#332: How Domitille de Saint-Exupéry (CMO at Lemlist) Turned $1.2M into $31M in New ARR

#332 | Dave is joined by Domi de Saint-Exupery, CMO at Lemlist, a bootstrapped $40M ARR sales engagement platform, to break down exactly how she turned $1.2M in marketing spend into $31M in new ARR in 2025. Domi shares the full breakdown of every channel, agency, influencer strategy, and partnership play that drove results. This includes how they went from $0 to $500K in paid ads, why partnerships are the most underrated B2B growth channel, how they built a micro-influencer program, and what AI use cases are actually working (and which are overrated). If you want real numbers and real playbooks, this one's for you.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - Introduction: $1.2M in spend, $31M in new ARR
  
• (03:36) - What Lemlist does and how the company got to $40M ARR
  
• (06:51) - Going from $0 to $500K in paid ads: what triggered the shift
  
• (11:06) - How to execute paid ads well: outsourcing vs. in-house, and scaling by channel
  
• (17:21) - LinkedIn ads creative: why "on-brand and safe" was the wrong approach
  
• (21:51) - Mistakes made in paid: Snapchat, Spotify, and channels that didn't work
  
• (25:21) - The micro-influencer playbook: how to find, brief, and measure creators
  
• (35:59) - How influencer content compounds with paid ads and outbound (the Julio story)
  
• (41:29) - Partnerships: why $450K went here and why it's the most underrated B2B channel
  
• (49:59) - AI in marketing: what's overrated (content generation) and what's actually working

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Dave [0:00:01]: You're listening to The Dave Gerhardt Show.

Dave [0:00:02]: My guess on this episode is Domi de Saint-Exupéry,.

Dave [0:00:19]: She is the CMO at Lemlist and Clap.

Dave [0:00:22]: They're accompanying the B2B sales space, and we talk about how she turned one point two million dollars of marketing spend into thirty one million dollars of new Arr.

Dave [0:00:32]: We break down the whole thing.

Dave [0:00:33]: Talk about all the channels, agencies, people, tools that you invested in to do it.

Dave [0:00:38]: You're gonna love this episode.

Dave [0:00:39]: If you want tactics, specifics.

Dave [0:00:41]: This is the episode for you.

Dave [0:00:43]: Enjoy my conversation with Domi.

Dave [0:00:45]: Can you start with the background Lemlist is, like this interesting company that I only know from from the Internet.

Dave [0:00:52]: And so I wanna I wanna go into all these stuff that you wrote, but tell me about the setup of the company?

Dave [0:00:57]: So there's...

Dave [0:00:58]: Actually, I'm not even gonna lead you with the question.

Dave [0:01:00]: I wanna hear you point it.

Dave [0:01:01]: You are the CMO.

Domi [0:01:03]: Yeah.

Domi [0:01:03]: Of course.

Domi [0:01:04]: So basically, Lemlist is a bootstrap, forty million Arr sales engagement platform, and it helps, like B2B startups Crush Ad outbound, basically.

Domi [0:01:15]: And we recently acquired Clap.

Domi [0:01:18]: Don't know if you...

Domi [0:01:18]: If you've seen the cyber, like, on the Internet or in My Linkedin post, but it's like, much smaller company, two million Arr r, conversation intelligence platform for sales team.

Domi [0:01:29]: And and, yes, that's basically who we are.

Domi [0:01:32]: I don't know how much are

Dave [0:01:34]: so your focus is selling...

Dave [0:01:35]: Like you sell software to sales is the as the customer.

Domi [0:01:39]: Exactly.

Domi [0:01:39]: Exactly.

Dave [0:01:41]: And what have you...

Dave [0:01:41]: What have you been doing?

Dave [0:01:42]: How did you how did you get to this role where you're your CMO of this forty million dollar Arr Saas company.

Dave [0:01:48]: I don't want the whole career story.

Dave [0:01:50]: This is where people are, like, they they...

Dave [0:01:52]: They're, like, just, you know,

Domi [0:01:54]: they start...

Domi [0:01:54]: So I sorry It's cool and then...

Dave [0:01:56]: Yeah.

Dave [0:01:56]: And then Yeah.

Domi [0:01:58]: Yeah.

Domi [0:01:58]: I can tell, actually, like, I've been fifteen years doing, like, b to marketing tech and, like, building marketing teams in, in Scale, basically, but, yeah, there is a funny story behind, like, how I end up at Lend.

Domi [0:02:12]: Like, the founder, g, like, reached out.

Domi [0:02:14]: I think it was, like, three years ago, and, basically, he wanted to discuss marketing and vice.

Domi [0:02:20]: And, like, it was at the very beginning when Lend was moving from a hundred percent self served motion, P motion to sales lead.

Domi [0:02:28]: And as I was doing marketing in a sales company, he was like, okay.

Domi [0:02:31]: Let's, you know, discuss an exchange, like, vice and and, yeah, it started like this and a few months later, he offered the job basically.

Domi [0:02:38]: And after saying no.

Domi [0:02:41]: A few months ago, I I can buy it.

Domi [0:02:44]: It was like you know what?

Domi [0:02:45]: It's time for me to to step out of my comfort zone and, like, start the lending curve again, I guess.

Domi [0:02:50]: And, yeah, I I finally said yes and change my mind and here I am.

Dave [0:02:55]: Okay.

Dave [0:02:55]: So the reason that we reached out to ask you to come on the podcast.

Dave [0:02:58]: Is because everybody's always in our webinars and chats and Dms and everybody wants marketers want examples.

Dave [0:03:06]: They want real stories This is why you're Linkedin content.

Dave [0:03:10]: I think you're a great person to follow.

Dave [0:03:12]: I'll have to add you to my list of people when they say, Who should I follow.

Dave [0:03:15]: You know how you know people, but my brain is like, oh, my goodness.

Dave [0:03:18]: So so put...

Dave [0:03:19]: We'll put you on?

Domi [0:03:20]: Please do.

Domi [0:03:20]: Please say.

Dave [0:03:21]: We'll we'll put you on the this.

Dave [0:03:22]: But you wrote this post, and we wanna, like, we need to talk more specifics about examples.

Dave [0:03:27]: People don't care where you went to college if you did college if you worked at Salesforce for nine years.

Dave [0:03:32]: Nobody cares.

Dave [0:03:32]: They wanna know, tell me specific things you're doing because I'm doing marketing right now, And I wanna have the podcast that you listened to and you're like, oh, man.

Dave [0:03:40]: I listened to this podcast, and I got this idea, and I tried this email that this person suggested in and it worked.

Dave [0:03:45]: Right?

Dave [0:03:45]: Or.

Dave [0:03:45]: And, about a month ago, you wrote this post and he said, we spent one point two million on marketing in twenty twenty five at Lemlist a generated thirty one million in new Arr, and today, I'm gonna share the exact breakdown, and I'm gonna try to draft off of that and we're gonna turn that into this podcast episode, but you just mentioned to me that the company is now forty million Arr.

Dave [0:04:06]: Which means that you added thirty one.

Dave [0:04:08]: So did you...

Dave [0:04:09]: Did Lemlist add thirty million in written this whole thing on its own is like an incredible story.

Dave [0:04:16]: Did the company go from nine million to forty million in the last year?

Domi [0:04:20]: No.

Domi [0:04:20]: No.

Domi [0:04:21]: It's...

Domi [0:04:21]: So it's new Arr, and it's for for Lemlist and Clap.

Domi [0:04:25]: And then obviously, like, we had, I think a sixty percent year growth, so it's pretty pretty huge, but still, like, a lot of company.

Domi [0:04:32]: We also have to fight churn and which is of, actually the reason why we are making this move from, self serve to sales lead and, like, a big moving market and serving right now, like, mid market and startups.

Domi [0:04:45]: And and so, yeah, that's that's how the math basically works.

Dave [0:04:50]: Okay.

Dave [0:04:50]: So you...

Dave [0:04:50]: You've done an awesome job in our in our prep doc.

Dave [0:04:52]: I gotta say you're already my favorite all time guests because you put the most amount of effort into the prep, which I feel like I can totally understand your personality type just having gone through the dock, which is amazing.

Dave [0:05:02]: So I'm gonna Maybe let you drive.

Dave [0:05:04]: How...

Dave [0:05:05]: Where should we go from here?

Dave [0:05:06]: We spend a million...

Dave [0:05:07]: We...

Dave [0:05:07]: Was said one point two million of marketing in twenty twenty five at Lemlist it generated thirty one million in new Arr where we start?

Domi [0:05:13]: I mean, I like the way you put fruit in the dock, like, maybe, like starting from the biggest spend spend part, and then, you know, we can break break it down from there, maybe?

