Results

Testing audiences

We launched on four audiences at once: financial advisors, business owners, car dealership service teams and a second angle on advisors. One advisor email pulled ahead early, with 2.4% of contacts replying against 0.6% for the other. Car dealerships got a second try in week 6, 917 emails with no interested replies, so they were cut. By week 8, advisors were tiring and interested replies were down to 2 a week.

Choosing the next market

I asked the agency and the client where gifting already drives business. They ranked real estate first, then mortgage brokers, then insurance. We started with real estate brokerages of 1 to 50 people, and two kinds of contact at each: the broker or owner who decides, and the office manager or transaction coordinator who places the gift orders.

The copy used the client's own words for that market, like closing gifts, open houses and purchase anniversaries, and named brokerages they already supply. Its first week brought 7 interested replies.

Scaling the winner

All 750 sends a day moved to real estate. Interested replies went from 10 a week to 20, then to 28 and 29 in weeks 16 and 18. Across those nine weeks, real estate brought about 5 interested replies per 1,000 emails, against about 2 per 1,000 on the advisor tests.

• The offer. The call to action offered a free branded mockup of the prospect's gift. It converted about twice as well as the plain "Interested?" ask on advisors, and it later went into every campaign on the account.
• The list. When the list ran low in late August, I topped it up by narrowing 95,961 companies to the 1,686 contacts whose job titles matched the 143 people who had already said yes.
• The mailboxes. 75 mailboxes in three groups, with one group resting each week. Bounces hit a low of 0.59% in week 17.

The bottleneck moved to sales

By late August, the client was answering every lead by hand and falling behind.

"I've been busy responding to all the leads."

The agency audited how the replies were being handled, and I built an AI agent that answers each interested reply within two minutes and hands it to the sales team. In testing it replied in 117 seconds. The client wanted to try it on a few leads before trusting it with all of them, so it's still being tested.

The client changed course

Real estate kept producing, but the client's sales team wasn't turning those leads into orders. The client told us agents weren't spending ahead of the holidays, with interest rates rising. So the client asked us to stop real estate, send their team fewer leads, and go after audiences more likely to buy: financial advisors, property managers and, from October, insurance agencies.

That's the drop in the chart. Interested replies fell to 4 to 7 a week at the same sending volume, because the client chose fewer, better-fitting leads. Real estate restarts in Q1 with its list and history saved.

The new campaigns carry the real estate playbook: the mockup offer and the client's own language for each market. Insurance launched on 21 October and got its first interested reply on day one, from the president of an insurance agency:

"You get the award for writing the most effective email to introduce yourself and your product. It's real, honest, and straight to the point."

Reporting

The agency and the client get a written report every week with the sends, every new interested lead and the running pipeline, and we talk it through on a weekly call.