How Key Outreach Scaled Lead Generation and 3x Their ARR Using Smartlead

Key Highlights

• 3X ARR with Smartlead in 2.5 years
• 2X increase in meetings booked per client.
• >5% positive response rates for influencer clients.
• Tripling their business with the same team of eight SDRs.
• Over 4 million emails are sent every month.

Company Overview

David Borman, head of Vice President of Operations at Key Outreach, is an outsourced lead generation firm specializing in influencer marketing, SaaS, and agency services. They work with enterprise clients generating over $50M in annual revenue and small to medium-sized businesses, helping them generate high-quality leads and book sales meetings.

With a team of eight dedicated Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), Key Outreach uses a variety of outbound strategies, with cold email being their most profitable method for securing meetings and driving business growth. Over the years, the company has refined its processes to ensure maximum efficiency, leveraging advanced tools and automating key functions to scale its operations.

The Challenge

Before integrating Smartlead into their outbound strategy, Key Outreach faced several challenges in their lead generation process:

Scalability Issues 

Managing multiple client accounts and campaigns without a cohesive system.

Deliverability Concerns 

Struggling to ensure emails reached decision-makers primary inboxes amidst increasing spam filters and restrictions.

Time-Consuming Processes 

Managing responses, lead categorization, and workflows manually drained time and resources.

Lack of Flexibility 

Existing tools did not offer the flexibility to automate key tasks or tailor campaigns to specific client needs.

With these challenges, Key Outreach needed a platform to automate manual tasks, improve email deliverability, and scale operations without increasing team size.

Why Smartlead?

After trying multiple cold email platforms in the market in the last 5 years, they transitioned to Smartlead. The decision was driven by Smartlead’s ability to address their challenges and provide flexibility, automation, and superior customer support.

“The cold email industry is changing rapidly, and I think tools like Smartlead and the community at Smartlead are imperative for us to stay up to date.”

Key Reasons for Choosing Smartlead

Master Inbox & Client Access 

Allowed Key Outreach to easily manage multiple accounts and offer clients real-time transparency into campaign progress.

Superior Deliverability 

SmartDelivery and custom email servers ensured high inbox placement rates, overcoming deliverability issues.

API Flexibility 

Enabled deep customization, automating processes like lead categorization and response handling.

Scalable Automation 

Features like subsequences allowed Key Outreach to automate follow-ups and improve the workflow for SDRs.

The Solution: Scaling Lead Generation with Smartlead

Key Outreach integrated Smartlead into all their lead generation campaigns, leveraging the following features:

• Custom APIs to integrate their lead generation and CRM systems, improving reporting and automating key tasks.
• Master Inbox to streamline inbox management, giving SDRs a clearer view of client accounts and responses.
• SmartDelivery to test email copy and ensure inbox placement, improving email deliverability.
• SmartServers, which they recently started using, has already shown an increase in positive reply rates.
• Lead Categorization API to automate the categorization of positive and negative replies, allowing SDRs to focus on high-quality leads.

“The client access features have provided excellent visibility for our clients as they check everything when needed, and being able to white label gives Key Outreach an elevated view.”

Results Achieved

Since adopting Smartlead, Key Outreach has seen a significant increase in efficiency, meeting bookings, and overall business growth:

• Key Outeach achieved 3X in ARR since they started using Smartlead.
• 2X increase in meetings booked per client – From 1-2 demos per week to 3-4 demos per week.
• >5% positive response rates for influencer clients using targeted campaigns, especially for clients traveling and engaging with local prospects.
• Improved workflow efficiency – Tripling their business with the same team of eight SDRs.
• Over 4 million emails are sent monthly, focusing on reply rates and positive reply rates as the key success metric.
• Improve client trust with real-time visibility into lead handling and responses.

Things To Look Forward In Smartlead

While Smartlead has significantly improved Key Outreach’s lead-generation efforts, David is looking forward to a few more features from Smartlead.

A feature allowing Key Outreach to track positive and negative replies by email account for better decision-making during campaign optimization.

Final Thoughts

With Smartlead, Key Outreach has successfully scaled its operations and 3X its ARR and doubled the number of meetings booked per client. By automating key processes and ensuring top-tier deliverability, they have consistently exceeded client expectations and grown their business remarkably.

David Borman, VP of Operations at Key Outreach, says: "Smartlead has been instrumental in scaling our lead generation efforts. API integration has helped us automate our workflows seamlessly. The customer service is stellar, and the community provides invaluable support to keep us ahead of the game."

By using Smartlead’s features like SmartDelivery, Master Inbox, and API integrations, Key Outreach continues to drive success for its clients in highly competitive industries.

Here's your chance to do the same. Try our 14-day free trial and see how it transforms your deliverability.