Acquisition project | Smartlead | GX-21
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Acquisition project | Smartlead | GX-21

Elevator Pitch πŸ’¬


πŸ“ŒIf you’re generating leads through cold email outreach, Smartlead makes your emails land in the inbox, but not spam with the best deliverability infrastructure in the industry. With features like unlimited warmups, unlimited mailboxes, and powerful APIs, we automate most tasks and many more, saving you time and helping you make more money.

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Understand your Product 🧰


​Product : Smartlead is a cold email outreach automation tool which helps you emails land in inbox, instead of spam. It has been built on the powerful infrastructure to ensure deliverability being the core metric.

It is a comprehensive email outreach platform that converts cold emails into consistent revenue. It scales your outreach with unlimited mailboxes, unlimited warmups, a limitless multi-channel infrastructure, and a unified inbox to handle your entire revenue cycle in one place. Trusted by over 31,000+ businesses, Smartlead excels in email deliverability, lead generation, cold email automation, and sales outreach. It is a powerful tool for businesses aiming to flood their pipelines with high-quality leads.

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It helps you to automate your entire outbound infrastructure using the most powerful cold email API and automation infrastructure in the market. Without lifting a finger, you can automate your entire campaign's flow, create campaigns, adjust settings, and push/pull data between software using our powerful API and webhooks infrastructure.


With Smartlead's robust API and webhooks infrastructure, you can automate campaign creation and management, add thousands of mailboxes in seconds, drip feed leads to live campaigns, and manage leads, automation, and meeting bookings via the API.

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Screenshot 2024-08-15 at 11.26.15β€―AM.png


Problem it is solving :

When we do outreach for lead generation or for any purpose that relates to emailing at scales, we work on large volumes and these large volumes can be sent only via automations. The ESPs ( Email services providers ) have become intelligent enough to understand the automations, trigger them and mark them as spam, resulting a fatal hit on deliverability. Smartlead has understood the art and science behind it and built a powerful infra for cold email outreach at scale with automation, premium deliverability being the core metric.

Pain Points :

Emails not hitting inbox landing in spam
Unable to send emails at scale - bulk volumes
Dependency on 3rd party tools to warmup mailboxes
Companies charging on the mailbox basis
Cannot run multiple campaigns
Unable to track huge volumes of responses/ replies from campaigns
Can't integrate with other tools
Unable to manage clients efficiently
Consumption of lot of time because of repeated tasks / No automation.
Cannot promote personal brand
Using multiple tools for the end to end outreach


Features :

Unlimited Mailboxes - You can connect unlimited mailboxes under one license.
Unlimited Warmups - A feature which will help you build reputation before you start cold email outreach with the mailbox.
Unlimited Users - On a Subscription, unlimited users can make use of the platform
Dynamic IP rotation - Will help you make a request to the ESPs with a reputed IP domain.
Master Inbox - A single place to get all the responses from 100's of email accounts.
Email follow up Automation - Unlimited email followups can be added to the campaigns
Powerful and Robust APIs - Best in the industry, powerful and robust APIs for communications
Client Management - Extensive features for client management
AI Enabled automations - Copies can be generated via GPT-4 and so on
Sentiment Analysis - AI categorises the response based on the sentiments of the replies received.
White Labelling - White labelling helps in the personal brand visibility for companies to their clients.
Subsequences - Automate responses based on the scenarios or replies from your leads

Understanding Core Value Proposition πŸ’₯


​Smartlead empowers businesses to maximise their cold email outreach with unmatched email deliverability, automation and scalability. We help your emails land in inbox, but not spam and provide features that streamline your process, saves you time and helps in driving more revenue. With Smartlead, you get competitive edge with features like unlimited mailboxes, Powerful and robust APIs, AI enabled operations helps you optimise and make you email outreach much more efficient.

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Understanding the Users πŸ‘©β€πŸ‘©β€πŸ‘§β€πŸ‘¦


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Customer Name

Subscribed Plan

Tenure

How they got to know smartlead

Business type

Things they like about smartlead

Things need that need improvement

Over all feedback

Mohan Muthoo

Custom_150k

1 year

Linkedin

Lead gen agency - 9 Client

Mobile app

Subsquences

Auto ESP Matching

Improved deliverability

1. Latency in subsequences - the subsequence messages are getting queued for a long time which is impacting the business, grave concern at the moment 2. Mobile App - Mobile app doesn't have a template feature, its lot of time taking to compose emails especially replies. 3.Bounce in Campaigns - If the leads are getting bounced in the campaigns, they want to double verify. 4. Spintax Integration - Need an inbuilt spintax feature 5. Default campaign settings - Especially for agencies he mentioned that they are a default settings they follow, whenever he starts a new campaign, he wants these settings to be automatically applied OR he should be able to upload the setting for multiple campaigns in bulk. 6. Addition of new columns - In the mid of the campaign, if he wants to introduce any new variables, he has to redo the entire campaign process-so need a way to add new columns in the mid of the campaign. 7. Regarding the new bounce threshold feature - Once the campaign is stopped what are the actions we can take post that - like do we suggest any? 8. Deliverability Test - Need something to understand the email placement in the inbox