Dave [0:05:24]: Okay.

Dave [0:05:24]: Let's do that.

Dave [0:05:24]: So you went from no ads in twenty twenty four to spending half a million dollars in twenty twenty five, which drove four million in first touch Arr.

Dave [0:05:32]: What was the...

Dave [0:05:33]: Where did that trigger come from?

Dave [0:05:35]: What what made you say we're gonna go from spending nothing to five hundred thousand dollars on ads this year?

Domi [0:05:42]: I think it's very much linked to what we've already like talked about.

Domi [0:05:44]: Because the the trigger that pushed lend from zero dollar in paid ads to, like, five hundred k a year was basically realizing that paid that, let's just you capture existing demand and and move fast on a new target audience, which is what we were trying to do moving from this, like, founder audience to more, like, a sales within a mid market companies.

Domi [0:06:09]: And, yeah, when paid is basically, you know, like, executed well technically speaking and and sits of course, on top of a strong positioning.

Domi [0:06:17]: It just give you things most channels want, which is speed and and control.

Domi [0:06:22]: And I think that's what we're looking at.

Domi [0:06:24]: So, yeah, that's that basically was the trigger.

Dave [0:06:27]: Okay.

Dave [0:06:27]: What you said is actually the most important part.

Dave [0:06:30]: When it's executed when paid is executed well and it's on top of strong positioning.

Dave [0:06:34]: So can we can we kinda unpack each of each of what each of those first, what was the positioning?

Dave [0:06:39]: Let's start with maybe, like, the the offer and the the thing that you were using paid to promote and let's talk about, like, what does that mean to execute paid well.

Domi [0:06:48]: Yeah.

Domi [0:06:48]: Again, I think there was just those two parts.

Domi [0:06:50]: Paid is, can be complex, technically speaking, especially, if you go on different platforms, You know, you have, like, if you do social, you have Linkedin, you have Facebook, and then obviously, you have Google ads and bing ads, and so each platform has their own, and you need to, like, master, you know, like, repetition and bidding, tactics and so on.

Domi [0:07:08]: And so for that part.

Domi [0:07:09]: And we basically decided that we didn't have this knowledge internally, this technical knowledge.

Domi [0:07:15]: And so we outsourced this part to someone who was, like, much better.

Domi [0:07:19]: And also, you know, who was eager to do this Like, it's kind of kind of something like quite...

Domi [0:07:24]: You repeat a lot during a day, and we wanted to this.

Domi [0:07:27]: But still in house, we would keep again, the the positioning and the messaging and and the tactics and and, like, the the person basically managing this person would be linking all our ads campaigns to our main product launches and, like, big Gt momentum, for instance and make sure that we will always have something on point and to sell to the market, and so that's basically how we we work on this.

Dave [0:07:55]: Where the ads trying to drive people into the into the product?

Dave [0:07:58]: Or was it, like, a a lead magnet, like, hey, get this ebook on how to do cold outbound?

Domi [0:08:04]: I would say that we we leveraged I'd mostly to drive either to the product through the sign up because we have a free trial or even directly to the demo and to our sales team because, again, the objective with ads was to go after this this new audience and and feed our sales with with pipeline.

Domi [0:08:23]: Yep.

Domi [0:08:24]: This is cool because it's something cool that you can do with ads, basically, you could target intent on Aca, and you can bid on competitors soon we'll probably be able be able to, you know, like, to be done or to do ads on L.

Domi [0:08:36]: And so this is obviously, like a strong premise.

Domi [0:08:39]: Right?

Domi [0:08:39]: To to look at.

Dave [0:08:40]: Except for ant.

Dave [0:08:41]: Did you see their ad?

Domi [0:08:42]: Yeah.

Domi [0:08:42]: Yeah I mean, what add, it's amazing.

Domi [0:08:44]: Do do you do you happen to watch black mirror?

Dave [0:08:48]: No.

Dave [0:08:48]: But tell me.

Domi [0:08:50]: Okay.

Domi [0:08:50]: No.

Domi [0:08:50]: Because I thought they ads, like, really recalls of a black mirror aps episode that's called, like, common people where basically yeah.

Domi [0:08:56]: The is this technology that makes people saying ads live, and it was, like, exactly the the for

Dave [0:09:05]: amazing.

Dave [0:09:05]: What's funny to I I saw that, and it, I just thought it was from a marketer standpoint and it's kinda like, when to products are so similar.

Dave [0:09:13]: It's so hard to figure out the differentiator, and it's like, well we're...

Domi [0:09:19]: Yeah.

Dave [0:09:19]: We're better.

Dave [0:09:19]: We're faster.

Dave [0:09:20]: We have this feature and it was kinda like someone just must have come up with, like, oh, here's an angle.

Dave [0:09:25]: Like, they're releasing ads, that's gonna be our, like, angle to just shift the conversation to our direction.

Dave [0:09:31]: I don't know if it was factor or not, but I...

Dave [0:09:33]: Think that's what's that's what's fun about marketing to me is, like, finding those little opportunities instead of saying, like, well what we do this thing two point three times faster.

Dave [0:09:41]: I talked about...

Dave [0:09:43]: I've been talking about this ad a lot, so apologies to people who've listened to the the the last app to episode probably, But there's a...

Dave [0:09:49]: Ramp is running these podcast ads, and they're talking about how hard it is to get an engineering job at ramp.

Dave [0:09:56]: They're like, you know, I don't know what the the the math is.

Dave [0:09:58]: I don't know what the ad is, but it's like, they only accept point zero zero zero one percent of the engineers it that apply to a job and the whole ad is about...

Dave [0:10:07]: It makes you think like, wow.

Dave [0:10:08]: Man, they must have like, the best product then.

Dave [0:10:11]: If they have the best engineers, and I just thought it was a interesting example of of positioning.

Domi [0:10:16]: Yeah.

Domi [0:10:16]: That's genius.

Domi [0:10:16]: I didn't know this one.

Dave [0:10:18]: On this paid thing.

Dave [0:10:19]: So you wanna scale up, like, you're ready to scale up this channel, but a lot of people I'll see in our community.

Dave [0:10:24]: They...

Dave [0:10:25]: Will hear this story now.

Dave [0:10:26]: You went from zero to to five hundred thousand dollars most of the marketers are gonna say, well, I'm not just gonna dump five hundred thousand dollars into this channel?

Domi [0:10:35]: It's not.

Dave [0:10:35]: Did you have a scale up plan?

Dave [0:10:36]: Did you go into this?

Dave [0:10:37]: A lot of people ask, like, how much...

Dave [0:10:39]: You know, what do I need to get started before I'm gonna go hire this...

Dave [0:10:42]: This person and I'm gonna go spend this money on it.

Dave [0:10:45]: Like, what was the what was the path to to ramping up?

Domi [0:10:48]: Yeah.

Domi [0:10:48]: Obviously, you don't...

Domi [0:10:49]: You don't, like, go from zero to five hundred in just a few weeks or even if month, you start small, you iterate and then you accelerate.

Domi [0:10:57]: I would say that first, you choose one channel because it it takes time to master different channel.

Domi [0:11:03]: So first, we started with Because, again, it's probably the strongest channel.

Domi [0:11:07]: I would say at least for consumer and the market because you can target like

Dave [0:11:12]: What's Aca.

Domi [0:11:14]: Giant acquisition.

Domi [0:11:14]: So Google it's basically or being asked.

Domi [0:11:16]: Okay.

Domi [0:11:16]: Because you just beat on intent and people like requests.

Domi [0:11:19]: So it's probably a bit easier to master than social ads where if you wanna be good at targeting, especially in B2b to b, you need to have like, retargeting motions and and so Ab and and and so on, especially if you're...

Dave [0:11:32]: Because it's not as direct response as, like, I search.

Dave [0:11:35]: Okay.

Domi [0:11:36]: Exactly.

Domi [0:11:36]: So, yeah, we started with with with Google Ads, we started one geo and when we extended to other geo, and then we launched Linkedin ads, and in Linkedin ads, we launched only, like, you know, like, sponsored advertising in the feed, and then we we started over formats, like a sponsored email And so, yeah, obviously, like, you go leo by little like this.

Domi [0:11:58]: And you need, like, to have, like, sprints of iterations.

Domi [0:12:01]: And every time we had, like, hypothesis that we would validate for Vp of grove and obviously need a paid guide manager, like, okay, if we spend like ten gram, and we get this type of response, then it means like, it's responding well.

Domi [0:12:15]: And obviously, the more you launch the more you can compare and and proof test like, the different channel between themselves, which is always super useful.

Domi [0:12:23]: So, yeah, This is how how we did it.

