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JumpLead is a UK outbound and fractional sales leadership agency built for founder-led B2B businesses. Its clients already have an offer, and they already have sales. What they do not have is consistency.
These are founders of businesses with 10 to 200 employees, mostly in SaaS, professional services and recruitment. They need pipeline, and many of them need experienced people running the sales process behind it.
In September 2026, JumpLead sent one email to 256 delegates of a major connectivity conference on behalf of a UK telecoms data client. No follow-ups. Zero bounces. 15 replies, 11 of them positive, and five meeting requests within a day of sending.
JumpLead is six months old. It has been on Smartlead for three. Smartlead is the sending infrastructure underneath all of it.
Joe Stone and Chris May run JumpLead, which helps UK founder-led B2B businesses win new business without a full-time sales hire. Their best Smartlead campaign so far, sent in September 2026:
Joe Stone and Chris May are the co-founders of JumpLead. Between them they bring 35+ years in B2B sales, £8m+ generated, and 200+ organisations sold into across their careers, including J.P. Morgan, Deloitte, Barclays, Amazon, PwC and EY.
Joe has worked in sales for 15 years. He has a keen interest in sales technology and has used a long list of outbound tools along the way.
The pair launched JumpLead in April 2026 to help UK founders win new business without a full-time sales hire. Some clients need a jump-start, so JumpLead fills their pipeline across LinkedIn, email and the phone. Some need someone in the driver’s seat, so Joe and Chris both join as fractional sales leadership. Most use a mix. Nothing goes out without the client’s approval.
“So my business is called JumpLead. We started the business in April of this year, so we’re just over six months old. We help B2B businesses, I’d say ranging from 10 to 200 employees, and we support them with their outreach. We’re UK-focused at the moment, and that’s just because it’s early days and we’re both UK-based. We support them in two ways. One is outreach, which is via cold email, and we can also help with LinkedIn and cold calling. The other thing we offer is sales strategy. So we offer fractional sales leadership, which we provide alongside our outreach as part of our service.”
JumpLead started on another sending tool and moved to Smartlead around three months ago. Smartlead had been on Joe’s radar for a while. When it came time to choose the email infrastructure for JumpLead, he compared it with other tools on the market.
Smartlead won on fit, ease of use, its connection to Claude, and the confidence that it would hold up as JumpLead’s outreach volume grew.
Before automating anything, the team learned the platform by hand.
“We always, with any tool, before we start using it with Claude Code, we use it ourselves. So we did run the campaigns initially doing it manually, just so we felt confident in the tool and we felt that everything was good and easy to understand.”
JumpLead works with UK founders whose businesses have product-market fit but no repeatable way to sell. The offer is there. The early customers are there. The process is not.
That makes the job twofold: find buyers with a genuine reason to talk, and then make sure the founder’s sales process can turn those conversations into revenue.
“Our current customers are founders of businesses who have a struggle with their sales. They haven’t got the consistency behind a sales process. I guess most of the clients that we speak with are SaaS, professional services or recruitment businesses. But our ICP is broad in that it could be any business with a sales need, a business that needs support with their sales, that has an offer and has sales already. So yeah, UK based founders of businesses between 10 to 200 employees.”
Over 15 years in sales, Joe found that many outbound tools are strong at finding contacts but weak at the part that matters most: getting emails sequenced properly and into the inbox.
JumpLead is growing client by client, and every new client means more domains, more inboxes and more sending. The team needed a platform it could start small on and grow into, without losing sight of inbox health or bounce rates.
“Having worked in sales for a long time, I’ve had some problems using Apollo in the past. It’s good for data, but not necessarily for sequencing and email deliverability. Email deliverability, keeping your inboxes functional, is such a big challenge, and I think Smartlead resolves that very well. The other thing is doing outreach at scale. The way Smartlead is set up lets you start gradually and build into something quite big, and keep on top of all of your inboxes with all the functionality that’s there, like bounce rate tracking and everything else.”
Each new client needs its own domains and mailboxes, warmed up and ready before a single campaign goes out. For a young agency, that setup cannot become a separate project every time.
Some campaigns run on a fixed date. When a client is heading to an event, the campaign has to be verified, segmented, written and sent in days.
