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In the competitive world of outbound sales, most agencies pick a lane. One industry, one persona, one playbook. Unlock Management does the opposite.
Founded by Jaime de Wenetz, Unlock Management is a three-branch agency running go-to-market, AI automation, and cybersecurity practices simultaneously. Their clients span hospitality brands, military organizations, and SaaS companies. And across all of them, Smartlead powers the outreach engine.
As Mateo, who oversees outreach operations at Unlock, puts it simply: "50% of the business is made in Smartlead."
This case study explores how Unlock Management built a multi-industry outbound machine, what they use to run it, and how they are now hitting reply rates that most agencies only read about.
Jaime built Unlock Management around a rare combination of skills: GTM strategy, AI-powered automation, Clay expertise, copywriting, and cybersecurity. The agency's core business is go-to-market, but its ability to operate across AI and cybersecurity makes it one of the few firms capable of running outbound intelligently across very different buyer types.
Their client roster reflects that range. One campaign might target hotel chains. The next, defense contractors. The one after, B2B SaaS founders. Each ICP requires a different message, a different sequence, and a different level of precision.
Unlock Management chose Smartlead from the beginning for their email operations and has never looked elsewhere.
Running outreach across radically different industries creates pressure that single-niche agencies never face.
With multiple campaigns running at the same time across different verticals, campaign setup has to be fast. Every hour spent on configuration is an hour not spent on strategy, copy, or client results. The team needed a tool that could keep up without getting in the way.
Cold email volume is Unlock's competitive advantage. If emails go to spam, the business model breaks. With clients expecting results across industries where email norms vary widely, maintaining a clean sender reputation is not optional. It is the foundation everything else sits on.
Mateo and the team had a straightforward reason for trusting Smartlead: it works, and it has never stopped working.
"Everyone that's doing outbound is using Smartlead. Emails don't go to spam, so why should we change it?"
From day one, Unlock Management's emails have landed in the inbox. The team actively monitors email reputation and has never dealt with a deliverability crisis. Smartlead's warmup infrastructure, rotating mailboxes, and humanized sending patterns handle the technical foundation so Mateo's team can focus on what actually moves the needle: the copy and the targeting.
Smartlead's platform, with its network of diverse mailboxes spanning Outlook, Google, Zoho, and other providers, ensures that sending reputation is built and protected automatically. The spam rescue feature adds another layer of protection, catching issues before they become problems.
Speed of execution is one of the things Unlock Managemnet values most about Smartlead.
"In just 30 seconds, you can do everything. Being so simple and so effective at the same time, I think it's really important."
Sequences of three to four emails are built, connected to rotating mailboxes, and launched quickly. Duplicating campaigns, swapping out leads, and adjusting sequences happens without friction. For an agency managing multiple active clients across different industries, that speed compounds quickly.
With several clients running simultaneously, inbox management becomes a real operational challenge.
Smartlead's tagging and label system lets the team filter their Master Inbox by client, campaign, or intent, so positive replies surface fast and nothing falls through the cracks.
"The tags and labels you can throw on some leads so you can then filter your inbox really, really fast."
Smartlead's Master Inbox organizes responses with sorting options including unread responses, most recent replies, and most recently sent, keeping the team on top of every active conversation regardless of volume.
Unlock Management now runs LinkedIn touchpoints through SmartAgents for leads who do not respond to email.
Before this integration, managing cross-channel outreach meant maintaining separate lead lists and manually deduplicating contacts who had already been reached through another channel.
"You create a campaign, you throw in the emails, and it starts a new campaign through LinkedIn for those leads that don't really answer your emails. Sometimes it's better to also contact them through LinkedIn."
The workflow is now fully connected. Email sequences run first. For non-responders, a LinkedIn touchpoint follows automatically. No duplicate lists. No manual cleanup.
Smartlead's built-in AI helps Unlock's team accelerate sequence drafts and reply suggestions.
Given that copywriting is one of their highest-rated core strengths, they use the AI as a speed layer rather than a replacement, getting to a strong first draft faster and then refining from there.
The integration with N8N automation has also been smooth. When building workflows, Smartlead's AI provided exactly the prompts needed for the automation setup. They mentioned:
"The AI gave us exactly the prompt we needed to put in N8N. So I think it was really helpful."
Since making Smartlead the foundation of their outreach operations, Unlock Management's best campaigns have delivered results that stand out even by agency standards.
"We used to go a lot to volume, but now we are doing some specific campaigns that are really getting some nice reply rates, like 25% of replies and then nearly 18% of positive replies. It's something that I think is a very good metric."
Unlock Management shifted their approach from high-volume blasting to tighter, more targeted campaigns built around a specific ICP and sharper copy. That shift, paired with Smartlead's deliverability infrastructure, is what unlocked their best reply rate numbers.
The combination of Smartlead email sequences and SmartAgents LinkedIn follow-ups means Unlock Management reaches prospects across the channels where they are most likely to respond. The integration removed the operational overhead that used to make multi-channel outreach messy.
Customer support has been a consistent strength throughout Unlock's time with Smartlead.
"Once we need help, support is instant. So I think it's the best thing."
That reliability has meant zero downtime on client campaigns and no gaps in outreach activity caused by platform issues.
Unlock Management is moving deeper into multi-channel outreach, layering LinkedIn and cold calling on top of email, and Smartlead is expanding in exactly that direction. The product roadmap aligns with where their clients need to go.
SmartProspect is also on their radar. While they currently rely on Clay for prospecting given their existing investment in the platform, they see SmartProspect as a strong future alternative.
"I think we could change in the future and start to use more SmartProspect."
For an agency running go-to-market, AI, and cybersecurity practices simultaneously, having a single platform that handles email, inbox management, multi-channel execution, and AI-assisted copy is not a luxury. It is what makes the whole operation possible.
Unlock Management is not chasing new tools. They are building on infrastructure that delivers, and scaling the results that prove it.
Join us to elevate your outreach!
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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