Dave [0:12:26]: And did you bring on this paid person from from the beginning?

Dave [0:12:29]: Or did you do some of this test and learn in house then get to a certain point and then scale and bring in someone?

Domi [0:12:34]: I mean, we started on our own first, and then we realized that when a budget was going higher.

Domi [0:12:40]: We definitely needed let someone super expert.

Domi [0:12:43]: And as we didn't want to hire yet someone, we decided to outsource this this skill, and we we basically looked for the pay that freelancer.

Domi [0:12:52]: And I think you you had this question about, like, how do you choose what skill you know you will outsource versus you will you will hire and I think it's it's differently, like, linked to this for us, we try to outsource obviously to do risk hiring because hiring takes time and until you've really proven a channel, you might not want to hire someone.

Domi [0:13:14]: And also, it's a fast track to basically, learning and and and impact because obviously, like, ramping up someone in your team on the new channel or, like, will take time.

Domi [0:13:25]: It could be a good bet, but to begin with, I think, like, working with someone and having this person working with someone external is probably the best at least for the first years, And last reason why we could, like, keep sourcing would be just to help stay focused on what matters.

Domi [0:13:42]: I don't want them to, basically, like, do, like, the same little task over and over.

Domi [0:13:48]: I them to focus on high impact us and and more strategic stuff.

Dave [0:13:54]: Was it a no brainer to scale this up?

Dave [0:13:56]: Or did you have to go ask for more budget and were there questions around proving that this is working.

Domi [0:14:02]: I mean, we got lucky because it worked.

Domi [0:14:03]: So when the...

Domi [0:14:05]: You know, we had, like, those dashboards that leadership was was looking at, and they basically saw two things first that we were starting not to be dependent anymore on just brand acquisition.

Domi [0:14:15]: Which is good because it's always good to diversify your acquisition.

Domi [0:14:19]: Obviously, you don't want to be a hundred percent, like, a dependent on paid because the day, the money runs out then.

Domi [0:14:25]: It's came over, but being also like, a hundred percent depending on brand is not good because you can't control Brand.

Domi [0:14:33]: Basically, like, if someone tells you, like, oh, Domi, I want you to, like, double acquisition next month.

Domi [0:14:38]: And the only thing is I I have is Brand like, what what do I do?

Domi [0:14:41]: Like, Brand is, like, the hollow effect of a bit everything and isn't

Dave [0:14:45]: This is, like, this happens all this time is like, well, I I run a community now.

Dave [0:14:49]: So as I will just use this example.

Dave [0:14:50]: Someone's like.

Dave [0:14:51]: We got mentioned in Exit Five and like, we got a bunch of new deals, like, from that.

Dave [0:14:54]: Like, how do we do more of that And, like, that's the thing.

Dave [0:14:56]: You can't...

Dave [0:14:57]: There's no, like, button to, like, control and do more...

Domi [0:15:00]: Exactly.

Domi [0:15:00]: There's no magic button.

Dave [0:15:03]: So you said you said, I like this.

Dave [0:15:04]: Said search search works extremely well when the market is mature.

Dave [0:15:07]: People actively searching for what you offer.

Dave [0:15:09]: That's the case for most of what you're doing.

Dave [0:15:11]: But when it's not, you needed to go more upstream, and this is educational ads, thought leadership, sponsored Linkedin post from the Ceo or industry creators, let's spend a minute and talk about that because that is it's still paid, but it is so different than someone searching for a specific term because here, the creative is often the...

Dave [0:15:29]: The creative plus the offer or often the variable for success.

Domi [0:15:33]: M.

Domi [0:15:33]: Yes.

Domi [0:15:34]: So just talking about...

Domi [0:15:35]: There are two things that are pretty linked and there is, like, employee cash see and then influence marketing, it's basically the same mechanism is just one is done with your own employee and the offer is done with external people that basically you pay for.

Domi [0:15:49]: I think both are extremely interest thing.

Dave [0:15:52]: Oh, so those are in your when you talk about paid, like, influencers.

Dave [0:15:54]: Influencer marketing is in that bucket.

Domi [0:15:57]: Oh, the the five hundred grand was just for, Ppc So, you know, like, linkedin, but no.

Domi [0:16:03]: Influences one of a was another bucket.

Dave [0:16:06]: Okay.

Dave [0:16:06]: Let's let's let's go to Blizzard in a second.

Dave [0:16:07]: I just wanna cap out because you expanded beyond Google Adwords as an example, and you are, you know, you mentioned running ads in the news feed on on Linkedin.

Dave [0:16:16]: What was the process for creative there.

Dave [0:16:18]: Like, what what work?

Dave [0:16:18]: Because my take on this is I see a lot of ads that just look like ads.

Dave [0:16:22]: They looked like this kind of stock standard a b b.

Dave [0:16:25]: It's like a Pdf, and it looks Yucky, and I don't know whoever clicks on that.

Domi [0:16:29]: Yeah.

Domi [0:16:29]: Do that?

Domi [0:16:30]: That was the funny story, like, when we started, like, launching ads on on Linkedin, you've required, like, some media, like, visuals of video, and we tried doing some stuff with Ai and some stuff we're good, but we also happen to have, like, a designer that's a designer team that is really cool with two brand designers.

Domi [0:16:48]: And so they started, like doing ads for us based on our brief and brainstorm swing with the team.

Domi [0:16:52]: And every time they would like, come up with those beautiful ads, but, like, very own brand, very safe.

Domi [0:16:58]: And I was like, no.

Domi [0:16:58]: No.

Domi [0:16:59]: I wanted to have fun.

Domi [0:17:00]: Like, like, it's it's the...

Domi [0:17:01]: Really, like, probably the only not the only part, but fully one of the channel where you can definitely have.

Domi [0:17:06]: And I don't care if it's not on brand.

Domi [0:17:08]: I don't care if you don't see the blue of lend or the pink of Clap.

Domi [0:17:11]: Like just like, make it fun, use f whatever you want.

Domi [0:17:15]: I want to try a lot of things and catch people attention, and I don't want it to look like a cover of a B2b book, you know.

Domi [0:17:22]: So, yeah, definitely we agree with you on on that take.

Dave [0:17:26]: Who who did the creative in house or do you had somebody?

Domi [0:17:29]: Yeah.

Domi [0:17:29]: Mostly in house

Dave [0:17:31]: or Ai.

Domi [0:17:31]: And again, like, we we also tried some Ai like, a tool to generate cola ads and we are doing both, like, a mix of Ai stuff and thinks things like just created by our in house brand designers.

Dave [0:17:44]: It's an interesting thing that always happens, which is, like, we're...

Dave [0:17:47]: We wanna run ads for our company and so we make ads that look like...

Dave [0:17:51]: It's like, when everybody used to have, like, the banners in your email signature?

Domi [0:17:55]: Yeah.

Dave [0:17:56]: How do you shake that within team.

Dave [0:17:57]: A lot a lot of peopLemlistening, you know, they are, like, marketers at bigger companies.

Dave [0:18:00]: They got a creative director.

Dave [0:18:02]: The ads have to go out in a certain way?

Dave [0:18:03]: Yeah.

Dave [0:18:04]: Always think about one of my favorite books was, like, og advertising he talks about, like, I really care.

Dave [0:18:09]: I don't really care how anyone feels about the ad.

Dave [0:18:12]: I I I wanna know that the ad made the cash register ring.

Dave [0:18:15]: Like, did it work.

Dave [0:18:16]: And we you said something important there.

Dave [0:18:18]: Which is attention.

Dave [0:18:19]: Is this thing gonna get attention?

Dave [0:18:22]: Like, it was like, do you actually...

Dave [0:18:23]: When you go and make the ads, do you actually go to Linkedin, scroll through the feed and think, like, what I click on this ad?

Dave [0:18:28]: Is this gonna interrupt the pattern here?

Domi [0:18:30]: Yeah.

Domi [0:18:30]: Yeah.

Domi [0:18:31]: Definitely.

Domi [0:18:31]: We we have this, like, a library notion where everyone in the team puts, like, benchmark of ad they like, and they say why they like this ad.

Domi [0:18:40]: There wasn't really this...

Domi [0:18:41]: We are right now testing a new Ai tool and basically, it allows you to to create those really cool ads where it feels like whatever you have on your ad is is getting out of the screen if that makes sense?

Dave [0:18:54]: Oh, yeah Just cook from Vector showed us and like that the other day.

Dave [0:18:58]: It's awesome.

Domi [0:18:59]: Yeah.

Domi [0:18:59]: Awesome.

Domi [0:18:59]: So it's...

Domi [0:19:00]: It's definitely this.

Domi [0:19:00]: It's like, inter interrupting the pattern.