“The top one I can say is probably email warmup. Being able to purchase domains and email accounts very easily, getting them set up. The connection with Claude, so being able to get Claude to help support us with setting up the sequences.”
In September 2026, a UK telecoms data company was heading to a major connectivity conference. It wanted meetings in the diary before it arrived.
JumpLead built the campaign in two days. It was set up on a Friday and the bulk of it went out on the Monday morning. By Tuesday, five meeting requests had landed. The fastest reply came in four minutes.
The list. The delegate list was verified and sorted into nine segments by fit. Every address was checked first. Zero bounces across all 256 sends.
The message. One short email per segment, each with its own angle and a real reason to talk: we’re both at the event, let’s get a coffee.
The send. Emails went out across warmed inboxes in Smartlead, with different wording per sender and no follow-ups. Replies were handled in the client’s name and went straight into the diary.
The results:
“It was really, really easy to set up. We had the variations of the campaign, the data we’d pulled ourselves, we tailored the messaging for the different type of persona, and we had to do it really quickly. So we had to get it set up on a Friday, send the emails out on Monday, then we got the opportunities booked in by Tuesday. And then those meetings were set to take place from Thursday onwards.”
JumpLead’s approach comes down to one principle, which Joe credits for the result:
“Every message starts from a real reason to talk, and that’s where our best Smartlead result came from.”
Smartlead data, September 2026. Nine split campaigns read as one. Replies counted from real people; five instant auto-replies left out. Client name withheld.
Warmup is the first feature Joe names. Alongside it, JumpLead buys domains and email accounts directly inside Smartlead and gets them running quickly. On the telecoms campaign, every email went out from a warmed inbox, spread across senders.
JumpLead uses Claude to help set up sequences in Smartlead. That connection is a big part of how the team turned the telecoms campaign around in two days.
JumpLead tailors messaging by persona and segment, then uses A/B variations and Smartlead’s reporting to see what is working. The bounce rate checker catches bad data before it damages the inboxes.
“A/B variations on campaigns, so we can compare which campaigns are working. Then, off the back of that, I would say the reporting, which is very good, so we can report in a lot of detail on what’s happening. And the last thing, which is very important at scale, is the bounce rate checker. It means that if we’re hitting data that hasn’t been validated correctly or is bouncing, we can turn that around quickly.”
Joe’s experience with similar tools meant he felt at home quickly, and the help documentation covered the rest.
“I’m not in the Slack community, but I should definitely join now that I’m aware of it. I’ve got a lot of experience using tools similar to Smartlead, so I felt at home with it quite quickly. It wasn’t brand new to me when I came into it. Well, it was a new tool, but I’d used some that were very similar. All of the documentation was there to support me, and it was helpful to go through it.”
JumpLead’s early results come from experience and process as much as from the tool.
Fifteen years of sales experience. Joe had used tools similar to Smartlead before, so he felt at home quickly. The help documentation filled in the rest.
“I felt quite at home with it quite quickly. All of the documentation was there to support, and it was helpful to go through that.”
Manual first, then automate. The team ran its first Smartlead campaigns by hand before bringing in Claude Code, so it understood every setting it later automated.
Own data, tailored messaging. JumpLead pulls its own data and writes different messaging for each persona, then tests variations against each other.
Strategy plus outreach. Fractional sales leadership means the campaigns sit inside a wider sales process, not alongside it.
1. Email Warmup. The first feature Joe names. Every JumpLead campaign goes out from warmed inboxes, protecting deliverability from day one. Learn more about Smartlead’s email warmup.
2. Domain and Email Account Purchasing. New client infrastructure set up inside Smartlead, quickly and without a separate setup project. Learn more about SmartSenders.
3. Claude Connection. JumpLead uses Claude to help set up sequences in Smartlead, which shortens build time on deadline-driven campaigns.
4. A/B Variations. One angle per segment, tested against each other, so the team knows which message is working.
5. Detailed Reporting. A clear, detailed view of campaign performance across every segment and sender.
6. Bounce Rate Checker. Fast detection of bad data at scale, so inbox health is protected before damage is done. Explore Smartlead’s email verification.