1. Overall experience is good and smartlead is doing a great job.He suggested that if smartlead can increase the customer experience - he is ready to pay more and also mentioned there are good chunk of users who are ready to pay more

Smit

Pro_User

Recently

From his past company

Lead gen agency

Customer Support

Realtime Inbox

APIs

AI categorisation

A/B Variations

1. Mobile app - At the moment, can't categorise the lead without opening the lead, need an option to categorise, when the email body is opened.
2. Not available on zapier - he can't find smartlead on Zapier.

Over all feedback is good, he was an instantly user and he switched to smartlead and appearantly he is advocating a lot of other people to switch to smatlead because of the UI we have.

Dan hunter

Pro_User

6 months

Through Founder, shifted from Competitor ( mailshake )

Recruitment Agency

Hubspot integration

Unlimited Mailboxes

1. Filters for Campaings and Lead s- requests ability to search and delete old, inactive leads that haven't been contacted in months.
2. Filters: adding time-based filters to identify leads with no activity for specific durations, for re-engagement or deletion
3. Apollo API Intergration : The apollo API integrations are not that great but, hubspot is great

Overall feedback is nice, he changed from mailshake to smartlead

Omar

Pro_User

6 months

Youtube

Lead agency - 1 client

It works

Master inbox

Community

Working on building things

1. Mobile App : The user was unable to send replies and the app is little slow, and he is not recieving any notifications
2. Asthetics : The dashboard is kinda stale at the moment, the aesthetics can be improved

Overall feedback is nice, he asked for better analytics and email inbox placement feature - i told they are already in progress. He suggested we can work on the aesthetics of the platform.

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Understanding your ICP πŸ‘€


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Influencers

Blockers

Decison Makers

Users

To make more money / Revenue

Learning curve

Founders

Sales teams

To save time / Efficient Ops

Adoption to a new solution

CEOs

Individual lead gen

To save money / Commercially viable

Changing the Tech stack

Sales heads

SDRs

Better Email deliverability

Technical Setup

VPs

HRs

Automation of tasks

Cost

Marketing Heads

Marketing Teams

Personalisation & Customisation

Unsure of impact on deliverability

Owners


Comprehensive Analytics

Legal & other complainces

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Integrations with other tools

Other Dependencies



Scalibility

Alignment of teams



Innovation and Tech advancement / AI enabled

Limited services



WOM, Good reputation




Continuous improvement and Keeping up with changing trends




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B2B Table:

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Criteria

Lead Generation Agencies

Recruiting Companies

B2B SaaS companies

Digital Marketing Agencies

Startups

Company Size

1-10

1-25

1-100

1-225

1-30

Industry Domain

Business

Recruiting / Staffing

Cloud Based

Advertising

Information Technology

Decision Maker

Founder / Owner / CEOs

Founder / CEO / Head of Marketing

Head of Sales / Head of growth

CEO / Founder / Head of Marketing

CEO / Head of Sales / BD

Frequency of use case

High

Medium

High

Medium

Low

Products used in workplace

Contact providers, CRM, Lead verification tools, cold email outreach tools, Automation builders, Marketing Tools..etc

ATS, Cold Email outreach tools, CRM, Job post platforms and many more

Sales Automation & Enablement tools, Email outreach tools, Analytics and Automation tools etc.

Email Marketing Tools, Cold email outreach tools, SEO tools, Marketing Analytics tools, Content Tools and many more.

Cold email outreach tools, Time & Project management tools, Finance tools etc

Conversion Time

High

Medium

Low

Medium

Low

Growth of company

High

Medium

Medium

Medium

High

Motivation

Revenue, Growth and portifolio expansion etc

Sourcing Good talent, rentention etc

Revenue, growth, best service, Enterprise Clients etc

Revenue, Market capture, More clients etc

Growth, Revenue, Brand Visibility etc

Tools Utilized in workspace

Clay, Apollo.io, Zerobounce, Make, Leadmagic, Sendrush, Zapier, Hubspot, bull horn,smartlead, Maildoso

Darwin box, linkedin navigator, Leadsquared, Zoom, Gmeet,Razorpay

Zoho, Salesforce, Clickup, Notion,Zendesk,Marketo

Mailchimp, Semrush,Google Analytics, Payu etc,

Trello, Notion, slack, Hubspot, Linear, Stripe

Decision Time

High

Medium

Medium

High

Low

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ICP prioritization table

Criteria

Lead generation Agency

Recruitment Comapny

B2B SaaS

Digital Marketing Agencies

Startups

Adoption Curve

High

Medium

Medium

High

Medium

Appetite to Pay

High

Medium

High

High

Low

Frequency of Use Case

High

Medium

Medium

Medium

Medium

Distribution Potential

High

Low

Low

Low

High

TAM

Medium

Low

Medium

Medium

High

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Understand Market 🌏


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Factors

Instantly

Lemlist

What is the core problem being solved by them?