Domi [0:19:02]: I think ads a department.

Dave [0:19:05]: Is eric...

Dave [0:19:05]: Is that...

Dave [0:19:05]: What what can you shout out that tool so people can check it out.

Dave [0:19:08]: Do you know what it is?

Domi [0:19:10]: We tried a bunch.

Domi [0:19:11]: I will let you know.

Domi [0:19:12]: I'm not even sure what it was cold.

Domi [0:19:14]: But...

Dave [0:19:16]: Alright.

Dave [0:19:16]: Go to add your Ai, just copy just at to paste this in after whoever's whoever's is listening to this.

Dave [0:19:22]: Okay.

Dave [0:19:23]: So paid working, you're doing more of it.

Dave [0:19:25]: Any mistakes that you that you made if you could look back over last year and just like, man I wish we would have learned faster if I didn't waste three months doing this or did everything just worked out of the gate and next next topic.

Domi [0:19:37]: We tried the some platforms that he didn't work at for us.

Domi [0:19:40]: We wanted to be a bit creative, and we tried, like, snapchat ads.

Domi [0:19:44]: We tried spotify ads.

Domi [0:19:45]: Like, I remember, like, we kind of...

Domi [0:19:47]: We we were, like, one one afternoon that this to you and we recording our own voices doing, like, some some spotify ads.

Domi [0:19:54]: Those didn't really work out.

Domi [0:19:57]: I I think, like, it's it's hard to to do b marketing on, like, very consumer channels, and it probably, like, takes a lot of a good tactical setup.

Domi [0:20:08]: I I think we didn't, like, crack it yet, but...

Domi [0:20:11]: Yeah.

Dave [0:20:12]: What plans you have for for this year?

Dave [0:20:14]: Like, how might you expand this?

Dave [0:20:16]: If you're gonna double down on this?

Dave [0:20:17]: What does that look like?

Dave [0:20:18]: Is it just more?

Domi [0:20:19]: I guess, there are two things.

Domi [0:20:21]: First when I try new markets, because ads are, again, a an incredible way to learn fast about new markets.

Domi [0:20:28]: For instance, we have this plan to extend in Germany because we already have, like, a pretty natural traction.

Domi [0:20:33]: Without doing basically anything, which is like, a good sign that you should probably push it a bit further.

Domi [0:20:39]: And it...

Domi [0:20:40]: It's like super recent, but we've tried in Q4 four, pushing some some ads there and and funny because, again, back to positioning, and you really learning a lot about your market.

Domi [0:20:50]: First, we we're, like, launching some ads that we were launching in Us, like, multi channel prescription for the sales team, pretty basic and classic with, like, cool design, but, like, base basic, messaging.

Domi [0:21:02]: And the Cto was really bad.

Domi [0:21:05]: And then we realized that call demi emailing is just poorly tolerated in Germany.

Domi [0:21:09]: And so we we started, like, investing heavily in, like, other kind of messaging, saying, okay, we flat you can, you know, like, bring your outreach to Linkedin and and and be better on the phone.

Domi [0:21:21]: And and it work just so much better.

Domi [0:21:24]: So it's funny because it's...

Domi [0:21:26]: I think it's a good way to to just proof test messaging hypothesis you would have full markets.

Domi [0:21:31]: So, yeah, this is definitely one thing.

Domi [0:21:34]: We wanna wanna double down.

Domi [0:21:36]: It's just, like, going after new markets with with pay them.

Dave [0:21:40]: Okay.

Dave [0:21:40]: Let's shift and talk about influencers, influencers play off of the paid strategy a little bit.

Dave [0:21:45]: And what's super interesting now about influencers that I think I see a lot of people doing and we've talked about it on this podcast is.

Dave [0:21:51]: You almost get more security with influencers now, especially if your audience is on Linkedin because you can take...

Dave [0:21:57]: You know, you can get someone to write a post and it's not just like one post that has to deliver x number of leads because now we can run those as thought leader ads.

Dave [0:22:05]: You spent this year, And this it said sixty thousand dollars on influencers, tell us about your approach to influencers.

Dave [0:22:14]: Where did it come from?

Dave [0:22:15]: How did you how did you tackle it and what was the play with influencers?

Domi [0:22:20]: Influencers, we wanted to to test it out because, we thought first that we always say, At Lemlist wanna have a marketing that's not, like, boring to boring.

Domi [0:22:29]: So often B2b marketing, you get have, like, pretty classic marketing and it can be classic in terms of format, but it can be classic in terms of channels too, and influenced marketing is probably something people think more you know, in the in the pro consumer word, and we wanted, like to test it for for B2b.

Domi [0:22:47]: And second, I think it's it's like really really cool channel to be to build both Gen and demand gen.

Domi [0:22:54]: I think that it's you who say that early only in the days on Linkedin.

Domi [0:22:57]: Like, how look at how you buy yourself as as a person before you do your own marketing.

Domi [0:23:02]: And we...

Domi [0:23:04]: What do we do when I wanna buy something, most of the time, we ask someone else.

Domi [0:23:07]: Someone we know someone we trust.

Domi [0:23:10]: And so I deeply believe this is how people buy and even more nowadays where you don't really, like trust.

Domi [0:23:16]: The sources of information.

Domi [0:23:19]: And and so...

Domi [0:23:20]: Yeah, just having, like, trusted people, you know, you can relate with.

Domi [0:23:25]: I I think, I deeply believe it.

Domi [0:23:28]: And that's why we wanted to to try it out.

Domi [0:23:30]: And so...

Domi [0:23:31]: Yeah, how did we launch this?

Domi [0:23:32]: I wish there was a magic recipe for finding, like, influencers and, like, the best influencers and especially before they blew up and before they became, like, out of in terms of.

Domi [0:23:43]: Money.

Domi [0:23:44]: But, we discovered that most existing database were pretty bad.

Domi [0:23:49]: I mean, at least five o'clock and and offers, and, like, non worth super like, relevant for.

Domi [0:23:58]: So it wouldn't it would give us, like, inferences with a lot of of followers, but then when we would look at the type of boats, it it wouldn't like, it wouldn't match.

Domi [0:24:07]: And because we we basically look at free things that think that had a hard time, like, basically spotting, which is the consistency and the death of the of the content that those influence would would post are a clear point of view and in a clear niche.

Domi [0:24:24]: I and also, like, qualitative comments.

Domi [0:24:27]: You know, like, not just hey, dude great take, like, comments.

Domi [0:24:30]: Like, but people that are able to spark discussions and questions below their their their posts,

Dave [0:24:38]: Well, there's, like, there's there's no database that's gonna give you that.

Dave [0:24:41]: I know that...

Dave [0:24:42]: No.

Dave [0:24:42]: No.

Dave [0:24:43]: Look, We're...

Domi [0:24:44]: I wish they was.

Dave [0:24:45]: We're in b2b to b, and I I I do...

Dave [0:24:46]: I forget who I was talking about somebody, like, a big bigger consumer marketer.

Dave [0:24:50]: I was like, no This exists, and it's called blah, but everybody that I've to, like, at least in our space and on this podcast.

Dave [0:24:55]: It's like, we want there to be...

Dave [0:24:58]: Even if there was, guess what would happen.

Dave [0:25:01]: Every company would just sort by followers and just try to go after the the same, like, five or ten people.

Domi [0:25:07]: M.

Dave [0:25:07]: It's just like, every channel eventually in marketing, It's, like, how do you figure out what works with influencers just, like, and who to target?

Dave [0:25:13]: Well, you gotta know you gotta know the audience.

Dave [0:25:14]: Right?

Dave [0:25:15]: Like, you gotta spend time there and know.

Dave [0:25:16]: Like, oh, I I wanna go work with this person.

Dave [0:25:19]: And I think in your in in our doc, you You actually label them as micro influencers, which I think is really important, and especially, in in the context of B2b b, you don't have to have someone with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers you don't need a kardashian to post about your thing.

Dave [0:25:34]: You need, you know, someone who writes about B2B sales with, like seven thousand followers would probably be a good target for a Lemlist, you know, thought leader ad.

Domi [0:25:44]: Exactly.

Domi [0:25:44]: And most of our influencers have, like, a run ten k followers.

Domi [0:25:48]: At the maximum, we are working with some big ones that have, like, hundred, you know, but, like, underdog sales or content these the new sales and and so on.

Domi [0:25:57]: But most of them are are small.

Domi [0:25:59]: And actually, I think that's a good bet to try to find influence as you will grow with because they have a high motivation basically to grow with you, which I think matters a lot.

Dave [0:26:12]: Let's dive into the mechanics of.

Dave [0:26:14]: Like, what did they need to be...

