Direct Response Marketing Tactics for SaaS

I've been testing "ridiculous" cold email openers that get 9% response rates. Here are my top 5: Cold outreach has become a wasteland of templated garbage. Everyone's using the same boring approaches, especially when targeting saturated markets like SaaS, agencies, and e-commerce. My solution? Lean into the absurdity. I started crafting intentionally over-the-top openers that acknowledge the cold email elephant in the room. These openers signal we're real humans who understand how annoying most cold emails are. After sending over 10,000 emails in the past quarter, I've identified the patterns that work consistently. Here are my 5 highest-performing openers that you can steal today: 1. "This is definitely a cold email, but I promise it's the only one today that mentions your secret love of spreadsheets." 2. "I know reading another cold email sounds about as fun as filing taxes, but I spotted something interesting about your recent product launch." 3. "Fair warning: this is a sales email. But unlike the other 47 in your inbox, I actually researched your business for more than 30 seconds." 4. "I'm not going to pretend we're old friends or that I 'just happened' to be thinking about your business challenges at 2am." 5. "Let's skip the fake relationship building - you're busy, I'm selling something, and we both know how this works." The data doesn't lie - these openers are generating 3x the responses of our "professional" templates. The key is they disarm with honesty while creating curiosity. What's your go-to cold email opener? Or better yet, what's the worst one you've received lately?

Over the last 4 years, Directive has run over $65M in Google ads for the top companies in tech. Here are the 3 biggest mistakes I see SaaS companies make with Google ads (and how to fix them): 1. They spend their budget on “informational intent” queries that have no chance of converting This seems obvious, but *every* account we audit makes this mistake. Here’s how to fix it: Step 1: Analyze Non Brand Queries - Filter to look at non-brand keywords - Filter those keywords to look at "keyword text contains" and input all the modifiers - Compare these keywords to "keyword text does not contain" the modifiers Example commercial intent modifiers: Software, Services, Provider, Company, Quote, Vendor, Solution, Best, Tool, Platform, Buy, Top, Comparison. Step 2: Segment your Campaigns by Intent - Ensure commercial and non commercial keywords are not in the same campaign (i.e. do not have "employee recognition" in the same campaign as "employee recognition software"). - Control budget on the campaign level. Ensure you don't have commercial intent keywords fighting for budget with lower intent keywords that have more search volume. Step 3: Max out budget on those high intent Keywords - Grow your keyword pool by finding more commercial intent keywords from scraping relevant software directories 2. They Use Request a Demo CTA The most widely used CTA in B2B SaaS is “Request a Demo”. Unfortunately, this causes hidden psychological friction... When you request something there’s an opportunity you wont be able to have it. See IMAGE BELOW for CTA’s you should test instead. Backed by data from our portfolio. 3. They Don’t Audit Their Ad Experience From Search Term > Ad Copy > Landing Page > Form > CTA > Scheduling It ALL needs to be audited. - Search term: Google ads pretends to target by keywords, but the truth in how you show up is in your search term report. Audit and understand this first. - Ad Copy: Don’t give Google control of your messaging. They will keyword stuff your ads and that won't work. - Landing Page: Is it fast? Does it deliver on the promise of the ad? - Form: Is your form too long? Can you do a two column layout for field? Does it have copy to entice you to convert? How long is the trial? Are you using an enrichment tool? - CTA: What is the copy on your form submit button? Can you be more compelling or creative? - Scheduling: What happens after they convert? Can they schedule a call? Do they have to wait for sales? Are they added to a retargeting campaign to support your lifecycle conversion rates? TAKEAWAY: Anyone who says Google Ads don’t work anymore is lying to you. It’s poorly managed campaigns that don’t work. So, go be your prospect. Experience your ads. Be critical. Ask yourself... “If I had to narrow my search to three brands while searching on Google would I choose ours?” Then run AZ tests, not AB tests. And GET OUT of the platform. Great ads are optimized for the wild, not in platform

If I only had 3 months to grow B2B SaaS startup, here’s what I would do: Rules: - You have 3 months - Need to impact revenue - Spend under $200/mo Here's what I would do: 1. Create a “laser focused” account list: a. Go to Keyplay b. Build out Sales 200 → 200 companies I want to sell into c. Import the list into Sales Navigator and run a lead search d. That should give me ~700 people. 2. Analyze 10 Closed Won / Lost deals a. Upload the transcripts of 10 Closed Won deals into ChatGPT b. Prompt: Analyze the key reasons why prospects bought from us in these deals. Organize and rank them c. Upload the transcripts of 10 Closed Won deals into ChatGPT d. Prompt: Analyze the key reasons why prospects didn’t buy from us in these deals. Organize and rank them 3. Design a “mini-offer” (cold friendly) a. Use the two insights above to design a mini offer. A mini offer is something that your prospects see and say “I need this right now”. In the early stages, this isn’t usually your product. Your standard “book a demo” or “let’s get on a call” isn’t going to cut it (Some ideas to get you started are in the pdf 👇🏽) Once you have that, you can… 4. Outbound to get mini offer out a. Use lemlist or Closely to warm up some email domains ($100/mo) b. Create a sequence across LinkedIn, email and calling for three lists: > Warm companies > Cold folks that are 2nd degree connections to anyone at our startup > Cold folks that are not 2nd degree connections c. Manually send the sequence to warm d. Use Closely to send the sequence to cold prospects across LinkedIn and email 5. Content for air cover I’d pick LinkedIn as my primary “PR” channel. When someone sees something from you, the first thing they do is go to your LinkedIn profile and see what you talk about. To provide “air cover” for the outbound campaign, I would create inbound content across 3 pillars: > Value Driven Content > Curation Driven Content > Founder and Employee Led Content (details in the pdf below👇🏽) 5. Set up tracking, analytics and automation a. Set up Google Analytics, Hotjar and connect to CRM b. Use Miro / Funnelytics to map out the entire funnel c. Find and map out all the “dead-ends” d. Pick 3 key metrics to track across the funnel e. Automate follow up email, calendar scheduling and website chatbot -- Summary: 1. Create a “laser focused” account list: 2. Analyze 10 Closed Won / Lost deals 3. Design a “mini-offer” (has to be cold friendly) 4. Inbound for air cover 5. Set up tracking, analytics and automation — P.S. If you want to workbook below with all the exercises and tools, comment “canvas” and I will DM you the entire playbook on how to do this (must be connected or following)

