The constraint
Seller Candy takes the back end of Amazon off its clients' hands. Sellers, vendors and agencies pass over account health issues, catalog updates, inactive listings and international expansion: almost anything a seller can raise a case with Amazon for. Agencies can also use it white-label, with Seller Candy doing the work behind them.
For four years, growth came from word of mouth, organic demand and partnerships. Seller Candy knew exactly who it wanted to reach. Reaching them was manual: lists of top agencies and larger sellers built by hand, then worked one message at a time, by email and mostly on LinkedIn.
We were maxing out at maybe 20 a day ... at best ... when we really got things ramped up, but it would take weeks just to even put together the list.
The brief was simple: take Seller Candy's ideal customer criteria, build the lists, write good copy, start the outreach, and fill the calendar with sales calls.
What we built
Criteria in, lists out
The ideal customer criteria Seller Candy had built up over the years became lists built by Frontal, instead of lists built by hand over weeks.
Two audiences, two tracks
Amazon sellers and agencies ran as separate campaigns. Sellers have a clear trigger point. Agencies need the right person found first, then a lot of back and forth, so the tooling was pointed at finding that person inside each agency.
Every step tested three ways
In one campaign, each of the three emails ran in three versions, A, B and C, with replies tracked per version.
Clean sending
In that campaign, the bounce rate stayed under 1% on every version.
Weekly check-ins, quick changes, new angles
Changes Seller Candy asked for went in fast, and Frontal brought new approaches of its own, including targets Seller Candy had not considered, which opened up more of the seller side.
Frontal set expectations for a ramp-up from the start. Within the first few weeks, a steady flow of calls was coming in.
- Clay
Results
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Booked calls | About 40 at last tally, in a pretty short time, with campaigns still running |
| Ramp | A steady flow of calls within the first few weeks |
| Conversions | A couple already, from those calls |
| Agency side | Agencies turned into partners, with lead sharing and referrals both ways |
| One campaign | 3,791 people contacted, 147 replies, 65 of them positive |
The seller campaigns produced the most: sellers responded quickly and booked calls fast. The agency side took more back and forth, and still delivered a good flow of agencies that fit.
Some of the agencies that we've spoken to have turned into partners for us as well. And ... we're able to also do some, some lead sharing back and forth and referrals. So ... I'd say the value is clear for us.
What this means for you
When your outbound is capped by how fast a person can build a list, working harder on the list is not the fix. Turning your customer criteria into lists and campaigns that run without you is. And if you sell to agencies, count partners as an outcome: some of the calls that do not become customers become referral sources.