Dave [0:26:16]: What were they posting Did they need to be using the product were you driving people to, an ebook?

Dave [0:26:21]: Was it some report You wanted people to share?

Dave [0:26:23]: Can you take me into the mechanics of...

Dave [0:26:25]: Or you got the info...

Dave [0:26:26]: You know, we identified influence somehow How many times are they posting over what period of time?

Dave [0:26:31]: What are they posting, how you how you measuring how you tracking success?

Domi [0:26:35]: And just to to wrap up on the identifying.

Domi [0:26:36]: Basically, we did it...

Domi [0:26:37]: I think it was pretty manual, but we would start with, or own network, and that means like partners clients, clients are a good sweet spot to start with.

Domi [0:26:46]: And I mean, we have, like, tens of thousands of clients.

Domi [0:26:49]: So it's a good way to start with no...

Domi [0:26:50]: You're not too small.

Domi [0:26:51]: And obviously, like, as you said, creators, we would already know and follow.

Domi [0:26:55]: And then, you know, like you just train the algorithm to basically surpass lookalike influencers because, like, you interact more with those con...

Domi [0:27:04]: With their content, and so then linkedin would just push more content lookalike, also another platforms.

Domi [0:27:09]: And also, we were running outreach campaigns, targeting the creators that are existing influencers would follow themselves.

Domi [0:27:17]: And this this actually work pretty well because often, like, your own influence follow of influential people.

Domi [0:27:23]: Does that make sense.

Domi [0:27:24]: So you have tactics to kind, like, scale.

Domi [0:27:27]: It's not really scale, but to grow a bit faster.

Domi [0:27:30]: I would say your follow, like, influencers audience.

Domi [0:27:35]: But...

Domi [0:27:35]: Yeah, back to your question.

Domi [0:27:36]: Basically, your question was, like, how do we work with them?

Domi [0:27:39]: How do we brief them?

Domi [0:27:40]: That's that's why you wanting to know.

Domi [0:27:41]: Right?

Dave [0:27:42]: Yeah.

Dave [0:27:42]: How do you how do you work with them, like, the brief.

Dave [0:27:44]: Right?

Dave [0:27:45]: I'll give you an example.

Dave [0:27:46]: I get an email from a big company.

Dave [0:27:47]: I'll give an email from, like, a Hubspot or they're like, hey, we're we're sourcing influencers.

Dave [0:27:52]: Here's the deadline...

Dave [0:27:54]: You know, here's what the post needs to be about.

Dave [0:27:56]: Here's the deadline, and I've just found that that stuff at least for us, it doesn't work.

Dave [0:28:00]: I don't I don't do those anymore.

Dave [0:28:01]: The best things happen when we're, like, really working with someone, and so I'm curious, you see you seem like a a thoughtful gal.

Dave [0:28:07]: So, I'm just curious to hear what your your approach has take me into, like, We got our ten influencers.

Dave [0:28:12]: What are we gonna do with them?

Dave [0:28:13]: Yeah.

Domi [0:28:14]: Of course.

Domi [0:28:14]: I I think something you said it was with Jess from V.

Domi [0:28:17]: Like, no one knows their audience better than the creator, which is why, like, you Dave, whenever you do, like, an ad for your newsletter or the podcast.

Domi [0:28:26]: Like, it works best if you are the one basically scripting it.

Domi [0:28:29]: A hundred percent, like, groove that points.

Domi [0:28:32]: And so we don't try to control creators, but we try to feed them.

Domi [0:28:36]: And we do two things, and they have, like, an onboarding and then an influence influencer circuit whenever they start with us.

Domi [0:28:42]: First, we align on the f philosophy, which is we never try to sell solely a feature.

Domi [0:28:48]: We sell a method that solves a real real pain.

Domi [0:28:52]: And it happens that this method is easier to execute if you have Lemlist or Clap.

Domi [0:28:58]: But you can reproduce the method, although you don't have Lemlist or Clap.

Domi [0:29:02]: And this is very important because we want them to use this structure, and most of them there are influencers that they naturally like, would do it, but we really don't want, like, this post like.

Domi [0:29:13]: Lemlist is the best because he wouldn't work.

Domi [0:29:14]: Like, wrong like

Dave [0:29:16]: to...

Dave [0:29:16]: Well, actually, this is this is kind of the first part of my question.

Dave [0:29:18]: So is it...

Dave [0:29:19]: What...

Dave [0:29:19]: Was it a pro...

Dave [0:29:20]: Like, would it be a product post for we're versus like, I'll see companies now being, like, hey.

Dave [0:29:26]: We're gonna use these ten.

Dave [0:29:27]: You know, we're gonna use Jess Cook to...

Dave [0:29:29]: We're gonna pay Jess Cook, Vp marketing a vector to promote.

Dave [0:29:32]: She's gonna do a post about, like, a webinar we're doing, or we just...

Dave [0:29:35]: We did this, you know, my company wrote a state of x y and z report.

Dave [0:29:40]: We're gonna use them to promote it.

Dave [0:29:41]: We're...

Dave [0:29:42]: You were doing more specific, like, product, go use le.

Domi [0:29:45]: Yeah.

Domi [0:29:45]: It it could be linked to some content if we have, like, specific webinar or or or or study, but most of the time it's linked to the product.

Domi [0:29:53]: And we try, like, to to match also the the capabilities to a certain type of influences, for instance, lend, you have, like, calling capabilities, and we have a lot of sales influencers who are really liking in the cold calling niche, and they're, like, creating amazing content, video content where they basically, like film themselves, cold calling and it's really funny.

Domi [0:30:13]: And so for those, for instance, we'd definitely go to them whenever we have something new around calling capabilities.

Domi [0:30:19]: But again, we would tell them, oh, this is, like the kind of narrative we we were we were thinking about, and this is how, like, we think you should, like, share these kind of use cases and to make sure that whenever they post, it's like useful.

Domi [0:30:31]: And so they share, like, frameworks or scripts if it's like something around Ai and templates plates, copywriting examples.

Domi [0:30:40]: And at the end, they say, by the way, this is done with Flame.

Domi [0:30:42]: But it's like, super useful.

Dave [0:30:45]: And how do you measure the excess of of those campaign?

Dave [0:30:48]: And I'm sorry, is it is it one post?

Dave [0:30:50]: Are you buying, like, one post a month over three months?

Dave [0:30:53]: What are the mechanics of the campaign?

Domi [0:30:55]: So it depends when we start working with an influencer.

Domi [0:30:57]: Most of the time we, like we we negotiate for at least free post because we we want to show them that it's a, like, long midterm commitment at least when you start because, obviously, you have to proof test.

Domi [0:31:08]: Yeah.

Domi [0:31:08]: Both sides that it works.

Domi [0:31:10]: But then when whenever we repeat because we think it's success and will come to this.

Domi [0:31:14]: How we measure this.

Domi [0:31:15]: We can we can, like, for some influencers, we pay, like, we we negotiate for six months of posting or a package of ten posts because we really believe, like, this should be, like, on, always on creator network and also, like, it compounds.

Domi [0:31:30]: Like, when influencers that, like, understanding your product and using it and seem like the advantage of it, like, he will create really good content faster also.

Domi [0:31:38]: So it will give a shame to just, like, do one off projects all the time, and it will be, like, super hard just to to food.

Domi [0:31:45]: To handle?

Dave [0:31:46]: Wait.

Dave [0:31:46]: And so are all these influencers using, using Lemlist in the back on the in the background?

Domi [0:31:52]: Yeah.

Domi [0:31:52]: Yeah.

Domi [0:31:52]: They they all have...

Domi [0:31:53]: When...

Domi [0:31:54]: Whenever they start, they have, like, this license, and we encourage them to test it, we should, like, again, depending on the niche, they, like, really good at doing copywriting, then we would, like, have them...

Domi [0:32:05]: Yeah, Exactly using it for more like, things you.

Dave [0:32:07]: What's funny is it's, like, it it's shaking out to be...

Dave [0:32:10]: We're learning this with all of our content channels.

Dave [0:32:12]: It's, like...

Dave [0:32:13]: Shocker the more effort you put into something.

Dave [0:32:16]: A lot of times the better it's gonna be.

Dave [0:32:18]: You know, I think there was kinda like, a v one of this where you could just kinda pay someone to write a post and you'd get a bunch of leads from that, but now the copy matters.

Dave [0:32:25]: Like, it can just be, like, yeah, They paid me to write this post.

Dave [0:32:28]: I wrote this post Gotta be, like, It's gotta be the the post without Lemlist has to be awesome.

Dave [0:32:33]: And then if you integrate Lemlist into that, that's how you're gonna get the maximum, like, engagement on that.

