How ThinkGrowth Built a Outbound Engine on Smartlead Across Every GTM Role

Faraz will be the first to tell you that Smartlead is the one tool that never got replaced.

Not Clay. Not Apollo. Not any of the LinkedIn outreach tools he has cycled through over three and a half years of GTM work. Those came and went as costs changed, as experiments ran their course, as something better came along.

Smartlead stayed.

Through his first GTM role at Go Marvel. Through an enterprise-level position at Zycas with a 70-member BDR team. Through building Think Growth from scratch into a full-time GTM agency with a client base that runs largely on cold email.

"SmartLead is the only piece in the tool stack that has never been replaced or changed," Faraz says. "I've stuck with it for almost two and a half, three years now. I run my own outreach on SmartLead. I run my clients' outreach on SmartLead."

That kind of loyalty, across multiple companies, multiple roles, and multiple years, is not habit. It is a judgment call made every time a new tool comes along and does not quite measure up.

TL;DR

Faraz, founder of Think Growth, has used Smartlead continuously since March 2024 across three different organizations before building his own GTM agency. Here is what that has looked like:

• 59 to 70% positive reply rates on internal outreach campaigns
• 45 to 50 positive replies in the last three months, converting to 25 to 30 discovery calls
• 90% of Think Growth clients run on Smartlead
• Three and a half years of GTM experience, with Smartlead as the only constant in the stack
• Used across company stages: early-stage startup, enterprise with 70-person BDR team, and solo agency
• Key features driving results: auto-tagging, Slack integration, tiered warmup pools, and deliverability infrastructure

Who Faraz Is and What Think Growth Does

Faraz has spent three and a half years in go-to-market, starting as a GTM generalist at Go Marvel before moving into an enterprise environment at Zycas and eventually founding Think Growth, a GTM agency he now runs full time.

Think Growth works primarily with marketing agencies and Martech tools, a niche Faraz understands deeply from his own background running a D2C startup before moving into GTM. The remaining clients are SaaS platforms and IT service agencies across other industries.

"I'd say eighty percent of our clientele comprises marketing agencies and Martech tools, and then the remaining twenty percent is other SaaS platforms or IT service agencies."

The through-line across all of it is outbound. And the through-line across all of that outbound is Smartlead.

How Faraz Found Smartlead and Why He Never Left

The Discovery

Faraz did not find Smartlead through a review site or a recommendation from a peer. He found it because Go Marvel, the company he joined as one of the earliest team members, was already using it.

"2024 March is when I started using SmartLead. That's when I got introduced to SmartLead and also to GTM, to be honest."

He learned cold email and Smartlead at the same time, which means his intuitions about how outbound should work were shaped entirely on the platform. When he eventually looked at alternatives, nothing quite fit.

"I started off from Smartlead and then eventually got such a hang of the platform that I couldn't really adapt to any other platform."

Three Companies, One Constant

At Go Marvel, Faraz helped set up Smartlead from scratch and built his foundational understanding of cold email infrastructure, deliverability, spintax, and personalized copy.

At Zycas, an enterprise-level company with a 70-member BDR team, Smartlead handled centralized cold outreach while other tools managed one-to-one email for the larger team. Even at that scale, Smartlead was the cold outreach infrastructure of choice.

At Think Growth, Smartlead is the only sending tool Faraz recommends and uses. Ninety percent of his clients run on it.

"For emails, it's mostly SmartLead. 90% of my clients also just use SmartLead, unless they have any personal preferences. But majorly SmartLead is something I've stuck with for almost two and a half, three years now."

What the 2024 Infrastructure Crackdown Taught Faraz

2024 was a turning point for anyone running cold email seriously. Deliverability tightened. Spam filters got smarter. Open rates and click rates became unreliable signals.

Faraz was in the middle of it at Go Marvel when it happened.

"In 2024 we saw that crackdown on the whole infrastructure where most emails were going into spam. That's when we realized we should stop tracking open rates and click rates."

The teams that survived that period were the ones who had already built their outreach around deliverability fundamentals rather than volume. Spintax, unique copy, personalized messaging, proper warmup. Faraz learned all of it during that period, and Smartlead's infrastructure was what made it manageable.

That experience shaped how he thinks about email deliverability to this day: it is not a feature you turn on. It is the foundation everything else sits on.

The Features That Actually Move the Needle

Faraz is not the kind of operator who activates every feature because it exists. He uses what solves real problems and builds from there.

Auto-Tagging

Before auto-tagging, Faraz was manually reading every reply and categorizing it himself. Interested. Not interested. Out of office. Meeting requested. At volume, that becomes a significant time drain.

"What used to happen at least a year ago is I used to manually read the replies and then mark them as interested, not interested. Now things have gotten easier with the auto-tagging feature. I just check whatever is either interested or meeting requested. So I just read through those emails. That's saving me a lot of time."

Slack Integration

Speed of reply matters in cold email. A positive response that sits unanswered for three hours is a warm lead going cold. Faraz used to check Smartlead once or twice a day and reply in bulk. The Slack integration changed that entirely.

