KBDE is a UAE-based exporter that finds new customers by sourcing companies from import-export trade databases. Their model was logical: identify companies importing your product category in a target country, reach out, convert. The problem was execution.
Every step was manual. A small team combed raw data, Googled company names, found contacts by hand, and wrote emails one at a time. On a good month, they reached 10-12 companies. New market opportunities sat untouched because there was simply no capacity to pursue them.
The data on B2B cold email benchmarks showed industry open rates of 15-22% and reply rates of 1-3%. KBDE was not reaching enough companies to know whether their outreach worked or not.
"A new market opened. Our data showed real demand. Our team calculated six months to work through the prospect list manually. We could not wait that long."
Each Monday, a rep uploads 200-400 company names and a target country from the trade database. That is the only manual step in the entire pipeline. Everything else runs automatically.
The agent searches the web to identify the correct company website for each name, then pulls company data, LinkedIn profiles, headcount, revenue signals, and identifies the correct decision-maker via Apollo.
Contact details are validated before any company enters the outreach queue. Bad data is filtered out automatically. Only verified, enriched contacts proceed.
Personalised cold email campaigns launch via Lemlist with LinkedIn touchpoints layered in simultaneously. Each message is calibrated to the company's profile, not a generic template.
Replies, opens, and positive signals are logged automatically. Interested leads are flagged for human follow-up with a full context brief attached. The team only touches warm conversations.
The same team that reached 10-12 companies a month now reaches 250 or more. No new hires. No new tools beyond what was already in place. Just the same people with a machine doing the manual work.
Reply rate hit 6.8% against an industry average of 1-3%. Campaign time dropped from 4 or more days of manual work to 2 hours of upload and review. The team went from wondering whether their outreach worked to having more meetings than they could comfortably handle.
"We were reaching 10 companies a month. We thought that was normal. Now we reach 250 and the system does most of the work."
Managing Director, KBDE