Domi [0:32:39]: Yeah.

Domi [0:32:39]: A hundred percent, and I think that's also why we are targeting operators.

Domi [0:32:42]: So basically, people that or doing the job right now.

Domi [0:32:45]: So ninety percent of the influences that work with us or doing sales, like every day.

Domi [0:32:51]: And so they are in the field in the battlefield of rejection and low reply rates and And that's why, like, the product is gonna be first really useful for them, but also, they they can talk about the pain because they they just experience it every day.

Domi [0:33:07]: And for us, it's super important.

Domi [0:33:08]: We happen to work with, like, big influencers that are book authors and not not...

Domi [0:33:12]: That mentioned more into the field, like, of call calling every day, but for most of them, we we want them to be salesperson basically.

Dave [0:33:20]: Okay.

Dave [0:33:20]: You mentioned multiple posts.

Dave [0:33:23]: I think this is so important, especially in B.

Dave [0:33:26]: I think what's really cool about what's I I run a business in this space?

Dave [0:33:30]: So it's why I'm passionate about this topic.

Dave [0:33:32]: It's interesting, But, like, we do newsletter sponsorships or we do, you know, long term engagements?

Dave [0:33:36]: In b2b to b, it's different because in consumer, everybody wants to know What are the Cpm?

Dave [0:33:42]: What are the Cpm?

Dave [0:33:42]: How am Gonna get?

Dave [0:33:43]: You know, how many I falls might get.

Dave [0:33:45]: But when you're selling something in in B2b b, the the price, especially...

Dave [0:33:48]: Right.

Dave [0:33:49]: You're talking about Lemlist is going up market.

Dave [0:33:51]: Right?

Dave [0:33:51]: You might do an influencer deal with someone, and they might get you what looks like seemingly low engagement.

Dave [0:33:57]: But you get a massive account from that post.

Domi [0:34:02]: Exactly.

Domi [0:34:02]: One deal can, like, you know, like, have a den Roi.

Domi [0:34:06]: So that's...

Dave [0:34:07]: It's not direct response, but it can be like, oh, I took this demo because I saw Lemlist in, you know, Mary's post or whatever.

Dave [0:34:14]: Yep.

Dave [0:34:14]: And I think that one thing that really matters is the one off post to me don't really seem to work where it's, like, over the course of three months is it like Lemlist, Lemlist, Lemlist.

Dave [0:34:25]: Lemlist.

Dave [0:34:25]: And now...

Dave [0:34:26]: Because it...

Dave [0:34:26]: Then you also...

Dave [0:34:27]: It changes the measurement discussion a little bit too.

Dave [0:34:29]: It's not your you're...

Dave [0:34:30]: It's not like, alright.

Dave [0:34:31]: You know, Mary's...

Dave [0:34:32]: It's Thursday.

Dave [0:34:32]: Mary's doing her post.

Dave [0:34:34]: Like, I gotta get my seven leads today.

Dave [0:34:36]: It's over the course of three months.

Dave [0:34:38]: Did more people hear about us and do we get inbound from that, which I I think is interesting.

Dave [0:34:42]: So it it's interesting to hear you say.

Dave [0:34:44]: Like, yeah, we wanna we wanna work with people, not not on a one off basis.

Domi [0:34:48]: One really cool thing about influence that I would I would like, advise marketers wanna I launch it to to tell their leadership to convince them.

Domi [0:34:57]: It's that it compounds super well with offer channels, and I think that's the beauty of it because it compounds super well with both ads and outbound.

Domi [0:35:04]: And this is something we've been, like, we've we've we've been pretty successful with.

Domi [0:35:09]: So basically, when you have a few posts that works super well naturally organically, you see, like, a lot of discussions under, like, the comments, questions, you can just sponsor it and it becomes, like, what Linkedin calls, a thought leadership ad the Ct, like, or amazing on those because I guess, like, people are just, like, more inclined to click and comment on ads that comes from real people than just a brand logo.

Domi [0:35:33]: And second, doing outbound with it, it's been, like, incredibly successful for us.

Domi [0:35:37]: We were able, for instance, we had this influencer, Gi, he's a called calling influencer.

Domi [0:35:41]: And he made one post about Lend.

Domi [0:35:44]: And we started, like, reaching out to some of the people that commenting asking questions about and but Lemlist and why he would like partner with us and and we had, like, amazing reply rate, like, forty percent, something they don't see usually.

Domi [0:35:57]: And something even crazier that we are just trying right now is actually to outreach to those people on behalf of the influence, obviously would do it with their with their agreement.

Domi [0:36:07]: Because it's a win win.

Domi [0:36:09]: They they get, like, to have more engagement and one on one and get which seems like one zero one engagement with their audience and so they like it's because people are happy actually to receive a message from their sales hero.

Domi [0:36:20]: And so, yeah, I think it's it's really cool and it's it's a really, really interesting channel for this.

Dave [0:36:26]: Did you make money?

Dave [0:36:26]: You spend sixty k on influencer last year.

Dave [0:36:29]: Did you break even?

Domi [0:36:30]: Oh, yeah.

Domi [0:36:30]: Again, attribution is always tricky.

Domi [0:36:33]: We try to be, like, very serious but attribution at limits.

Domi [0:36:36]: But at the same time, we also believe that we don't want like to build this crazy model attribution model because we know it will never be true even more like in b to b mid markets, where you have, like, several touch points and and and and the funnel is a bit complex.

Domi [0:36:50]: Still, we look at first out attribution, at at least just to, like, compare, like, a channels between the between themselves and see how they evolve at the time, which is, like, very important, but we know, like, it's not a hundred percent true.

Domi [0:37:02]: And for influence, it's even...

Domi [0:37:04]: It's more tricky because two things, we don't want to put Ut on on the the influencers post because...

Dave [0:37:13]: Oh, thank you.

Dave [0:37:13]: Thank goodness.

Dave [0:37:14]: Thank much.

Dave [0:37:15]: That...

Dave [0:37:15]: That's, like the ultimate, like, That's the ultimate like head.

Dave [0:37:18]: Right?

Dave [0:37:19]: It's like, weird marketers.

Dave [0:37:19]: We wanna work with this outside channel that which we have no control, but we want everyone to make sure you click on the link in this influencers bio and use this perfectly labeled Ut.

Dave [0:37:29]: So we can track that the six people.

Dave [0:37:32]: It's just like, this somehow how marketing works.

Dave [0:37:34]: It doesn't work like that.

Domi [0:37:36]: Exactly.

Dave [0:37:36]: And but you said it, like, we...

Dave [0:37:38]: You said, we try really hard, but attribution is it's not really about, like, what what you want to do is the company.

Dave [0:37:45]: It's like, the the customer.

Dave [0:37:46]: What if I never What if I never click or engage or do anything, but I still saw that post from from Julio.

Dave [0:37:51]: I still saw that or whatever his name was.

Dave [0:37:53]: But I ended up booking a demo, like, months late I never told you about it.

Dave [0:37:57]: It's like, oh, that doesn't count then.

Dave [0:37:58]: Right?

Domi [0:37:59]: Oh, exactly.

Domi [0:38:00]: So we have a system to kind of estimate the impact of influence, we started with something super simple when we launched it because, yeah, we wanted to launch fast.

Domi [0:38:09]: And so our first model deal basically was looking at a sign up baseline.

Domi [0:38:15]: And whenever we had a post and at at the very beginning, we had just a few, you know, we would look at whatever uplift we would get.

Domi [0:38:23]: And sometimes we would see, like, pretty, pretty crazy uplift, especially with, like, post sharing frameworks template very concrete, like, step by step inside the product.

Domi [0:38:33]: And that was really a good sign.

Domi [0:38:35]: And then, you know, we're, like, okay.

Domi [0:38:37]: So it gives, like, this number of sign ups in terms of up uplift compared to the baseline, then we would just apply the class, like, conversion rates free trial to pay that we have in average and the classic Lt tv and we'll just estimate the revenue it will give us.

Domi [0:38:51]: Now the the growth team there they were a bit crazy about it, but they built, like this a bit more complex like attribution model where they do make of, like, rich and comments and so on.

Domi [0:39:03]: And, yeah, they they like, like, refining it.

Domi [0:39:06]: And I think it's cool, but still again, for me, the most important is to see the trend and to be able also to compare influences between themselves, it's also a good way.

Domi [0:39:15]: You know, whenever you we wanna start with an influencer because it's not working out, and sometimes it happens.

Domi [0:39:19]: To be like, look, we have this table and you just consistently under perform plus we believe, like, that the the tone of voice we want and then, you know, it's a with goodbye.

Domi [0:39:30]: You don't want but a lot.

Domi [0:39:31]: But does do.

