Beta Case Study - 2025

27 Booked Meetings.
90 Days. Zero Warm Audience.

How GrowQuikr used FirstMark Data during private beta to generate 113 inbound leads and fill SiteGeek Infotech's pipeline with international ecommerce clients.

27
Meetings booked
113
Inbound leads
2.7%
Reply rate
90
Days
GrowQuikr - Agency
SiteGeek Infotech - Client
The Brief

A web development studio. An empty international pipeline.

SiteGeek Infotech is a web development and digital solutions studio specialising in ecommerce builds - Shopify, WooCommerce, custom storefronts. They'd built a strong local reputation but their growth had stalled. Every new project was coming from referrals, and referrals were running dry.

They needed international clients. Ecommerce operators who were actively building or relaunching their online stores. Businesses early enough in the process that SiteGeek could shape the brief - not ones who had already written an RFP and were collecting quotes from five agencies.

They approached GrowQuikr, a B2B outbound agency, with a single brief: fill our calendar with qualified discovery calls from ecommerce operators outside India within 90 days.

Agency
GrowQuikr - B2B Lead Generation
Client
SiteGeek Infotech - Web Development
Target market
Ecommerce operators, US / UK / AU
Campaign duration
90 days (Q3 2025)
Tools used
FirstMark Data, Smartleads, Instantly, LinkedIn
FirstMark plan
Agency (beta access)
The Problem

Generic lists were killing deliverability and wasting budget

GrowQuikr had run ecommerce outreach campaigns before. The standard playbook was familiar: pull a list from Apollo or ZoomInfo filtered by industry and company size, load it into a cold email tool, and run a sequence. The problem was that by the time a business appeared in those databases, the opportunity window had usually closed.

A company that has been operating an ecommerce store for two years already has a development partner. They have a CMS they're committed to, a hosting setup, an agency relationship they'll only leave if something goes badly wrong. Cold outreach to established businesses at this stage converts at under 1% on a good day - and kills your sending domain if you push volume.

GrowQuikr needed to find ecommerce businesses at the moment they were registering their online presence - before the decisions were made. That's when they got early access to FirstMark Data.

The timing problem with standard B2B databases

Apollo, ZoomInfo, and similar platforms index businesses after they're established. By the time a company appears in search results, they've already made their vendor decisions. You're not reaching a prospect - you're trying to displace an incumbent. That's a fundamentally harder sale.

The Approach

Four tools. One coordinated system. Daily fresh data.

GrowQuikr built a four-layer outreach system designed to identify newly registered domains with ecommerce signals, warm decision-makers on LinkedIn before the cold email landed, and convert interest through two separate email infrastructure setups to protect deliverability.

1
FirstMark Data - Agency Beta
Daily domain intelligence - finding the right businesses at the right moment
Each morning, GrowQuikr's team logged into the FirstMark Data beta dashboard and pulled the previous day's newly registered domain data, filtered to US, UK, and Australian registrants with verified email addresses. They applied manual keyword scoring to the domain names - looking for ecommerce signals like "store", "shop", "goods", "supply", "co" suffixes, and direct-to-consumer brand naming patterns. This typically yielded 80-120 high-signal prospects per day from a total daily batch of approximately 4,000-5,000 registrants. Those contacts were tagged, exported to a CSV, and loaded into the sequencing tools the same morning. No list was older than 24 hours when outreach began.
2
LinkedIn - Warm-up Layer
Profile views and connection requests before the email arrived
For every contact where a LinkedIn profile could be identified through domain or name matching, GrowQuikr's team sent a connection request with a brief, non-salesy note. No pitch - just a reference to the domain registration and a genuine observation about what they appeared to be building. The goal was simple: when the cold email landed 24-48 hours later, the name would already be familiar. On LinkedIn, this generated an additional layer of profile view notifications that kept GrowQuikr visible without requiring a response. Roughly 34% of contacts accepted the connection request within the campaign window.
3
Smartleads - Primary Sequences
Deliverability-first cold email infrastructure for the main sequence
Smartleads handled the primary outreach sequence across four dedicated sending domains, each warmed for a minimum of three weeks before the campaign launched. The sequence was three emails: an initial contact referencing the domain registration, a value-led follow-up sharing a relevant SiteGeek case study, and a final short-form bump. Sending volume was capped at 40 emails per inbox per day to protect deliverability. Smartleads' inbox rotation spread sends across all four domains automatically. Average open rate across the campaign: 41.3%. Average reply rate: 2.4%.
4
Instantly - Secondary Sequences
Re-engagement layer for non-responders after 14 days
Contacts who had opened at least one email in Smartleads but hadn't replied were imported into Instantly after a 14-day cooling period. Instantly ran a separate two-email re-engagement sequence with different subject lines and a reframed angle - this time leading with a specific question about their ecommerce stack rather than SiteGeek's services. This second-touch approach on a separate infrastructure avoided repeat-sender fatigue and generated an additional reply rate of 0.9% on top of the primary sequence results. Combined, the two-platform approach contributed to the overall 2.7% blended reply rate without burning a single sending domain.
The Sequences

What the emails actually said

The copy strategy was built around three rules: reference the specific domain, lead with their situation not SiteGeek's services, and ask a single low-friction question. Here's how each touch was structured:

Email 1 - Smartleads (Day 1)

Subject: [theirdomain.com] - quick one

Hi [First name],

Saw you registered [domain] recently - building something in the ecom space?