"I get a notification immediately. I don't have to wait. Before, even if I'd gotten a reply at 10am, I was still replying at 1pm because that's when I was checking SmartLead. Now in five minutes of getting a reply, I'm on it."

That response speed compounds over time. Prospects who hear back quickly convert at higher rates. The multi-channel outreach ecosystem Faraz runs depends on that kind of tight feedback loop.

Tiered Warmup Pools

One of Faraz's more specific observations is about warmup pool quality. Earlier, all accounts shared the same warmup pool regardless of plan, meaning a new user on a basic plan could drag down the reputation of pools used by serious operators.

"Now you have different tiers. You have premium, growth, and all of that in terms of the warmup pool. So your warmup pool just keeps improving when you move plans, rather than being on the same pool as everyone else."

For clients running high-stakes outreach in competitive industries, pool quality is not a minor detail. It is part of what keeps emails landing in the primary inbox consistently.

Deliverability Infrastructure

This is the feature that goes unnoticed when it is working, which is most of the time for Faraz.

"Deliverability is great. I'm not having any issues with emails going into spam or replies coming in late. Warmup is great. That's why my emails are not going into spam."

As he puts it: "When it's not performing, all of us ask why. But when it is performing, it just happens in the background and goes unnoticed." That invisibility is exactly what good infrastructure looks like.

The Numbers

Internal Campaign Performance

Faraz's own outreach campaigns for Think Growth consistently produce 59 to 70% positive reply rates. That figure reflects both strong deliverability and tight ICP targeting: his lead lists come from Prospeo or Apollo, his messaging is generated with Claude, and Smartlead handles the sending.

"Campaign-wise I'm getting consistent 60 to 70% positives. Volumes are decent. I'm sending a good amount."

Pipeline Generated in the Last Three Months

Over the most recent three-month period, Faraz generated 45 to 50 positive replies through Smartlead outreach. Of those, 25 to 30 converted into discovery calls.

"That ratio is pretty good. A good 30 meetings have been booked out of 50 positive responses."

Closures from outbound are still maturing. The May to July period was slow across the market and most closures during that time came through inbound. But the meetings, proposals, and discovery conversations that feed that pipeline are coming directly from outbound through Smartlead.

"All of my discoveries, talking to people, sending proposals, all of that volume is purely coming from outbound."

This is a distinction worth understanding. In many outbound operations, the funnel generates meetings that close as inbound-assisted deals. Outbound fills the top, relationship and timing close the bottom.

How Faraz Uses the SmartAssistant

Faraz has experimented with the SmartAssistant and has a clear-eyed view of where it adds value and where it could go further.

For someone at his experience level, having an AI build a campaign in isolation does not save much time. He can build a campaign himself in five minutes. What would genuinely change his workflow is if the assistant could connect the full picture: suggest a campaign, build a relevant lead list through SmartProspect, and generate the messaging, all in one conversation.

"If I get those three things to start off with, then I can have a few more chats with the bot and finalize the campaign. Right now I'm just getting a campaign built, which is not adding incremental value to me."

He is also actively building out the Smart Reply Agent for his use case, though it is still a work in progress. The potential is there. The configuration for his specific workflow is still being refined.

What Faraz Values Beyond the Platform

Office Hours

Faraz has been a consistent presence at Smartlead's weekly Office Hours, particularly in his early months on the platform. He sees it as one of the most underrated parts of the Smartlead ecosystem.

"Every Thursday I know there is an Office Hour happening. Monday or Tuesday I'll get an email about who's coming this week. I think that's great. Office Hours is beyond SmartLead. It's not just about how to use the platform, but also things around it. You get to learn a lot more."

His engagement has evolved naturally. Early on he attended regularly to build his understanding. Now he picks and chooses based on the topic and speaker. That trajectory from regular attendee to selective participant is exactly what a healthy community looks like in practice.

The Smartlead Community

Faraz was recently featured as Smart Leader of the Week, which is actually how he discovered the Slack community existed. He had to ask via LinkedIn to get the link because it was not visible on the website, a gap he flags directly.

"I couldn't find the SmartLead Slack community link anywhere on the website. I had to text you guys on LinkedIn to get it. That's one of the reasons I joined in late."

Once inside, he finds it a useful space with active conversations, mostly around troubleshooting and platform questions. He expects it to become more valuable over time.

Ready to Build an Outbound Engine That Holds Up Over Time?

Faraz has run Smartlead across early-stage startups, enterprise BDR teams, and his own agency. Three and a half years in, it is still the only sending tool in his stack that has never been replaced.

The infrastructure that produced consistent 60 to 70% positive reply rates and 30 booked meetings in a single quarter is the same infrastructure available to every Smartlead user.

Start your free trial on Smartlead and see what three years of compounding deliverability, auto-tagging, and Slack-connected reply management can do for your outbound operation. Read the lead generation guide to understand how serious operators structure their outbound stack, or explore AI-assisted outbound before your next campaign launch.

‍