Dave [0:39:33]: You've under performed.

Dave [0:39:34]: Alright.

Dave [0:39:34]: I pictures it's not...

Dave [0:39:36]: It's not even you.

Dave [0:39:37]: It's just like someone comes out and is like, yeah, hello.

Dave [0:39:39]: I'm from the growth team at Le.

Dave [0:39:41]: This post has under performed Goodbye.

Dave [0:39:43]: Wait.

Dave [0:39:44]: What is the growth team?

Dave [0:39:45]: Is it another part of...

Dave [0:39:48]: Growth is not marketing?

Dave [0:39:49]: Like, are they just...

Dave [0:39:50]: Their job is to figure out attribution or why do they do that?

Domi [0:39:53]: No growth is marketing.

Domi [0:39:54]: Basically, our...

Domi [0:39:55]: Our marketing team is like, ten people, and it's basically two soft teams.

Domi [0:40:00]: It's very classic.

Domi [0:40:01]: It's like, content, brand and product marketing on one side and growth on the other side and growth basically owns the website, the drip campaigns and all the distribution channels and obviously, like, they work very closely together.

Dave [0:40:14]: Okay.

Dave [0:40:14]: Influencers, we put a bow in that, the other big dent, the other big thing...

Dave [0:40:18]: The other big spend of the one point two million was four hundred 50k on partnerships.

Dave [0:40:23]: You said it's probably the most underrated B2B2B growth channel, leveraging your network to sell insanely powerful.

Dave [0:40:28]: Partner partners bring new revenue and makes customers more successful with your product.

Dave [0:40:32]: You pay lifetime commissions.

Dave [0:40:34]: It's a win win.

Dave [0:40:35]: This is super interesting because this is never...

Dave [0:40:36]: I'm always of, like, the more.

Dave [0:40:38]: Let's let's do the let's do the sexy stuff like, influencers, a B2B tech, you know, optimization it's a hot man, half a million dollars his partnerships.

Dave [0:40:46]: But that's that's massive, and obviously, made a big impact, tell me about partnerships and how this works for you.

Domi [0:40:51]: Yeah.

Domi [0:40:51]: First of all, disclaimer, we don't pay Left lifetime commissions to every partners is just for the tier one partners.

Domi [0:40:57]: For the other ones, it's like twenty five percent for a year.

Domi [0:41:01]: So, yeah.

Domi [0:41:02]: It's it's only for the big...

Domi [0:41:04]: The big outbound agencies that we would have, like, left lifetime commissions because we know they are the one basically, like, increasing lifetime value and retention.

Domi [0:41:12]: So again, you cannot see them just as demand.

Domi [0:41:15]: Capture, basically, they are here just to to increase.

Domi [0:41:18]: I think, like, Lt for those Tier one agencies is more than double than the one we have, usually, which shows that they are here to help our users that they'll required be just more successful because they build, like, use cases, basically, then they they they basically coach them to be better.

Dave [0:41:35]: So do they sell Lemlist through their...

Dave [0:41:37]: So it's a it's a it's a outbound sales agency and they resell Lemlist

Domi [0:41:43]: exactly And for Clap, for instance, is like coaching agencies because one of the use cases is, like, coaching sales.

Domi [0:41:48]: And and so, something very important that we we did the shift also, like, last year is to really work with agencies that have a done with you motion and not done for you, so the client basically sees the end product and and grow with the agency and basically use it with them, and it's not the agency using your product for them if that makes sense.

Domi [0:42:11]: And I think this is super important if you really want to compound and you want, like, your client...

Domi [0:42:16]: You don't want to be basically invisible for your client.

Domi [0:42:20]: This is super super important.

Domi [0:42:21]: Because the last part about partnership, I think is that it builds up your brand.

Domi [0:42:27]: Because partners when when, you know, obviously, you have a good relationship with them.

Domi [0:42:31]: We spend a lot of time, like, training them.

Domi [0:42:34]: They have access to our product managers.

Dave [0:42:36]: Is this in marketing?

Dave [0:42:37]: Is is partners as part of your marketing org?

Domi [0:42:39]: They're in the growth team, and and so we have this strong relationship with partners and then, you know, they start, like, organizing events with us or webinars, and it it's really strong because they allow your brand to shine.

Domi [0:42:50]: Yeah.

Domi [0:42:51]: Even in geographies where you're not.

Domi [0:42:53]: And so I've seen them as a force player.

Domi [0:42:55]: And clay, for instance, has been, like, incredibly successful partnerships, and I think they have a playbook that we should definitely try to replicate.

Dave [0:43:04]: Yeah.

Dave [0:43:04]: Oh, there...

Dave [0:43:05]: There the the clay partnership thing is a master class and just, like, I I'm not...

Dave [0:43:10]: I don't know a lot about partnerships, but I love how they name everything.

Dave [0:43:12]: They called them agencies.

Domi [0:43:14]: Yeah.

Domi [0:43:14]: Agencies.

Domi [0:43:15]: And then they have a clay Claps and they kinda do clayton...

Dave [0:43:18]: Yeah You need someone like that.

Dave [0:43:19]: Lemlist Lemlist.

Dave [0:43:20]: I don't doesn't work the same clay.

Dave [0:43:23]: Lemlist

Domi [0:43:24]: Clap, doesn't work.

Domi [0:43:25]: Lemlist?

Dave [0:43:26]: LemClap.

Dave [0:43:26]: That's a good name.

Dave [0:43:27]: Do you have that?

Domi [0:43:28]: No.

Domi [0:43:28]: But we have Lend friends, which is which is like the the we have with them at too show them

Dave [0:43:33]: Pretty good.

Dave [0:43:33]: Yep.

Dave [0:43:34]: And so how do you think about partners as a marketing channel?

Dave [0:43:37]: Like, it's some I so someone is someone on the growth team in charge of, like, you know, finding new agencies.

Dave [0:43:42]: Yeah.

Dave [0:43:43]: Closing deals with them.

Domi [0:43:44]: Exactly.

Domi [0:43:44]: That's our manager, and she's in charge of both, like, doing acquisition and finding new partners.

Domi [0:43:50]: Well, And she's working a lot on growing, basically, this this pool and making sure that that they do upsell, and and that they grow the clients, they have.

Domi [0:44:00]: And so, yeah, It's a full time job, and we believe it, like, super super powerful.

Dave [0:44:06]: Let's talk about Ai before we wrap up.

Dave [0:44:08]: What what role does Ai play for for you in your in your marketing org right now?

Dave [0:44:14]: And do you hate it as much as Do?

Dave [0:44:17]: Just what I'm on this week?

Dave [0:44:20]: That says, I've had enough.

Dave [0:44:21]: I love Ai.

Dave [0:44:22]: I've used it so much like to to...

Dave [0:44:24]: We've talked about it so much that...

Dave [0:44:25]: But I just...

Dave [0:44:26]: I'm out this week.

Dave [0:44:27]: I can't keep up anymore.

Dave [0:44:29]: I...

Dave [0:44:29]: There's just too much happening.

Dave [0:44:30]: I feel so insecure and so inefficient and, like, someone is probably, like, wait.

Dave [0:44:35]: You Dave, you did a podcast with an actual person.

Dave [0:44:38]: Don't you know?

Dave [0:44:38]: I could've have done that, you know, in Claude and that.

Dave [0:44:40]: Yeah.

Domi [0:44:43]: No.

Domi [0:44:43]: I think we all have fun with Ai, but, yeah, Obviously, we use a lot Ai.

Domi [0:44:46]: The first use case is probably content generation, but it's not the.

Domi [0:44:51]: Only one.

Domi [0:44:51]: Basically, for every channels that we've mentioned, we would use Ai.

Domi [0:44:54]: So for ads, it's a lot to create visuals or just, like, do different, like, maybe...

Dave [0:45:01]: Let me ask you this in a different way.

Dave [0:45:02]: Yeah.

Dave [0:45:02]: Because I my guess is you're using Ai in this in the, you know, similar to a lot of a lot of peopLemlistening.

Dave [0:45:06]: What is

Domi [0:45:08]: One use case?

Dave [0:45:09]: What's an overrated in an overrated use case of Ai that you see marketers talking about in an underrated thing.

Dave [0:45:15]: So it's something you've you may implemented internally that's been, like, sneaky good.

Domi [0:45:21]: Over overriding, I think it's, again, content generation because I think just...

Domi [0:45:25]: I don't believe that Ai is that good at creating content.

Domi [0:45:29]: I think it's good at repurposing.

Domi [0:45:31]: Be framed...

Dave [0:45:33]: Good at.

Dave [0:45:33]: If you if you suck it...

