The Value of Signal-Based Outreach: Go from 0% to 10.71% Response Rate

Cold outreach isn’t dead. You just need the right strategy.

Not long ago, I shared how I’ve been trying out different GTM plays, like targeting lookalike audiences, retargeting website visitors, and experimenting with micro-campaigns.

I recently took this one step further by running three micro-campaigns side by side for the same amount of time, just to see how they’d perform.

Here’s what I learned:

• Micro-campaigns are seriously underrated (and they’re really starting to grow on me).
• High-performing campaigns focus on clear intent signals. 

Here’s a closer look at each campaign and how they performed.

TLDR

• The goal: Get more positive responses
• The tactic: Run sales campaigns that use signals to trigger email sends
• The result: Go from a 0% response rate to a 10.71% response rate

Campaign #1: Traditional cold outreach (0%)

My first campaign was a standard cold email campaign with pretty precise targeting, but it was pure cold.

No signals. No engagement history. No previous interaction.

Just leads I found through our lead database.

The result? 

Out of 344 leads engaged:

• 2% overall reply rate (mostly out-of-office messages, unsubscribes, and “not interested”)
• 0% positive reply rate

Campaign #2: LinkedIn social signals (2.93%)

I tried a different angle for my second campaign.

I targeted people who (a) fell within our ICP and (b) recently liked or commented on a competitor’s LinkedIn post.

I also removed people like our current customers and our competitor’s employees.

Since prospects were already engaging with certain content, I could configure AiSDR to send more relevant, effective messages.

Out of 375 leads engaged:

• 9.87% overall reply rate
• 2.93% positive reply rate
• 9 meetings booked

This shows that LinkedIn social signals are a clear step up from pure cold outreach and drive better campaign results.

But why stop there when we have even stronger intent signals?

Campaign #3: Website visitors

My third campaign was the most targeted as it reached out to website visitors. I used AiSDR’s own website visitor tracking feature, but there are other solutions like RB2B for collecting visitor intelligence.

More specifically, I reached out to people who:

• Matched our ICP criteria
• Visited AiSDR’s pricing page
• Didn’t book a demo

Out of just 28 leads engaged:

• 14.29% overall reply rate
• 10.71% positive reply rate
• 3 meetings booked

In other words, I scored a conversion rate over 10% by retargeting website visitors. So while the audience was small, the ROI was strong.

This should come as no surprise though. 

Visiting a company’s pricing page is a good indicator of buyer intent. People are likely evaluating options but not ready to commit, so a well-timed, relevant message may give them that extra nudge to book a demo.

Result

Hindsight is 20/20, but it’s always nice to have real data that backs up your ideas.

The key takeaway here is the stronger the signal, the higher the conversion.

This comes with a tradeoff though. Your target audience gets smaller as signals get stronger: 

• With standard cold outreach, you can go as big or small as you want, and you’re only limited by the size of the lead list you generate.
• With LinkedIn social signals, your limit is the number of people who engage with the content of the person you’re tracking, whether it’s you, an influencer, a competitor, or someone else.
• And with website visitors, you’re working only with people who actually land on the page you’re targeting.

So yes, the pool of leads you contact shrinks. 

Case in point? My third campaign had just 28 leads.

But if you’re optimizing your outreach for quality over quantity, then it’s 100% worth the effort.