How Smartlead Transformed Bharatt Arorah’s Cold Email Lead Generation

Key Highlights

• 14.3% reply rate and a 37.67% positive reply rate (25-30 high-quality positive replies) from a single campaign.
• Booked calls with three top healthcare SaaS businesses in the US for a client with each lead worth around $20,000.

This case study delves into how Bharatt leveraged Smartlead’s powerful features to streamline his workflow, boost email deliverability, and scale his business operations to get the above results.

About Bharatt Arorah

Bharrat Arora, a lead generation expert, founded Claygen, a specialized agency helping B2B and SaaS businesses establish and manage cold email systems. Operating across the US, UK, Europe, and Australia.

Claygen assists businesses—ranging from small-scale startups to enterprise-level companies such as marketing agencies, SaaS platforms, recruitment firms, and software companies—create hyper-relevant outreach strategies.

His unique approach focuses on hyper-personalization, ensuring that his cold emails feel like they’re coming from a real person, even when they’re sent at scale. 

Three years ago, Bharrat explored cold email as a lead generation channel when he was a freelancer. What began as a solution for his agency's growth transformed into a core offering for his clients. Today, Claygen leverages cutting-edge technology like Clay, intent-based targeting, and AI-driven personalization to craft campaigns that deliver results in a competitive cold email landscape.

Despite his expertise, Bharatt encountered numerous roadblocks in his journey to grow his business. Managing multiple clients, optimizing email deliverability, and maintaining high reply rates became serious pain points. That was until he discovered Smartlead—a cold email platform designed to overcome these very challenges.

The Challenges Before Using Smartlead

Deliverability Drops 

Initially, Bharatt used a competitor platform to run his cold email sequences. 

For the first few months, things were smooth, with email open rates and reply rates showing promise. However, as time progressed, email deliverability began to decline. 

Despite optimizing his email copy and refining his strategy, more and more emails landed in spam folders. This led to a significant dip in the effectiveness of his campaigns. 

As Bharatt notes, "Deliverability is the cornerstone of cold email outreach. You could have the best email copy in the world, but if no one is seeing it, it’s useless."

Scaling Personalization While Managing Multiple Clients 

Managing multiple clients simultaneously was another massive hurdle. 

Bharatt’s cold email outreach often involved tailoring each message to the individual lead, which was a time-consuming process. 

While competitor platforms offered automation, they either compromised on the personalization aspect or were unable to handle multiple client accounts effectively. 

Bharatt needed a solution that could help him scale his outreach efforts without sacrificing personalization—a crucial component of his approach.

Lack of Client Transparency and Reporting 

Clients increasingly wanted transparency and real-time access to their campaign performance, something the tools Bharatt used did not fully support. 

Manually updating clients or creating reports was eating into his time and efficiency. For someone managing multiple clients, juggling between campaigns while keeping them in the loop was a tedious and time-consuming process.

Why Bharatt Chose Smartlead

Bharatt was introduced to Smartlead by peers in the cold email outreach community, and it quickly became clear that the platform offered unique solutions to his challenges.

Why Smartlead? Key Features That Made the Difference

API Access

Smartlead’s advanced API functionality provided unparalleled flexibility, allowing Claygen to integrate with existing systems and build custom workflows tailored to each client’s needs.

Ease of Us and High Deliverability

Smartlead’s ability to manage multiple client accounts from a single dashboard was a game-changer for him. Additionally, its reputation for consistently high deliverability rates caught his attention.

SmartDelivery

What truly set Smartlead apart, however, were its SmartDelivery feature, white-label client portals, and automation capabilities—all of which played a pivotal role in helping Bharatt scale his operations. 

These tools significantly boosted email deliverability by identifying optimal inboxes and reducing the risk of spam, ensuring that campaigns reached their intended audience.

Customer Support

Bharrat praised Smartlead’s responsive support team, noting how quick resolutions allowed campaigns to run smoothly without interruptions.

After experimenting with the platform, Bharatt realized Smartlead was the missing piece he needed to transform his workflow and improve client satisfaction. He has been using Smartlead for around 2.5 years now and hasn't looked back.

The Solution: How Smartlead Helped Transform Bharatt’s Workflow

Improved Deliverability Through SmartDelivery 

One of the core challenges Bharatt faced was ensuring high deliverability for his cold email campaigns. Smartlead’s SmartDelivery feature became the cornerstone of his outreach efforts. This feature enabled Bharatt to quickly test deliverability across multiple inboxes, allowing him to identify potential issues before running full-scale campaigns. It also helped him optimize sending times, ensuring that his emails reached his prospects' inboxes at optimal hours.