Dave [0:45:34]: If you're not a good content creator then it's definitely better, but, yeah.

Dave [0:45:37]: You have a good, you know, personality, tone of voice and, yeah, for for sure.

Dave [0:45:41]: I'm like, oh, my god, who wrote this.

Domi [0:45:43]: Yeah.

Domi [0:45:43]: And I mean, like, it has...

Domi [0:45:44]: Comment has become a commodity, so you could just take a example in Linkedin.

Domi [0:45:49]: Everyone, like, posting on Linkedin.

Domi [0:45:51]: I think, like, most post just suck because people like, would just...

Domi [0:45:56]: Say, hey, hey, I want to write about this just write a post.

Domi [0:45:59]: And Ai would do, like, a hoo and then, you know, like, free parts of it and the conclusion and asking a question, but the whole thing will be a bit, like, empty because what really matters in the and it's, like, sharing something, like, an experience and na anecdotal numbers and this is basically the context and Ai cannot get that context, unless, like, I'm just need to give it to them.

Domi [0:46:20]: So, yeah, I don't really believe, like, in the like, generating a hundred blog posts, because if you don't give, like, context, then...

Domi [0:46:28]: Yeah, you will have blog posts in your blog, but they will they will basically suck.

Dave [0:46:33]: I...

Dave [0:46:33]: That's that's where I wanna say see it.

Dave [0:46:34]: I see show me.

Dave [0:46:36]: I see people saying I used you're...

Dave [0:46:38]: You know, I fired my content team.

Dave [0:46:40]: We just created a hundred landing page variations using I'm, like, show me the landing pages.

Dave [0:46:44]: Look, can I see?

Dave [0:46:44]: Can I see?

Dave [0:46:45]: Now maybe maybe everyone's smarter than me and they're just creating content for a different world humans don't matter And actually, the whole point of creating content is so that m Ml can just, like, crawl your content.

Dave [0:46:55]: Maybe that's...

Dave [0:46:56]: I'm I'm gonna get lap there, but I don't know.

Dave [0:46:58]: What's the on...

Dave [0:46:59]: What's an underrated use that you've put into play at Le.

Domi [0:47:03]: Yeah.

Domi [0:47:03]: I think one underrated is is probably for either outbound or drip campaigns, something that we've been, like, pretty successful with is reaching out to users maybe free trial or pet users based on their activities or results.

Domi [0:47:22]: And with Ai, you can really like...

Domi [0:47:25]: Because you have the context inside your product.

Domi [0:47:28]: You can give Ai ideas context and say, reach out to them with something super helpful and tailored and you can, like this, you can, like, reduce or prevent churn, you can increase monetization, like, for instance, like selling more credits or just improving your conversion to which you paid.

Domi [0:47:44]: And I think this is, like, it's not like super sexy, like, Drip campaigns or, like, outbound, but I believe, like, being able to bring more value, tailored value to people because you just use their own context with your own knowledge.

Domi [0:47:58]: This is...

Domi [0:47:59]: I think this is pretty pretty cool.

Dave [0:48:01]: Yeah.

Dave [0:48:01]: There seems like the mode is gonna earn not even the mode, but the huge thing for marketers would be like this data layer, I was thinking about the Thursday like, and I'm not a big Ai influencer.

Dave [0:48:10]: If we have all of our customer calls recorded.

Dave [0:48:12]: All of our sales conversations recorded, all of our internal meetings recorded, all of our notes and everything recorded.

Dave [0:48:18]: There is a gold mine of stuff that we can use for copy for sales enable that's that's sitting on that, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Domi [0:48:28]: You're you're basically bitch pitching Clap.

Dave [0:48:31]: Alright.

Dave [0:48:31]: Let's go.

Dave [0:48:32]: Get me Clap up.

Dave [0:48:33]: Let me get it.

Domi [0:48:36]: No.

Domi [0:48:36]: But basically, this is what the Clap does.

Domi [0:48:38]: It records sales conversation, but it doesn't record it for the sake of giving, like, insights like, hey.

Domi [0:48:44]: You spoke like, twice more than your prospects.

Domi [0:48:46]: It's basically gathering super useful valuable information that you only can get in those conversations, and it can be, like, key information to update your serum.

Domi [0:48:58]: Like, for instance, it's super critical to know the number of employees from a company from an account for both sales marketing and everyone in the company and often it's really hard to get this number right.

Domi [0:49:07]: But if you speak with a prospect, you can ask, and they were like, oh, yeah, we are, like, five hundred hundred company, And then boom, you can update your Crm and you have, like, an update information that you can act on.

Domi [0:49:18]: So this is, like, super strong case to repeat what you said, for instance, in terms of sales enable, you can use all the discussions you have to, like, see, like, what are the main objects and objections rising the main competitors and then, like, just surface the best way to anticipate those.

Domi [0:49:37]: So you can be super strong for sales and enable.

Domi [0:49:39]: And as...

Domi [0:49:40]: It's it's a tool for sales, but I use it because I have...

Domi [0:49:43]: You know, we don't we don't pay anymore, because we bought them.

Domi [0:49:46]: I use it for, like, customer stories, and this is really cool Like, I interview clients with it.

Domi [0:49:52]: I questions.

Domi [0:49:52]: I don't take notes.

Domi [0:49:53]: And then I just give my template and boom.

Domi [0:49:55]: I have my my customer story.

Domi [0:49:57]: So, yeah, that's that's pretty cool.

Domi [0:49:58]: And, yeah.

Dave [0:50:00]: Even just like our our internal team calls, like, today, just before this, we we had a events meeting and we were talking about.

Dave [0:50:06]: We were working through the revisions on a on the a landing page.

Dave [0:50:09]: Just the ability to, like, R on the idea, and then the team gets the transcript from that call.

Dave [0:50:15]: Yeah.

Dave [0:50:16]: It used to be like, did you write that down?

Dave [0:50:17]: Did you take notes like, make sure you take notes.

Dave [0:50:19]: It's like, we we talked about the copy in in the call.

Dave [0:50:22]: And...

Domi [0:50:23]: It's a relief that you don't have to focus on the note taking part and you can be, like, really focused on on the discussion you're having, I guess for sales that's indeed a huge place.

Domi [0:50:31]: But for anyone, like,

Dave [0:50:33]: Okay.

Dave [0:50:33]: We got rap.

Dave [0:50:34]: This was great.

Dave [0:50:35]: Domi, thank you for coming on my podcast.

Dave [0:50:37]: Yeah.

Dave [0:50:38]: Anything anything I should have asked you before we go.

Dave [0:50:40]: I'll give you one one one parting thought if you want it.

Domi [0:50:45]: No.

Domi [0:50:45]: I think we'd covered a a lot already.

Dave [0:50:48]: Alright.

Dave [0:50:48]: Everybody will go follow follow you on Linkedin filled with filled with...

Dave [0:50:52]: I, keep writing like that until until Le...

Dave [0:50:55]: Until your company is too successful and they say stop sharing all of our, you know, spend, and and everything publicly, you have to cut back.

Domi [0:51:02]: No.

Domi [0:51:02]: The...

Domi [0:51:02]: Actually funny, Anecdote this post, it was an idea for my Ceo.

Domi [0:51:07]: She was like, hey, Donna, You should you should post a breakdown of our marketing budget and, you know, and we're like, okay.

Domi [0:51:12]: Let's let's do it.

Domi [0:51:13]: So

Dave [0:51:14]: Amazing.

Dave [0:51:14]: Perfect example, like, what good content can be.

Dave [0:51:16]: You don't have to be the most, like, create...

Dave [0:51:18]: You didn't have some crazy, cute, like, carousel or all this nonsense.

Dave [0:51:22]: Just like, here's what our marketing budget is Here's what we spend on and and and went viral.

Dave [0:51:25]: And now we're on the podcast talking about it.

Domi [0:51:28]: Yeah.

Dave [0:51:29]: Alright.

Dave [0:51:29]: Good job.

Dave [0:51:29]: Keep up the good work.

Dave [0:51:30]: I will see you soon.

Dave [0:51:31]: Thanks everybody for listening to this episode, Go find Domi on Linkedin, Send a connection request, send a message and be like, I heard you on Dave's podcast because the best thing.

Dave [0:51:39]: The thing that makes me feel the best is when of, someone who I had on my podcast message.

Dave [0:51:44]: Just me later.

Dave [0:51:44]: I like, man, people actually listen to your podcast.

Dave [0:51:46]: I was legit.

Dave [0:51:47]: I was really good.

Domi [0:51:49]: Thanks, Dave.

Dave [0:51:50]: Thanks see you.

Dave [0:51:50]: Hey.

Dave [0:51:54]: Thanks for listening to this podcast.

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