View demo Start free
B2B SaaS·Series BAcquiredUnder NDA

A reported 1.2% to 5.8% reply rate in 60 days.

An anonymized mid-market sales team replaced generic templates with Orbit’s signal-driven Cold Email system. The client reported higher replies and meetings after deployment. The company was acquired four months later; this study does not claim Orbit caused the acquisition.

1.2→5.8%Reported reply rate
3.1xReported meetings
$4.7MReported pipeline
9 daysReported time to live

Client-reported metrics are anonymized and approximate. Supporting detail is available on request under NDA.

The challenge: a sales team buried in templates and getting ignored.

The client’s outbound was running on a popular sequencing tool with stock templates and basic mail-merge. The client reported reply rates around 1.2% across 12,000 sends per quarter. Their VP of Sales described it as “throwing emails at a wall and watching them slide off.”

The deeper issue was deliverability and detection. Inbox providers were flagging their templated language as automated. Even prospects who would have opened their door to a real person were never seeing the message. Internal SDRs were burning out trying to write personalization for thousands of accounts manually.

They didn’t need more volume. They needed messages that read like a human, scaled to a thousand a week.

The approach: a casualized outbound engine, built around real signals.

The engine did three things differently:

  1. 1
    Real signals, not just first-name tokens. Drafted first messages from public signals: recent funding rounds, hiring patterns, conference talks, blog posts. Each opening line referenced something the prospect actually did, not a generic personalization slot.
  2. 2
    Casualization layer. A specialized post-processing pass that broke up overly polished sentences, varied phrasing across the send list, and patterned message length the way humans actually write. Recipients consistently asked the SDR which colleague had drafted the message.
  3. 3
    Reply classification and auto-routing. Replies were classified (interested, deflect, OOO, unsubscribe, hostile) and routed to the right queue. SDRs only saw what required a human. The dashboard surfaced reply counts, sentiment, and pipeline contribution live.

The same prospects. Two very different inboxes.

Anonymized examples of messages the same SDR sent to similar accounts before and after the new engine. The reply column tells the story. Names, company details, and links are masked; real templates shared on request under NDA.

Before

1.2% reply rate

Templated mail-merge. Generic openers, fake personalization, no real signal.

To: sarah@<redacted>.comNo reply
Subject: Quick question about <Company>
Hi {firstName},

I came across <Company> and was impressed by your work in the <Industry> space. We help companies like yours scale their outbound sales motion through proven AI-powered automation.

Worth a 15-minute call to learn more?

Best,
<Sender>
To: marcus@<redacted>.comNo reply
Subject: Saw your post on LinkedIn
Hey {firstName}, hope you’re doing well!

I noticed your recent activity and wanted to reach out about how we can help <Company> grow with our cutting-edge solutions.

Would love to chat about your goals for 2026.

Cheers,
<Sender>
To: eliza@<redacted>.comMarked as spam
Subject: Following up
Hi {firstName},

Just bumping this up in your inbox in case you missed it. Did you have a chance to think about scheduling that call?

Thanks,
<Sender>

After

5.8% reply rate

Real signals, casualized voice, a single specific question. Sent to similar accounts.

To: sarah@<redacted>.comReply in 4h
Subject: noticed the Series A announcement
Hi Sarah,

Congrats on the Series A. The piece in <publication> about how you’re scaling SDR ops was a great read.

Quick one: now that you’re ramping headcount, are reps still spending more time researching prospects than actually selling? That’s the bottleneck I keep seeing at this stage.

Worth comparing notes if so.

<Sender>
Reply: “Wait, did you read the <publication> piece? Yes, this is exactly what we’re wrestling with right now. 30 min Tues?”
To: marcus@<redacted>.comReply · meeting booked
Subject: thoughts on the Q3 hiring spike
Hey Marcus,

Saw you’re hiring 14 SDRs into Q3. Curious whether you’ve thought about how to keep your existing team’s playbook from getting diluted as you bring on new reps.

We’ve helped a few similar teams keep tribal knowledge in one place so the new hires don’t reinvent it. Worth a quick chat?

<Sender>
Reply: “Honestly the dilution thing keeps me up at night. Pick a time.”
To: eliza@<redacted>.comReply · same day
Subject: the old logo on your site
Hey Eliza,

Minor thing, but: noticed the favicon on <website> is still your pre-rebrand mark. Probably nothing, but figured I’d flag it.

Separately: I read your post on the deliverability project. We hit the exact same warm-up wall last spring at a different client. Different topic but happy to share what we did if useful.

<Sender>
Reply: “Honestly, thank you for the favicon catch. Yes, tell me more about the deliverability fix.”
5xApprox. reported lift

In the anonymized campaign data, the SDR, target accounts, and daily send volume stayed consistent. Messages moved from the old templates to the new engine. The reported reply rate rose from 1.2% to 5.8% within 60 days and held there.

Examples are anonymized and approximated. Real templates shared on request under NDA.

The reported results: higher replies, more meetings, then an acquisition.

The client reported a 4.1% reply rate within 30 days and 5.8% by day 60, where it held. Meeting bookings reportedly tripled in the same window. One prospect from a Fortune 500 company asked for the SDR’s LinkedIn after assuming the message was personally written.

The company was acquired four months after the system went live. The client reported that the acquirer treated the outbound engine as a material asset in due diligence and that the parent company still runs it. This study does not claim the deployment caused the acquisition.

“We tried two other tools before Orbit. Neither got our outbound past template-detection filters. With Orbit the system was live in days and the messages actually sounded like us. By the time we sold the company, it was generating more than half our pipeline.”

VP of Revenue · B2B SaaS, Series B
Quote anonymized at client request, in line with mutual NDA.

← All case studies  ·  Cold Email is available in Orbit Live

Build the next result.

Start with one system, keep approval where the risk is, and measure every run.

Start 7-day free trial