We work with a few Shopify and WooCommerce stores on their site builds and have helped a handful of similar brands get from zero to live in under 6 weeks. Happy to share what that looked like if useful timing.

Worth a quick chat?

[Sender name] - SiteGeek Infotech

Email 2 - Smartleads (Day 5)

Subject: Re: [domain] - one example

Hi [First name],

Wanted to share this quickly - we recently built a DTC home goods store from scratch. They went live in 5 weeks, hit their first 50 orders in month one.

If you're still figuring out the technical side of the build, I'm happy to jump on a 15-minute call and share what we learned.

No obligation - just useful context if you're at that stage.

[Sender name]

Email 3 - Instantly re-engagement (Day 18)

Subject: Quick question about [domain]

Hi [First name],

Have you already sorted your tech stack for the build, or still deciding?

[Sender name]

Campaign Timeline

What happened over 90 days

Week 1-2 - Setup
Infrastructure, domain warming, ICP definition
Four sending domains purchased and connected to Smartleads for warming. LinkedIn profiles created for two campaign personas. ICP scoring criteria defined for FirstMark Data filtering. First batch of contacts identified but not yet contacted.
Week 3-5 - Launch
First sequences live - early replies coming in
Primary Smartleads sequences launched at controlled volume. First 11 replies received by end of week 4. 3 discovery calls booked. Open rates above 38% confirmed deliverability was healthy. LinkedIn connection acceptance rate tracked at 31%.
Week 6-8 - Scale
Volume increased, Instantly re-engagement activated
Daily contact volume increased to 90-120 new prospects from FirstMark Data. Instantly re-engagement sequences activated for week 3-4 non-responders. Reply rate stabilised at 2.6-2.8%. 14 additional meetings booked during this phase - the highest-velocity period of the campaign.
Week 9-13 - Optimise
Email 2 subject line tested, final 10 meetings booked
Subject line A/B test on Email 2 revealed "one example" outperformed "a relevant case study" by 18% on open rate. Final 10 meetings booked. Total pipeline handed to SiteGeek: 27 qualified discovery calls, 113 total inbound responses including partial-interest and timing-not-right replies that remained in a nurture sequence.
The Results

Numbers from the 90-day campaign

4,218
Total contacts identified via FirstMark Data
113
Total inbound replies received
27
Qualified discovery calls booked
41.3%
Average open rate (Smartleads)
2.7%
Blended reply rate across all sequences
0
Sending domains burned or blacklisted
Funnel stage Volume Rate Source
Daily registrants identified 4,000-5,000 / day - FirstMark Data beta
High-signal ecom prospects filtered 4,218 total ~2% of total batch Manual keyword scoring
Emails sent (all sequences) 4,218 100% Smartleads + Instantly
Emails opened 1,742 41.3% Smartleads primary
Replies received 113 2.7% Both platforms
Qualified meetings booked 27 23.9% of replies Manual qualification
Nurture pipeline (future) 86 Timing not right Ongoing sequence
"The difference with FirstMark Data was that we were reaching people who registered a domain two days ago. They don't have a developer yet. They don't have an agency yet. When your email arrives and it references their actual domain, it reads like you've been paying attention - because you have. That's what made the reply rates work. It wasn't the copy. It was the timing."
GrowQuikr - Campaign Lead, SiteGeek Infotech engagement (Beta 2025)
Key Learnings

What actually drove the results

1. Data freshness was the primary variable

GrowQuikr had run similar campaigns with Apollo data and seen reply rates of 0.8-1.2%. The jump to 2.7% on this campaign came almost entirely from the timing advantage. When prospects are contacted within 48 hours of registering a domain, the outreach feels relevant rather than random. The domain reference in the first line of every email converted open intent into replies in a way no subject line trick could replicate.

2. Two platforms protected deliverability without sacrificing volume

Running primary sequences on Smartleads and re-engagement on Instantly meant neither platform was pushing dangerous volume on any single domain. The 14-day cooling period between touches also meant prospects who were close to making a decision had more time to move - and came back into scope at exactly the right moment.

3. LinkedIn warmed the inbox before the email arrived

Contacts who had accepted a LinkedIn connection request before receiving the email replied at 4.1% compared to 1.9% for contacts who received cold email only. The pre-warm didn't require a message - just a connection request and a profile view was enough to make the sender name recognisable.

4. Short emails, one question, no attachments

Every email in the sequence was under 90 words. No attachments, no calendar links in the first email, no case study PDFs embedded in the opening message. The single ask in every email was a yes/no question. Complexity kills reply rates - especially with new business owners who are already overwhelmed with decisions.

The beta advantage

This campaign ran during FirstMark Data's private beta in 2025, before the platform launched publicly. GrowQuikr had exclusive early access to the data feed and was one of fewer than 20 agencies testing the platform. The competitive advantage of reaching newly registered businesses before any other agency was doing it at scale was a significant contributor to the results. That early-mover advantage is now available to all FirstMark Data Agency plan subscribers.

Run the same playbook for your clients

FirstMark Data Agency plan gives you daily access to newly registered domain contacts, bulk export, and daily alerts - everything GrowQuikr used to build SiteGeek's pipeline. 30-day free trial included.

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