scaling is b2b saas is never easy. we started at $0. no leads. no pipeline. no traction. here's how we built a $100k+ sales pipeline in 90 days using email outbound campaigns. step 1: we built a clear icp (ideal customer profile). we focused on a niche where we knew we could win. step 2: we found targeted leads. we used linkedin & tools like apollo to gather verified emails. quality over quantity - it saved us time. step 3: we wrote cold emails that stood out. short. personalized. problem/solution-focused. subject lines were direct, not clickbait. example: "struggling to [problem]? here's what worked for [similar company]." step 4: we automated follow-ups. most deals happened by the 2nd/3rd email. no follow-up = no sales. in 3 months: - sent 10,000 emails - 154 replied - 78 discovery calls booked - $100k+ in sales pipeline email is still a goldmine if done right. don’t overthink it - start small and iterate. what’s stopping you?

How we generated €350K ARR with 70% meeting-to-close rate. From one of the smallest markets in Europe!   My last name gives it away, I’m Greek. So when a Greek brand came to us, I honestly didn’t just want us to win… I wanted us to make them a category leader.   Before we stepped in, this HR/recruitment SaaS relied only on LinkedIn connection requests: →Wait until the prospect accepts. →Then send a DM. →Repeat.   Which is fine as a supporting channel but as the main growth engine? Way too slow!   Here’s what we changed: 1️⃣ Email Campaigns from Scratch They’d never run Outbound email before. We built messaging flows from the ground up, launched campaigns, and expanded their TAM a huge win in a market as small as Greece + Cyprus.   2️⃣ Localized Greek Market Campaigns From June 2024, we ran targeted campaigns in Greek, positioning them as the dominant local player and winning high-ARR deals.   3️⃣ Layered LinkedIn on Top By October, we improved their LinkedIn messaging flow and ran it in parallel with email, multiplying touchpoints and reply rates.   4️⃣ Smart Recontact Campaigns We didn’t let warm leads go cold. We re-engaged: “No replies” with new angles. “Not interested” with fresh value props. “Showed interest but didn’t convert” with personalized follow-ups.   The results: ✅ €350K+ ARR added in 10 months ✅ 70% meeting-to-close rate ✅ Expanded market presence in Greece + Cyprus   When you combine multi-channel outbound with market-specific strategy, even “small” markets can produce massive wins.   #outbound #b2bsales #leadgeneration #saas #growthmarketing #gtm

We ran a micro email campaign last week to just 400 leads—and booked 3 enterprise-level meetings. Here’s exactly how we did it, step by step ⬇️ We’ve been experimenting with micro campaigns—highly targeted, small-scale outbound campaigns—and the results have been 🔥. For this campaign, we specifically targeted followers of a competitor's LinkedIn page. Here’s the exact process we used: Step 1: Build the list We used a tool (still in beta—DM me if you want details 👀) to scrape the followers of our competitor’s LinkedIn page. The tool provided us with an 8,000-contact CSV file. Step 2: Filter the list Imported the list into Clay to filter down to contacts who fit our ICP (in this case, sales leaders), got us to 440 highly relevant prospects. Step 3: Enrich the data Used Clay email waterfall for enrichment. My go-to tool for emails is Findymail (seriously incredible—post coming soon on why I love it, but by FAR the best accuracy in terms of email addresses) Step 4: Craft the outreach Uploaded the refined list into Smartlead for sequencing. Wrote highly specific, competitor-relevant copy, because we knew they were already familiar with our competitor. Here’s the structure we used: Plain text message 1: "Saw you follow [competitor]—curious if you’ve tried video prospecting. Mind if I send you a 30-second video showing how we’re different?" Plain text message 2: Called out the competitor directly: “We differ from [competitor] in [specific way] and have helped companies like [ABC Corp] drive [X results].” Video outreach: Created a personalized video to show how we differ from the competitor using Sendspark. Step 5: Results 3 enterprise meetings booked from just 400 leads. Step 3 was the MVP (s/o Sendspark dynamic videos 🙌 ) Definitely looking at scaling these campaigns out even more over the coming weeks! Who else is running a micro campaign like this? #saas #outbound #sales