Timing is everything in sales, but knowing the right moment to reach out can be a difficult task. 

Sales teams often miss opportunities simply because they aren’t able to pinpoint when prospects are most likely to engage. 

Add to that the overwhelming task of managing manual cold email campaigns, ensuring deliverability, and avoiding the dreaded spam folder—it’s a challenge every sales leader knows all too well.

That’s where Hugo Millington-Drake, CEO and co-founder of Trigify, comes in. Trigify is a SaaS platform that helps businesses identify key sales triggers to engage prospects at the right moment. 

Despite Trigify’s ability to help sales teams identify key moments to engage with prospects, Hugo’s team still encountered the same outreach hurdles many others face: manual cold emailing, deliverability issues, and the ongoing struggle to avoid spam folders. 

That’s when they turned to Smartlead to simplify and scale their email outreach.

Let’s dive into their journey to learn more. 

About Trigify and Hugo Millington Drake

Trigify is a cutting-edge SaaS platform focused on identifying sales triggers, co-founded by Hugo Millington-Drake, who serves as the company's CEO as well.

Trigify helps businesses pinpoint the best times to reach out to potential leads by tracking market events that could signal ideal engagement opportunities.

The platform covers both traditional and innovative triggers. 

On the conventional side, it tracks indicators like job postings and company news. What truly sets Trigify apart, however, is its social signals feature. Leveraging LinkedIn engagement, this feature analyzes the types of posts and content that users interact with, building detailed profiles that help sales teams reach out with greater precision.

Hugo and his team didn’t start in the SaaS world right away. 

Trigify originally launched as an agency, specializing in custom workflows for individual clients. However, the team eventually transitioned into a full SaaS model, serving a wider array of businesses.

Trigify’s core clientele has historically included sales teams from software startups and recruitment firms, usually ranging from solo operators to teams of up to 50 people. However, with the introduction of social signals, Trigify has also found value in marketing teams. By tracking engagement across social media, the platform helps clients attribute engagement to conversions like website visits or demo requests.

Hugo highlights the pivotal role of Smartlead as a key tool for both Trigify’s agency and SaaS operations. 

Most of Trigify’s customers also use Smartlead, making the platforms highly interconnected, particularly when it comes to managing outreach.

Challenges Before Using Smartlead

Before integrating Smartlead, Hugo Millington Drake and the Trigify team faced two major challenges with their email outreach campaigns:

Time-Consuming Manual Processes

Conducting cold email outreach manually was incredibly labor-intensive. The team struggled with the constant need to follow up, track replies, and maintain consistency, leading to a scattered approach. It required an immense amount of time and effort to manage each step, making it difficult to scale outreach efforts efficiently.

Deliverability Issues

Hugo initially managed campaigns by sending large volumes of emails from a single domain without much focus on deliverability. This resulted in a high percentage of emails landing in spam folders, severely limiting their effectiveness. The lack of proper deliverability management meant low engagement and fewer replies, hindering their ability to generate leads.

These challenges were common, but they hindered Trigify from reaching its full potential in terms of scaling outreach and maximizing lead generation.

Solutions

Smartlead offered Trigify the solution to both time and deliverability challenges:

Automation of Campaigns

Smartlead streamlined the entire cold email process. With the ability to set up campaigns in minutes, inject spintax for personalization, and automate follow-ups, Trigify could move from a tedious manual process to a more efficient, automated workflow. This freed up significant time for Hugo and his team, allowing them to focus on other high-value tasks.

Deliverability Optimization

Smartlead's features helped Trigify ensure that their emails reached the inbox rather than the spam folder. The tool’s simple UI allowed them to handle email warm-ups and deliverability settings, improving their campaigns' effectiveness. By leveraging Smartlead’s ability to manage multiple domains and reduce harmful open rates, Trigify improved deliverability rates substantially.

Scalability

With Smartlead, Trigify was able to scale their cold email outreach with ease. The integration with their workflows allowed for the creation of evergreen campaigns, where leads could be seamlessly imported into Smartlead and run in the background. This integration proved invaluable as Trigify moved towards more automated and scalable processes.

Impact

The integration of Smartlead had a dramatic impact on Trigify's operations and growth:

From Zero to 30,000 Leads per Month

Within just six months of using Smartlead, Trigify grew their outreach from zero to 30,000 emails sent per month, solely relying on email for outbound marketing. 

“When we started our agency, we started with Smartlead on cold email, and we got that from zero to 30,000 a month in six months. And that was solely from sending emails from Smartlead.” - Hugo Millington Drake

This scale of operation was unthinkable before Smartlead, as the manual process had capped their potential.

25% Reply Rate

One standout campaign, which targeted over 3,000 contacts, achieved a 25% reply rate, with 38% of those replies being positive. This is an exceptional conversion rate, demonstrating the power of Smartlead in helping Trigify connect with their target audience effectively.

Client Success

Trigify’s clients also benefited from Smartlead’s capabilities, with many of them using it for their own outreach. The integration between Trigify’s platform and Smartlead made it easy for clients to use both tools simultaneously, streamlining their sales efforts.

The Road Ahead

Looking forward, Hugo and the Trigify team are keen to deepen their partnership with Smartlead. 

Hugo mentioned the potential of further improving campaign management, especially around domain setup, which can be complex for new users. He expressed interest in seeing Smartlead expand its offerings to make email outreach even simpler for beginners, potentially by automating some of the more technical aspects like domain configuration.

Additionally, Hugo is curious about Smartlead’s roadmap and its vision for the future. 

While email will undoubtedly remain the core focus, Hugo wonders whether the platform might expand into other areas, such as LinkedIn outreach, which could open new doors for even more integrated outreach strategies.

Conclusion

Trigify's journey from a manual, time-consuming process to an efficient, scalable outreach operation is a testament to the power of Smartlead. 

By addressing the core challenges of time management and deliverability, Smartlead has enabled Hugo and his team to not only scale their business but also improve the quality of their campaigns. For anyone looking to streamline their outreach and boost their lead generation, Smartlead is a game-changer.

Ready to transform your email outreach like Trigify? 

Try Smartlead free for 14 days and see the results for yourself!

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