AM
"We're getting 8 demos every single week and the meetings actually convert."
Ana Meadow
Head of Sales, Spotlight
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.
$170K+
In closed deals
8
Sales calls / week
6%+
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.
01
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.
02
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.
03
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.
$170K+
In closed deals
8
Sales calls booked per week
6%+
Average reply rate
36
Hyper-local campaigns in parallel
400
Emails sent per day (volume kept low)
3
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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