Cold email that puts sensors in engineers’ hands

A maker of membrane potentiometers and flex sensors sells to design engineers at OEMs who rarely fill in a contact form. We went to them.

Of real replies were positive: 29%
Of positive replies requested a physical sample: 57%
Bounce rate across the program: 1.2%
Positive-response rate after retargeting to founders and CTOs: 3x

Replies and sample requests are measured in the sending platform. Quotes and orders are tracked by the client’s sales team and are not included.

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[ The challenge ]

Buyers who never raise their hand

Design engineers specify a sensor once and rarely go looking for a new supplier, so inbound leads were scarce and lead tracking on the site was unreliable.

[ The challenge ]Buyers who never raise their hand

Design engineers specify a sensor once and rarely go looking for a new supplier, so inbound leads were scarce and lead tracking on the site was unreliable.

[ What we did ]

A sample-first offer, segment by segment

Built the campaign around a free sensor sample instead of a sales call
Ran industry segments one at a time (design firms, aerospace, automotive, electronics, machinery, medical devices) and kept the lists clean
Filtered out auto-replies, which were more than half of all responses, before anything reached the client
Handed every positive reply to the client’s head of sales the same day
Retargeted to founders and technical leads at small hardware and robotics companies, which produced the best response rate

[ What we did ]A sample-first offer, segment by segment

Built the campaign around a free sensor sample instead of a sales call
Ran industry segments one at a time (design firms, aerospace, automotive, electronics, machinery, medical devices) and kept the lists clean
Filtered out auto-replies, which were more than half of all responses, before anything reached the client
Handed every positive reply to the client’s head of sales the same day
Retargeted to founders and technical leads at small hardware and robotics companies, which produced the best response rate

[ The result ]

Engineers at real OEMs asking for parts

Positive replies ran at 29% of real responses, and 57% of them asked for a sample shipped to their lab. Bounce rate held at 1.2%. The final retargeting round tripled the positive-response rate.

[ The result ]Engineers at real OEMs asking for parts

Positive replies ran at 29% of real responses, and 57% of them asked for a sample shipped to their lab. Bounce rate held at 1.2%. The final retargeting round tripled the positive-response rate.

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