How BeforeHello Doubled Client Sign-Ups and Improved Clients’ Outreach Performance by 250%

Customer Background

Before Hello is an outreach agency with eight years of experience in the B2B space. The team has operated for eight years, delivered 200 plus client projects across 50+ industries, and reports that client programs influenced more than 20 million in revenue.

Key Outcomes

“Elsa opened the door. We can now give strategy upfront, start faster, keep a stable reply rate, and run a subscription model. Conversion went up, and the infrastructure lives longer.”

Challenge

Before Hello had a proven technical infrastructure for email delivery, but lacked one crucial element: a deep understanding of each client’s audience. Such understanding was only possible through industry-specific audience research, which used to take days of work before Elsa AI.

“Each project meant a new industry, and doing full audience research for every one of them was simply unrealistic. We didn’t have the time or the budget. As a result, our emails looked universal, technically correct, but without a soul.”

Without that insight, it was difficult to:

• Understand who the actual decision makers were in hard-to-penetrate industries such as fintech, healthcare technology, logistics automation, renewable energy and industrial manufacturing. 
• Build a clear roadmap for A/B testing and improving messaging 
• Move projects through approvals quickly
  

This limited conversions, slowed client onboarding, and led to repetitive back-and-forth discussions. At the same time, outbound campaigns were based on universal templates that produced shallow, self-promotional messages.

“We used to bet on technical tricks and universal emails. It looked like self promotion. One wrong move and people report it, and no infrastructure can save you.”

Solution

BeforeHello made Elsa AI the starting component of every engagement. The team now generates ICPs and extracts five core insight sets per audience: goals, problems, pains, job- to-be-done, and barriers. 

Alex calls it “feeling the spirit of the target audience.” You can feel it in every email. It does not sell, it offers help that is real, relevant, and timely. 

These ICP insights drive a two stage operating mode for outreach:

1. Discovery phase
   Launch several micro campaigns in parallel, each tied to a different pain or goal from Elsa. Identify which variant resonates best by reply rate and tone of responses.
   
2. Scale phase
   Double down on the winning angle, expand reach, and keep copy, offers, and follow ups aligned to that specific ICP truth.

The example below shows what the client’s outreach emails looked like before working with BeforeHello, and how they look now with BeforeHello’s ICP tailored messaging.

Elsa AI also powers a new presales motion. BeforeHello now prepares a concise ICP breakdown and draft sequences as upfront value. Prospects see the logic and the plan before paying, which speeds buy in and shortens delivery after kickoff.

“We break the audience down to molecules and test five versions of pains and barriers. We find the winner and scale it.”

Results

Performance and deliverability

• Stable reply rate from 5% and higher across industries, with past peaks up to 30% when the offer and audience fit
• Fewer spam reports due to empathy driven copy that offers practical help rather than self promotion
• Longer inbox and domain lifespan, so less spend on constant rotations and replacements
  

Sales and operations

• Upfront strategy became a high converting lead magnet that improves close rates
• Faster delivery because strategy and copy are approved before payment
  Moved to a subscription model with defined monthly capacities of 5k, 10k, or 20k emails, improving revenue predictability and retention
  Increased demand and pipeline health to the point that capacity is currently constrained
  

Client lifecycle and trust

• Clear discovery to scale roadmap extends relationships over multiple months
• Executive and manager level prospects respond more politely and constructively, even when not interested, which is an indicator of message relevance

“Now we bet on relevance. We feel the audience’s spirit, use their goals, pains, and barriers, and offer help that is hard to refuse.”