Outreach at Scale

Outreach at Scale

What are the products/features/services being offered?

Outreach, Lead database, Deliverability,CRM, Website Visitors,Email Accounts, Verification

Lead database, email finder and verifier,Linkedin Voice message, warmup booster,Inobx rotation, chrome extension,Warmup booster

Who are the users?

Leaed gen agencies, Digital marketing agencies, Recruiting firms, SaaS companies, Startups etc

Leaed gen agencies, Digital marketing agencies, Recruiting firms, SaaS companies, Startups etc

What channels do they use?

Email Marketing, SEO, Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, Affiliate, Social Media Marketing, Community engagement, Co-branding

Email Marketing, SEO, Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, Affiliate, Social Media Marketing, Community engagement, Co-branding

What pricing model do they operate on?

Growth - 30USD / Month
Hyper Growth-77.6USD/Month

Light Speed -286.3USD/Month

Enterprise - Custom

Pro - 69USD/ Month

Multichannel - 99USD/Month

Outreach - 159USD/Month

Brand Positioning

As a cold email outreach software with other verticels


UX Evaluation

Good

Okay

What is your product’s Right to Win?

Deliverability, Pricing, Customer support, Best in the industry APIs

Deliverability, pricing , customer support, Best in the industry APIs

What can you learn from them?

Website design, User interface

Social Proofing on brands level.


As per the research Smartlead and Instantly have been leading the industry in the cold email outreach. Both the companies have been doing well. But Smartlead has an edge over Instantly. Instantly has captured the market who just want to run a cold email outreach, have the data ready on the platform and easy to use. Instantly or other tools have focused more on the breadth of the product by adding lot of verticals.

On the other hand, Smartlead supports bigger use cases like Automations for agencies, Complicated workflows and Complex APIs. Anyone doing the cold email outreach at scale and with a tech stack preferably uses Smartlead for outreach. Smartlead has been focusing only on depth of the product. Deliverability being the core metric, Smartlead focused only working this particular aspect as this is one unpredictable aspect of the outreach process.


The below is total market for cold email outreach tool across the world and SAM, SOM are assumed.

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TAM - Total Companies in the world in 2023 = 359 Million (from statista)
AOV of 360 USD per year = 360*359 = 129.24 Billion

SAM - Assuming 30% of the business from the TAM

359*30% = 107.7 Million

AOV of 360 USD per year = 360*107.7 = 38.772 Billion

SOM - Assuming 5% of the SAM

107.7*5% = 5.385 Million

AOV of 360 USD per year = 360*5.385 = 1.94 Billion

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Let's Understand the current Traffic from Sources like Similar Web with other providers in the market so that we can assume the market share which is SAM



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Total traffic and Engagement


Screenshot 2024-08-17 at 8.58.06β€―AM.png


Designing Acquisition Channel πŸͺ‚

The below is the Channel analysis.

Ideal scenarios goes like this:

Cost : Low
Flexibility : High
Effort : Low
Speed : High
Scale : High

If any channel has 2 or more than 2 of the above scenarios, they are a goof fit for designing our acquisition channels.

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Channel Name

Cost

Flexibility

Effort

Speed

Scale

Organic

Low / Medium

High

High

Low / Medium

High

Paid Ads

Medium

High

Medium

High

Medium / High

Referral Program

Medium

Moderate

Medium

Low / Medium

High

Product Integration

High

High

Medium

Low

High

Content Loops

Low / Medium

High

High

Low / Medium

High

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Detailing your Acquisition Channel πŸ› οΈ

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Organic Channel


Type of search

Keyword

Search volume (avg monthly)

