Case study / Marketing & Advertising

How we helped Spotlight book 8 sales calls every week

Digital-out-of-home advertising on screens inside U.S. zoos. $170K+ in closed deals and a 6%+ reply rate from a market most outbound agencies would not touch.

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2:24

"We're getting 8 demos every single week and the meetings actually convert."

Ana Meadow Head of Sales, Spotlight

$0 In closed deals

0 Sales calls / week

0 Average reply rate

Digital-out-of-home advertising on screens inside U.S. zoos.

Industry

Marketing & Advertising

Headquarters

United States

Company size

2 to 10 employees

// The challenge

A great product, zero outbound system.

Spotlight had a unique advertising product and a strong offer, but the market was so niche that paid ads did not make economic sense, and referrals alone could not feed a sales pipeline.

Too niche for paid ads

The buyer pool around each zoo was small enough that broad paid acquisition would have lit money on fire. Spotlight needed a precision outbound channel instead.

Pipeline ran on referrals

Almost every new conversation came from a personal intro. Growth slowed every time the referral flow slowed, and there was no way to predict next month's pipeline.

No system for sales calls

Spotlight had a real offer that closed well when buyers saw it. They just had no repeatable way to put it in front of qualified decision makers near each zoo.

// The approach

Three zoos. Twelve industries each. Thirty-six campaigns.

A hyper-local outbound system: small audience, small volume, and a separate campaign for every buyer segment around every zoo location.

// 01

Setup & deliverability

Multi-mailbox sending stack across Google Workspace and Outlook
Volume kept deliberately low: 400 emails per day total
Per-domain warm-up, SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured cleanly
Daily inbox placement monitoring across seed accounts

// 02

Data & targeting

Hyper-local targeting: companies within roughly 50 miles of three target zoos
Clay-based ICP qualification: minimum $1M in annual revenue
LinkedIn search and Google Maps used in parallel to surface every relevant operator
Owners and marketing decision makers identified by name on every account

// 03

Messaging & personalization

12 industries identified per zoo, three zoos in total: 36 distinct campaigns in parallel
Each campaign spoke to the pain points and benefits of one specific buyer type
Tight, hyper-relevant copy that read as if written for one company at a time
Multi-channel: email paired with direct phone outreach to compound contact rate

// The results

A small audience that actually replied.

Three months in, the system was delivering predictable, weekly sales calls from a market most outbound teams would have walked away from.

In closed deals

Sales calls booked per week

Average reply rate

Hyper-local campaigns in parallel

Emails sent per day (volume kept low)

Zoo markets covered

// The outcome

From referral-only to eight calls a week.

Spotlight now has a predictable channel feeding the sales team every week, instead of waiting for the next warm intro.

$170,000+ in new closed deals from outbound alone
8 sales calls landing on the calendar every single week
A 6%+ reply rate sustained across all 36 hyper-local campaigns
36 vertical-specific campaigns running in parallel across 3 zoo markets
A reusable framework Spotlight can extend to new zoo locations
Sales team focused on closing instead of prospecting

// Key takeaways

What made this work.

// 01

Volume is not the lever

Spotlight did not need 4,000 emails a day. The geography was small, the buyer pool was small, and the right list outperformed scale every time.

// 02

36 campaigns beat one campaign

Splitting a tiny market into 36 industry-by-zoo segments meant every email read like it was written for the exact buyer. Reply rate followed.

// 03

Multi-channel turns replies into calls

Email alone gets replies. Pairing email with direct phone outreach is what got actual sales calls scheduled on the calendar week after week.

// Apply for a free pilot

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