LP
"We've generated $1.5M+ from Grow Surely campaigns in our first 4 months."
Lou Petracci
Chief Revenue Officer, AdLeverage
Case study / Marketing & Advertising
How we helped AdLeverage close $1.5M in four months
A full-service paid ads agency for home service companies. $1,585,000 in closed revenue against $35,000 in campaign spend, from HVAC, plumbing and electrical operators doing $10M+ a year.
$1.5M+
In closed revenue
45.3X
Return on spend
4-5
Meetings / week
Full-service paid advertising for home service companies.
Headquarters
California, United States
Company size
50 to 200 employees
// The challenge
The in-house system stopped landing.
AdLeverage ran their own cold email and it worked. Then Google and Microsoft tightened their spam filters, the same campaigns started landing in spam, and the one direct line into the top of the home service market went quiet.
01
Cold email started hitting spam
The in-house campaigns had been producing. What changed was the inbox. The Google and Microsoft filter updates pushed the same sends into spam, and running it internally was no longer viable.
02
Enterprise operators are hard to reach
A home service company doing $10M+ a year is not out browsing for an ads agency. There are only a handful of ways to get in front of that owner, and nearly all of them are direct.
03
Paid channels brought the wrong fit
AdLeverage runs paid ads and social for a living, so they know exactly what those channels do. At the top of the market they bring volume, and a lot of it from companies that were never the right size.
// The approach
One finite list of operators, hit from five angles.
A tightly built list of the largest HVAC, plumbing and electrical companies in the country, then a rotation of proven angles aimed at those same companies until the right one landed.
// 01
Data & targeting
- A custom list build in Claude Code and Clay, pulling from Google Maps, LinkedIn and several contact databases
- Filtered on revenue: home service operators doing $5M+ and $10M+ a year
- HVAC, plumbing and electrical, which at this size are usually all three inside one company
- Owners, CEOs, CMOs and VPs of marketing identified by name on every account
// 02
Reach & rotation
- Four to five proven angles kept in rotation against the same list of target companies
- A lead magnet offer sitting behind each angle rather than a request for a call
- Conference campaigns: when AdLeverage attends a major industry event, we run outreach to the attendee list
- 231,100 emails sent on the account to date, at a 2.19% reply rate
// 03
Messaging & personalization
- AdLeverage has years of client results, so every prospect was matched to the case study closest to their own business
- An authority-figure result from a nationally recognised operator did the heaviest lifting on replies
- Copy written to one company at a time, never a blast to a segment
- Multi-channel follow-up once a lead replies, so interest turns into a booked call
// The results
Enterprise meetings, every single week.
Four months in, AdLeverage had generated $1,585,000 in revenue from $35,000 of campaign spend. Seven months in, the system is still running at 4 to 5 meetings a week.
$1.5M+
In closed revenue, first 4 months
45.3X
Return on $35,000 of campaign spend
4-5
Meetings booked per week
40-50
Qualified leads per month
2.19%
Reply rate across 231,100 emails
7
Months running, and still going
// The outcome
From a dead inbox to $20K retainers.
AdLeverage now has a direct channel into the largest home service operators in the country, and it no longer depends on whether their own domains survive the next filter update.
- $1,585,000 in revenue generated in the first four months, against $35,000 in campaign spend
- A 45.3X return, confirmed on camera by AdLeverage's Chief Revenue Officer
- 4 to 5 meetings a week, 15 to 20 a month, with enterprise home service operators
- 40 to 50 qualified leads a month out of the same finite list of companies
- $20,000 a month retainers closed with some of the largest HVAC companies in the country
- Seven months in and still running, now extended to industry conference attendees
// Key takeaways
What made this work.
// 01
Cold email did not break, the setup did
AdLeverage's campaigns were producing right up until the filter updates. What failed was the infrastructure underneath them. Run the same idea on sending infrastructure built for it and the channel comes back.
// 02
The case study is the personalization
AdLeverage had years of client results sitting in a folder. Matching the right one to each prospect did more for reply rate than any first-line personalization would have.
// 03
Rotate angles, do not chase a bigger list
At the top of the home service market the list of companies is finite. Four to five proven angles rotated against the same names beat widening the net every time.
// Get my free meetings
Want results like these?
We run a 7 day free pilot. We do a focused first campaign to your ICP before you pay a cent.