated VAs that customize every email with custom snippets to make each of them unique.

What’s your best open and reply rate?

88% open rate with a 13% reply rate. This is for a cold email campaign and is something we’re really pleased with. And how did we make it happen? By using custom snippets.

What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

We approached many of our prospects and generated leads for ourselves and our clients with Woodpecker. A big chunk of them converted into paying customers.

What do you like most about Woodpecker?

That it’s built for agencies and has a beautiful UI. I enjoy using Woodpecker. No other tool has such a clear and explicit agency panel!

To sum up

What part of Pearl Lemon Leads’s strategy did you find the most interesting? I liked how they experiment in their campaigns and test what works best for them and each of their clients.

I also liked that Deepak stressed the importance of personalization: the ‘one email for every prospect’ approach just doesn’t work. Customizing their emails has helped them to build a steady flow of leads, and I’m sure they’ll keep getting great results if they stick to this approach.

About ProSales Connection

ProSales Connection is a B2B sales and marketing agency with a focus on lead generation. Their core customer base consists of B2B companies who offer a complex or technical solution.

ProSales Connection was born out of its founder’s growing dissatisfaction with the marketing agency’s poor results in generating high-quality leads for his sales team. Believing that this process could be improved, he decided to set up his own company.

People behind ProSales Connection believe that predictable prospecting can drive sales, and that’s why they put a lot of effort into manually building prospect lists. They are also advocates of advanced personalization, and always use custom snippets in their cold outreach emails.

They’re based in Houston, Texas.

Read the full interview to see the details of how Woodpecker helps ProSales Connection in their business journey.

Could you tell us what you do at your company?

Absolutely. ProSales Connection is a growth-driven sales & marketing agency. For the past 11 years, we’ve helped B2B companies, who offer a complex or technical solution, generate demand, build their sales pipeline, and meet with more of their ideal prospects — building a set of processes that creates predictable revenue growth.

How did you start your company?

ProSales Connection was launched after our founder and CEO became increasingly frustrated with the marketing agency’s ability to deliver real leads and sales meetings for his sales teams. He believed that it was possible for a focused marketing agency to help B2B companies generate real engagement with prospective clients through proven prospecting processes.

In 2009, he launched ProSales Connection with a mission to help businesses grow by connecting sales teams with qualified prospects. The business has grown and capabilities have expanded to now include Sales Development, Digital Marketing Outreach and Inbound Marketing programs.

What do you use Woodpecker for?

As a B2B Sales and Marketing agency, we offer a variety of inbound marketing and cold outreach programs to include cold email outreach, LinkedIn networking, and cold calling.

We use Woodpecker for cold email outreach to generate business for our clients and ourselves.

Who are your ideal customers?

Our ideal customers are B2B companies who offer a technical or complex solution. They typically are a technology-based solution like SaaS, IT Hardware, IT Solutions Providers & Managed Service Providers.

How do you get a prospect base?

We create our own. We use various lists sources. Some of my favorite include LinkedIn Sales Navigator, D&B Hoovers, and UpLead to find prospects. Each of our lists is hand-curated and verified to ensure the best quality. We never buy lists.

How many prospects do you usually have in a single email campaign?

It depends on the client. If the campaign is very specific and targeted or the message requires deep personalization, then we enroll as little as 15-20 prospects. On the other hand, some of our bigger campaigns have 800-1000 prospects.

However, we never enroll more than 250 in a single campaign, but rather segment our list to achieve better results.

Do you send follow-ups?

Yes, in each of our campaigns we send up to 6 follow-up emails in a seven-week cadence, one email per week.

What about personalization?

We highly personalize our campaigns. We always use snippets like {first name}, {title} and {company}, but also create custom ones, based on what we hope to achieve in a particular campaign. That is where 15 snippets provided by Woodpecker come in very handy.

What’s your best open and reply rate?

I must say, when we started using Woodpecker, we noticed much higher open and reply rates. Our best open rate was 83.3% with a 38.9% reply rate. That campaign was sent to 130 prospects over seven weeks. The client was a K12 software company, and our highly-targeted prospect list consisted of mid-level education industry professionals.

What have you gained by using Woodpecker?

Our cold email outreach strategy has improved a lot since we started using Woodpecker. The seamless automation Woodpecker provides allowed us to spend more time on creating personalized messages and hand-curated lists because we didn’t have to worry about technology.

What do you like most about Woodpecker?

What we like the most about Woodpecker is that it is so easy and convenient to use. We can set up our campaigns in less than 30 minutes. Monitoring the stats is super easy, and all the details are just a click away. Another thing that we like are helpful articles that explain everything in a simple and informative way. Our marketing team is a big fan of the Woodpecker blog.

What’s in it for you?

Thanks for your kind words, Dora! I’m glad you guys find Woodpecker super useful, and that you enjoy reading our blog.

I hope that the case of ProSales Connection gave you insight into how you can make your cold outreach process easier and faster. I definitely enjoyed the “no more than 250 prospects per campaign” piece of advice.

If you’d like to take Woodpecker for a test ride, click on the button below and try it for free.