Dealight had a strong product but couldn't crack outbound in the saturated AI SDR market. We repositioned their messaging around a clear differentiator, and booked 24 demos in 3 weeks across 30,000+ emails sent, with a 13.8% positive reply rate on the best-performing campaign.
BACKGROUND.
Dealight is an AI SDR platform built to help service-based firms like staffing agencies, consulting companies, and recruiting firms, book demos 24/7 through LinkedIn.
By combining automation with AI-driven engagement, Dealight identifies the right prospects, crafts the right message, and manages LinkedIn outreach end-to-end so clients can focus on closing deals, not chasing leads.
The company’s mission is simple: help businesses that rely on outbound sales consistently generate qualified leads without manual effort.
Before engaging with Cymate, Dealight had a strong product and consistent inbound results but wanted to validate and scale its outbound strategy through cold email.
Despite testing some campaigns internally, the team struggled with a few key challenges:
Their initial cold outreach lacked clear differentiation from other AI SDR tools in a crowded, commoditized market.
Previous campaigns produced inconsistent engagement - some responses, but not enough to fill the calendar reliably.
Dealight needed to find a repeatable system for targeting service firms and sales leaders that could scale safely without damaging deliverability.
This was their first large-scale cold email initiative, and they needed a framework that combined performance, consistency, and experimentation.
THE SOLUTION.
Infrastructure Setup
We built an infrastructure of 33 domains and 99 mailboxes with separate warm-up schedules to maintain 100% health. Each campaign was segmented by audience type, ensuring deliverability stayed under 1% bounce rate across 30,000+ emails sent.
Initial Strategy
The first phase targeted a broad set of industries with generic messaging focused on “AI SDR automation.” While this generated replies, conversion into demos was low. The market viewed “AI SDR” as saturated, and the messaging failed to stand out.
Strategy Pivot
After the first week of results, we analyzed response data and noticed stronger engagement from ‘newly hired sales leaders’ - a segment naturally in “pipeline-building” mode.
We collaborated with the client to:
Refine the audience toward C-level, VP, and Director of Sales within small service-based firms.
Reframe messaging around LinkedIn-specific AI engagement, emphasizing that Dealight’s AI books demos on LinkedIn (not via email) - a key differentiator.
Shorten copy, switch to conversational CTAs, and incorporate case studies (e.g., “15 demos in 2 months for a consulting firm”).
Once the new approach launched, the campaigns gained immediate traction - reply rates rose by over 40%, and the first week delivered multiple booked demos.
Data-Driven Iteration
By integrating with Cymate’s analytics, Dealight tracked metrics such as:
Positive reply rate
Meeting-booked ratio per campaign
Bounce and sender performance
Weekly iterations were made to ensure steady growth, replacing underperforming audiences and doubling down on high-engagement groups.
In just three weeks, Dealight’s campaigns achieved:
24 meetings booked
44 interested leads
Average 4-6% reply rate across campaigns
13.8% positive reply ratio on best-performing campaign
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