The situation
Spotlight is a new category. Buyers were not searching for an AI-visibility platform, so there was no demand to capture. It had to be created.
And the audience was the hardest possible one for a PR product: marketing and brand leaders at airlines, private aviation firms, hotel groups and luxury resorts. These people receive PR pitches all day. Another "quick call?" email would have been deleted on sight.
The hard part
Asking for a meeting is what every other sender in that inbox does. To get attention, we had to do the opposite.
What we did
1. We gave first. We call it the Reverse Lead Magnet. The first email offered to write a finished feature on the prospect's company before any talk of placement. Every yes triggered our agent to research the brand and write a real, publish-ready article about it. Free. No call required. The prospect kept the draft either way, and held a finished asset before ever speaking to a salesperson.
2. The free article was the demo. The article showed exactly what Spotlight and SkyHigh produce. Prospects didn't have to imagine the value. They were already holding it. We were the only sender in their inbox who had given something before asking for anything.
3. We scaled only as fast as deliverability allowed. Sending ramped from about 2,000 to over 7,000 emails a day, step by step, only as inbox placement held. Each vertical ran its own angle and its own article format. Every reply was answered within 5 minutes, drafted by the agent and approved by a human before it went out.
Supporting systems: up to 8 follow-up touches per prospect and continuous re-engagement of earlier non-responders.
One email from the campaign
The first email in the sequence, as sent. Merge fields highlighted.
Merge field notes
{company}: the prospect's brand.{category}: the vertical, written per segment (aviation, hospitality, luxury travel).
It gives before it asks, and removes the commitment: "you keep the draft regardless."
Results
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Emails sent | 221,400 |
| Reply rate | 1.75% |
| Replies | ~3,870 |
| Qualified opportunities | 159 |
| Opportunities per month | ~53 |
| Emails per opportunity | 1 in 1,392 |
Why the meetings were different
Prospects arrived having already read their article. Calls started at "how do we do more of this" instead of "so what do you do?" People show up for the company that already gave them something.
What it meant
159 buying conversations with aviation, hotel and luxury resort brands, from a standing start, inside one quarter. The free article is now a permanent part of how SkyHigh sells. It sits on their homepage today as "Get a free article."
Built with
Apollo · Ocean.io · BuiltWith · SalesQL · Apify · Clay · Mailtester Ninja · Instantly · Claude (reply agent) · Slack (human approval)
How we count
- Emails sent: every email delivered by the sequencer, first touches and follow-ups combined.
- Reply rate: replies divided by leads contacted, as reported by Instantly.
- Positive reply: a reply showing interest. Not a meeting yet.
- Qualified opportunity: a positive reply from a decision-maker at a company that fits the client's ICP, flagged as an opportunity in Instantly.
- Qualified meeting: a booked call with a decision-maker that meets the client's qualification criteria.
- Attended: the prospect actually showed up.