🦁 Hi hunter, want a 45% reply rate? Here’s my secret: stop focusing so much on your copywriting. The biggest mistake 99% of salespeople make is starting with the message. If you want people to reply, you need to first nail your ICP, persona, and business signals.

These three combined will shape the perfect copy—not the other way around.‍

Here’s an example from one of our campaigns that hit a 45% reply rate (with half converting into meetings):

1. Define your ICP

🦁 99% of people mistake ICP for lead characteristics. In reality, an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) focuses solely on company attributes—not individual leads.

So, what defines your ideal companies?

Example with Pronto 👇



Don’t confuse TAM (Total Addressable Market) with ICP:

Your TAM represents the entire market you could potentially target.
Your ICP defines the specific types of companies that are the best fit for your product or service

You’ll get much better results by focusing on your ICP rather than trying to cover your entire TAM. It’s a common mistake—but you need to stay disciplined and stick to your ideal customers.

For Pronto, the US market is much easier to convince than France, and B2B scale-ups convert far better than SMEs. Even though our TAM is huge, we focus our main efforts on a very specific and "easy" target.

By narrowing your focus to your ICP, you can prioritize the companies most likely to convert and achieve much stronger results.

2. Divide your persona (& their pains)

🦁 Each persona has unique pains, so one-size-fits-all messaging won’t work. This is the biggest mistake I can see in outreach. Separating personas lets you create tailored copy that drives better engagement and conversions!

Example with Pronto 👇



‍

We don’t speak to SDRs the same way we speak to CMOs:

→ CMOs are often inbound specialists looking to expand through outbound strategies but lack expertise. They need guidance and insights on how outbound can drive growth.

→ SDRs receive lead lists from the marketing team and are tasked with crafting the perfect outreach. Their main challenge is finding the best messaging to boost response rates and book meetings.

Similarly, we don’t approach Founders the same way as Growth teams:

→ Founders focus on rapid scaling and want to know the most efficient go-to-market strategy. They care about big-picture growth and ROI.

→ Growth teams prioritize operational efficiency and often need help automating processes to scale their outbound efforts smoothly.

That's why our reply rates are so high—**we know exactly what their pain points are**. Like a precision strike, we’ll keep pressing where it hurts most.
‍ ---

3. Find relevant business signals

For this campaign, I used the business signal:
→ Following a competitor's company

I targeted all LinkedIn followers of our competitors, filtered by persona 😉. I knew exactly their pain points—that's why we achieved a 43% reply rate! I’ll share the exact strategy and messaging I used in a future email.

We’ve seen similar success with other business signals, such as:

→ Website visitors (even outside the US)
→ Alumni job changes
→ Champions switching companies
→ Growing sales teams
→ Recent hires

… and over 20 more.

You’ll learn how to build these high-converting campaigns in just a few days.

But for now, let’s take it step by step!

Your turn 🦁

Before tomorrow’s email, answer these 3 questions:

→ What types of companies would recommend your product? (Think size, location, and industry.)

→ Who is the decision-maker (your persona)?

→ Do you see actionable business signals?

Updated on: 13/01/2025