“SmartDelivery... gets the process a lot more smoother and aligned. I can just complete the tests of all the inboxes and I can get the results in like a couple hours, couple minutes.” - Bharatt mentioned. 

Efficient Client Management with Multiple Account Support 

Smartlead's multi-account management system allowed Bharatt to oversee several client campaigns simultaneously without needing to switch between different platforms or logins. With the ability to manage multiple client domains and inboxes from a single dashboard, Bharatt could streamline his workflow and stay on top of all his campaigns with ease.

This not only saved time but also allowed Bharatt to handle more clients and increase his revenue potential without compromising the quality of his work. The platform’s intuitive interface made it easy to switch between clients, set up new campaigns, and monitor progress all in one place.

In Bharatt’s own words, “I really love the feature where you can actually give client accesses to your clients. So it just kind of manages the entire thing way better than... the other ones in the industry. On just one single account you can actually have multiple clients associated and they can have their own view.”

White-Label Client Portals for Transparency 

To enhance client transparency and reduce the time spent on manual reporting, Smartlead’s white-label client portals were a game-changer for Bharatt. This feature enabled him to provide clients with real-time access to their campaign data, allowing them to monitor performance without needing to request frequent updates.

Personalization at Scale with Automation

A significant advantage of Smartlead was its ability to combine automation with personalization. 

While other tools tended to sacrifice one for the other, Smartlead allowed Bharatt to set up campaigns that maintained a personal touch even when sent at scale.

Smartlead’s dynamic variables and easy-to-use interface enabled Bharatt to craft personalized email sequences while automating the tedious process of sending follow-ups, managing replies, and moving leads through the sales funnel. This balance between automation and personalization was key to Bharatt’s success, as it allowed him to replicate the quality of manual outreach on a larger scale.

Game-Changing Campaign Successes

Case 1: A 14.3% Reply Rate Campaign

One of Claygen’s standout campaigns was executed three months ago. For this campaign:

• 2,000 emails were sent to a custom-scraped list.
• Leads were enriched using multiple solutions and imported into Clay for targeting.
• The campaign achieved a 14.3% reply rate and a 37.67% positive reply rate (25-30 high-quality positive replies).

This campaign was a turning point for the client, delivering high-quality leads and significantly boosting their sales pipeline.

Case 2: Success in Healthcare SaaS

Claygen also achieved remarkable results for a SaaS healthcare client with a $20,000 ticket size. Using Smartlead, they:

• Booked calls with three top healthcare businesses in the US.
• Created a scalable system for the client, ensuring repeatable success in their outreach efforts.

Other Results: Measurable Impact on Bharatt’s Business

Thanks to Smartlead, Bharatt saw a significant improvement in his overall outreach performance. Some of the most notable results included:

• Revenue Growth: Bharatt experienced an increase in revenue as a direct result of Smartlead’s platform. With improved deliverability, higher open and reply rates, and the ability to take on more clients, Bharatt’s revenue saw a considerable boost.
• Increased Efficiency: The time saved through Smartlead’s automation features and multi-account management allowed Bharatt to focus on client acquisition and refining his outreach strategies, rather than spending hours managing campaigns.
• Enhanced Client Satisfaction: The addition of white-label client portals helped Bharatt impress his clients, giving them access to real-time campaign data and increasing overall client satisfaction.

Roadmap Ahead: What’s Next for Bharatt

While Bharatt is pleased with Smartlead’s current offerings, he sees potential for even more efficiency through the use of Smartlead’s API. He hopes to see more features become accessible for non-technical users, enabling him to further automate parts of his workflow and scale even faster.

Conclusion: Ready to Scale Your Cold Email Outreach?

Bharatt’s story demonstrates the power of the right tool in overcoming the challenges of cold email outreach. By leveraging Smartlead’s unique features—such as improved deliverability, client access and management, automation, and transparency—Bharatt was able to significantly scale his operations while delivering high-quality results to his clients.

If you’re ready to take your email outreach to the next level, at Smartlead we offer a 14-day free trial that will give you a firsthand look at how it can transform your business. 

Whether you’re an agency, an independent contractor, or a business looking to grow your lead generation efforts, Smartlead can help you achieve better results, faster.