JumpLead’s results come from a simple system: healthy inboxes, data you trust, messaging tailored to each persona, and the speed to launch when a client needs pipeline.
Start with Smartlead’s automated warm-up, test persona-level variations, and keep bounce rates in check as you scale.
Founder, StackOptimise
Smartlead's combination of automation, unlimited inboxes, and easy campaign management has completely transformed how we run cold email campaigns.
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Founder, Cold Email Hackers
We have about 15 companies and we use Smartlead for all of them.
Founder, DutchSave Media
One of the things I love about using Smartlead is the deliverability feature. If they landed in the bounce or spam folders, we could resolve this quickly.
Co-Founder, Growth Today
I want to continue to use Smartlead to make operations more seamless - the plan is to bring more clients here and build more SOPs.
Founder, FueltoFly
Smartlead listens to the agencies and customers and builds according to what people want, that has really made things easier for us.
Founder, OutboundSync
We build an infrastructure product, and OutboundSync communicates with Smartlead itself. I love the webhook and API. They're really well done and keep getting better.
Founder, Axoleads
With SmartDelivery, you can put all of that in the hands of the tool. It ensures your emails land in inboxes, and by running a simple test, you can see if you're hitting the mark.
Founder, Claygen
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. I really love the feature where you can actually give client accesses to your clients.
Co-Founder, Cymate
I do not want to switch to another software. Pick a solution you trust, stick with it, and keep refining your copy.
CMO, Avalanche Capital
Managing large volumes of emails through multiple inboxes used to be a logistical nightmare. With Smartlead, the process is seamless. We book thousands of discovery calls through cold emails. These campaigns are generating leads at a scale we never thought possible.
Founder, Growth Engine X
We came for the unlimited inboxes, and we stayed for the API. 1.5M cold emails/month, 7,767+ inboxes managed.
Head of Community & Ecosystem, TxtCart
You cannot replace having 10,000 touches with potential clients. When you have that much distribution and reach, you really start to see incredible results. The simplicity of Smartlead made all the difference. It doesn't require you to be a technical wizard.
Founder, Hyperke
Smartlead has been a game-changer for us. It increased our appointment volume, improved ease of use, and offered valuable features. 80% increase in appointments/month, peak of 276 appointments in a single month.
Founder, Kinetyca
Smartlead has been our cold email backbone from day one. The platform evolves constantly, keeping pace with how deliverability and personalization need to work today. 21% overall reply rate, $175K in 4 months for multiple B2B clients.
Founder, Reachflow
Smartlead is centered around deliverability and constantly evolving. Their API is not like any other platform. Smartlead covers all our needs. The focus on core features like deliverability and API integration is unmatched.
CEO, Halfwarm
Our approach to crafting conversational emails led to reply rates that many of my peers thought were unattainable.
Co-Founder, letstrike
We've grown on zero capital, zero marketing, purely cold emailing - and that's the story we love to tell. The best approach is no approach if you can't handle domain meltdown. The second best is something like Smartlead that's built from the ground up for deliverability at scale.
Founder, Fenixtal
Smartlead's white-labeling and automation let us punch above our weight. The 12M euros sales potential? That's what happens when you combine human creativity with Smartlead's precision.
Co-Founder, Digital Creativs
Nine out of 10. Ninety percent of our clients are on Smartlead unless they come in with an existing setup. That's the default.
Co-Founder, BuildingReach
At the end of the day, you have to take a bet on one tool or another. It was a no-brainer taking that bet on Smartlead. We had to even turn down the volume of our marketing campaigns - Smartlead was capable of driving more volume than our sales team was able to fulfill.
Founder & MD, Prospectiv
Since starting the business in January of this year, we've already generated $200K in sales exclusively from cold email. Smartlead has been central to our operations and has exceeded our expectations.
Founder, Growthlynk
There's so much stuff built on top of it. I would be dead if I had to rebuild it with another tool. I can manage hundreds of senders easily. I can send hundreds of thousands of emails.
Founder, Corebits
The platform's HubSpot integration, real-time Slack updates, and advanced campaign customization have been game changers for our business and our clients'.
Founder, Apex Ascension
From day one, we've never used anything else.
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