Who is the client?

Scoutbee uses AI to connect buyers with suppliers at scale, with the goal of expanding its supplier database quickly and consistently. Their core business is a “networking as a service” platform that connects ready to purchase buyers with suppliers across multiple industries.

Their network of buyers and investors includes major global brands such as Walmart, Unilever, Schneider Electric, and Bacardi. Their growth model is built around speed and scale, and outbound email is a primary lever for onboarding new suppliers.

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What was the problem?

Scoutbee was primed for expansion, but the outbound motion they had in place was not reliably converting suppliers at the volume they needed. The team was struggling to use outbound email to sign up suppliers at scale. Engagement was low and the number of meetings booked was below expectations.

On top of that, they did not have a repeatable process that could consistently hit the conversion rates required for growth, and their existing email infrastructure was not built for the scale of project based outreach they wanted to run.

They also had a clear performance target. They wanted rigorous A and B testing that would increase supplier sign up conversion rates to at least 1.5 percent. That meant improving list quality, optimizing campaigns, and leveraging a more advanced toolset for lead generation.

At the same time, they needed a major infrastructure upgrade so they could manage high volume campaigns without hurting deliverability, while still staying tightly aligned to their Ideal Customer Profiles.

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The Approach we took:

• We started with a deep TAM and ICP analysis so the plan was based on Scoutbee’s real ICP features, market position, past initiatives that worked, and the way the team was organized internally. This gave us the guardrails for what to test and what to scale, rather than relying on guesswork.
• We built a highly targeted, scalable database engine that started from a short list of domains Scoutbee’s discovery team provided weekly. From that narrow input, we identified thousands of lookalike companies and the right contacts that matched their ICP guidelines.
• To reach scale without losing quality, we used Clay as the central workflow layer, supported by Ocean.io, Apollo, and Sales Navigator, plus OpenAI for automation and classification. We also used scrapers and data utilities including Zenrows, SerperDev, and The Companies API, and we ran email verification using tools such as Findymail, Lead Magic, and Prospeo so the system could scale without sacrificing deliverability.
• We engineered the email infrastructure needed for safe volume by creating, setting up, and warming a large sending environment with 147 inboxes across 49 domains. The goal was simple: protect deliverability, avoid spam filters, and support high volume demand without the usual breakdown that happens when teams try to scale too fast on weak infrastructure.
• We treated outbound like a testing lab, not a guessing game by running an intensive 22 day testing phase from July 11th to August 1st, 2024. During the initial test window, the campaigns produced 88 conversions from more than 11,600 emails sent.

• The testing was not just about copy tweaks. It helped us identify which value propositions and ICP angles created the highest conversion intent. One of the key learnings was finding high impact conversion keywords, and in some campaigns we saw positive reply rates as high as 6 percent.
• We connected execution, reply handling, and reporting into one operational system so the team could move with inbound speed even though this was outbound. Replies from Instantly were routed into a dedicated Slack channel so SDRs received immediate notifications. SDRs followed detailed SOPs and managed lead information inside a structured Google Sheet that contained the details needed for fast follow up, including work email, reply text, phone numbers, and LinkedIn profile URLs. In parallel, campaign and project performance was centralized in Airtable so Scoutbee had real time reporting by project, with weekly tracking of sign ups per project, total emails sent, and emails sent per project. Leads were added and updated in HubSpot in real time so nothing got lost between outreach and follow up.

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Results:

In two months, Scoutbee generated 296 supplier sign ups and 901 qualified leads. The program increased the supplier sign up conversion rate by 521 percent versus their previous outbound campaigns.

Beyond the numbers, the team saved significant manual SDR time because the workflow routed positive replies instantly, centralized lead context, and made follow up fast and consistent.