SEO Difficulty

Cost

per click

Paid Difficulty

Use case

Cold email outreach

320

High - 55

23.25 USD

42 - High

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Send unlimited emails

50

High - 52

31.16 USD

44 - High

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Unlimited email warmups

20

Easy - 17

0.23 USD

1 - Easy

Competitor

Smarlead vs Instantly

90

Easy - 11

10.62 USD

26 - Easy


Instantly free trial signup

0

Easy - 4

0.00 USD

1 - Easy

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Instantly reviews

110

Easy - 9

6.50 USD

8 - Easy

Your product

Smartlead trial account

0

Easy - 12

0.00 USD

1 - Easy


Smartlead reviews

10

Easy - 29

0.00 USD

36 - High

Your brand name

Smartlead

2400

Easy - 23

3.29 USD

19 - Easy

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Smartlead Pricing

90

Easy - 16

1.83 USD

18 - Easy

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Smartlead API

90

Easy - 8

4.75 USD

6 - Easy

Screenshot 2024-08-17 at 3.32.54β€―PM.png

Article to increase the "Unlimited email warmups" - Article name - Email warmup


Article πŸ’¬

The Importance of Email Warmup: A Key to Successful Email Outreach

In the world of email marketing and cold outreach, ensuring that your emails reach the recipient's inbox rather than getting lost in the spam folder is critical. One of the most effective strategies to achieve this is email warmup. But what exactly is email warmup, and why is it so important?

What is Email Warmup?

Email warmup is the process of gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from a new or inactive email address to build a positive reputation with email service providers (ESPs). This process helps establish your email address as a trusted sender, making it more likely that your emails will land in the recipient's inbox rather than being flagged as spam.

Why is Email Warmup Important?

  1. Improves Deliverability:
    • ESPs closely monitor the sending behavior of email addresses. If you start sending a large volume of emails from a new or dormant account, it raises red flags, leading to a higher chance of your emails being marked as spam. Warmup helps build a positive sending reputation, significantly improving your chances of landing in the inbox.
  2. Protects Your Domain Reputation:
    • Your domain’s reputation is crucial for the long-term success of your email campaigns. A poor reputation can result in your emails being blocked or filtered out by ESPs. By warming up your email address, you ensure that your domain maintains a good standing, which is essential for ongoing email outreach efforts.
  3. Avoids Blacklisting:
    • Sending too many emails too quickly from a new address can trigger spam filters, leading to your domain or IP being blacklisted. Once blacklisted, it's challenging to regain credibility. Email warmup prevents this by ensuring a gradual increase in sending volume, reducing the risk of being blacklisted.
  4. Builds Trust with ESPs:
    • Trust is earned over time. As you gradually increase your sending volume during the warmup process, ESPs begin to recognize your email address as legitimate. This trust is vital for the successful delivery of your emails in the long term.
  5. Enhances Engagement Rates:
    • By avoiding the spam folder, your emails are more likely to be opened and engaged with by recipients. Higher engagement rates further boost your sender reputation, creating a positive feedback loop that benefits all your future email campaigns.

Conclusion

Email warmup is not just a recommended practice; it’s a crucial step in any successful email marketing or cold outreach strategy. By taking the time to properly warm up your email address, you ensure higher deliverability, protect your domain reputation, and ultimately achieve better results from your email campaigns. In a competitive digital landscape, where inbox placement can make or break a campaign, email warmup is a step you can’t afford to skip.

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Content Loop πŸ’«

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The Basics πŸ˜€

Hook : "Best cold email template" Competition wins you special access to upcoming features and rewards too.

Creator : The users are the creators of the "Best cold email template"

Distributor : The users will be distributing this on their Communities and socials to get the maximum possible applause wins.

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Designing the Competition πŸ˜ƒ

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Aim : To increase the brand visibility for Smartlead, drive more traffic to Smartlead and user engagement and attract more number of users

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Duration of the Competition : 4 months


Landing Page : Landing page to submit the "Best Email Template".

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Rewards and Incentives : The winners will get to access the new features and other incentives on their current subscription or new subscription.

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Communication and Marketing : Smartlead will be using its socials, Communities, News letters to communicate this competition with different creatives. Weekly communication to be set on socials of smartlead and Communities.


Hashtag to be used while posting : #SmartleadTemplates


Winning Criteria :
1. The team decides the best templates and gives them early access for new and premium features if they are existing users.
2. If they are new registrations, they get to access the platform for free for 1 month PRO Plan.
3. The post with highest number of reactions in the community will get the platform currency - Email verification credits.
4. If they are new users, then they have to register to get the 3rd points

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Rules :

  1. The content should be original and should be submitted within the duration of the time.
  2. The content after submission should be shared on their socials and our community
  3. The final decision rests with the internal team.


Process :


Step 1 : The user creates the "Best email template" Submits on the landing page.

Step 2 : Once submitted they have to share it on the their social tagging smartlead and with #SmartleadTemplate.

Step 3 : Along with their new post a link for new submissions will be available so that new traffic is diverted to the website and this loop continues.

A Simple Workflow :

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