FinTech
Turning a niche fintech ICP into 2,000+ qualified touches a month — without adding any SDR headcount
Service
Done-For-You Outbound + Custom Playbooks
Industry
HQ
Team Size
Results First: What We Delivered
When Finimize came to Corebits, their goal was clear: scale outbound without hiring more SDRs. Their small team was drowning in manual research, and generic email sequences weren't cutting through the noise. Here's what happened over 90 days:
Qualified Touches: Scaled from 400/month to 2,000+/month — a 5x increase without adding any headcount.
Campaign #1 Results: 11 replies → 9 positive responses → 2 confirmed meetings booked. That's an 82% reply-to-meeting conversion rate.
Monthly Meetings: Went from 0-2 qualified meetings per month to 8-9 consistently.
Markets Expanded: Originally targeting only US and UK. Now reaching Canada, EU, MENA, APAC, and LATAM.
SDR Hiring Avoided: They had planned to hire another SDR. Instead, automation handled the load — $0 additional headcount cost.
Content Workshop Campaign: Instead of pitching on email #1, we invited leads to a 30-minute webinar. Execs from Wells Fargo, Visa, and Mastercard registered. Generated 2 meetings from a single campaign.
"We ended with a library of workflows we can clone and tweak. That's the real ROI — speed plus ownership"
- Sebastian Salina,
BD Lead, Finimize
The Context: When Manual Outreach Hits a Ceiling
Finimize is a B2B content licensing platform that helps trading platforms, neo-brokerages, and robo-advisors educate their retail investors. Think of them as the content engine behind the investment apps you use every day.
They had a small but capable sales team — 2 SDRs and 1 BD Lead — running everything through HubSpot. But despite having a strong product, they were stuck. Their north-star metric was user engagement inside client platforms, and they needed more clients to grow.
Here's why they reached out to Corebits:
Spray-and-pray lists from Apollo. 70% of their contacts were outside their true ICP. They were wasting time on banks, insurance companies, and crypto exchanges that would never buy.
Manual research was eating all their time. SDRs spent 60% of their week digging for accounts instead of emailing. They could only research 100-200 accounts per week.
"Financial services" keyword noise. Their searches returned Stripe, crypto exchanges, and enterprise treasury firms — none of which were their buyers.
Generic sequences that blended in. Open rates were decent, but replies were rare. Their emails sounded like everyone else's.
What they asked us for:
A system that could scale outbound without hiring more SDRs
Hyper-targeted account lists — only trading platforms, neo-brokerages, and robo-advisors serving retail investors
Personalized messaging that actually referenced the prospect's situation
Someone to handle responses, follow up, and book meetings directly
"I saw people bragging about Clay and AI agents on LinkedIn, but we had no idea how to stitch it all together."
- Sebastian Salina,
BD Lead, Finimize
Strategy: Laser ICP, Signal-Based Personalization, Multi-Channel Execution
Our plan mirrored exactly what Finimize asked for on that first discovery call — a clean data spine, personalized messaging at scale, and a repeatable engine that books meetings without adding headcount.
Here's how we built it:
1. ICP Filtering That Actually Works
We didn't trust keyword searches. Instead, we built a custom AI agent that visited each company's website in real-time to answer one question: "Is this a trading platform, broker, robo-advisor, or neo-bank serving retail investors?"
Auto-excluded sites mentioning "institutional," "enterprise treasury," or pure crypto focus
Filtered out banks, insurance companies, and B2B fintech infrastructure
Result: 458 laser-fit accounts from thousands scraped in the first batch
No more spray-and-pray. Every account on the list was a genuine potential buyer.
2. Signal Stack (Per Contact)
We didn't just find contacts — we found reasons to reach out. For every prospect, we pulled multiple signals to personalize the message:
Signal Type | How We Pulled It |
|---|---|
Blog & help-center themes | Text scrape → OpenAI summarized key topics |
LinkedIn posts & job changes | Clay LinkedIn enrich block |
"We're hiring" cues | Clay Jobs → filter roles with "content," "education," "engagement" |
Event panels | News → keyword + company name |
Competitor follows | LinkedIn competitor follower scrape |
Each signal gave us something specific to reference in the email — not "I saw your company is growing" but "I noticed you're hiring a Content Education Manager, which usually means..."
3. AI Copy Engine
Claude (Anthropic's AI) took the top three signals per prospect and wrote a 90-100 word first email.
Tone: Helpful analyst, not pushy vendor
Each email referenced the prospect's own content gaps (e.g., "I noticed your app doesn't have beginner explainers for options trading...")
No generic "I'd love to connect" — every email had a specific, signal-based hook
4. Multi-Channel Orchestration
We didn't rely on email alone. Each channel played a specific role:
Email: The steady driver. Easiest to scale, cleanest lever on cost-per-meeting.
LinkedIn: Intent radar and social proof. Lower direct conversion, but excellent for warming up cold prospects.
Website visitor follow-up (RB2B): When someone visited Finimize's site, we hit their inbox within 24 hours. This lifted meeting rates by 30%.
Together, they created a flow that felt natural to the buyer — not pushy, not disconnected — just well-timed outreach that landed meetings.
5. Tech Orchestration
Clay drives research + personalization
SmartLead rotates domains for deliverability
Make.com posts positive replies to a #hot-leads Slack channel for immediate follow-up
HubSpot scores and tracks everything
All workflows were built inside Finimize's own Clay account — not ours. This means they own the system forever.
The Standout Campaign: "Content Workshop" Wedge
This was the campaign that proved the entire approach.
Instead of pitching a license fee on email #1, we took a different angle. We invited leads to a 30-minute webinar: "How to write finance content that sticks."
Why this worked:
Social proof in the invite: "Execs from Wells Fargo, Visa, and Mastercard already registered." This made it feel like a real industry event, not a sales pitch.
CTA felt like free value: The ask was "learn something useful," not "take a sales call." Much lower friction.
Positioned Finimize as the expert: By teaching content strategy, they established credibility before any sales conversation.
Campaign Breakdown:
1. Message Crafting
3-email sequence focused on the webinar invite
Subject lines tested: "Finance content that actually gets read" performed best
No product pitch in any email — pure value offer
2. Multi-Channel Outreach
Email sequence: Invite → Reminder → Last chance
LinkedIn: Connected with registrants, shared related content
Post-webinar: Personal follow-up to attendees offering a deeper conversation
3. Results
11 replies from the campaign
9 positive responses (interested in learning more)
2 confirmed meetings booked directly
82% reply-to-meeting conversion rate
4. Why It Resonated The webinar offered genuine value. Prospects weren't being sold — they were being educated. By the time they got on a call, they already saw Finimize as a trusted resource, not just another vendor.
"The Content Workshop campaign was a smashing success. It proved that leading with value opens doors faster than leading with a pitch."
- Sebastian Salina,
BD Lead, Finimize
What Slowed Results (And How We Fixed It)
Every campaign hits speed bumps. What matters is how fast you recover. Here's what we encountered and how we resolved it:
Challenge | Header 2 |
|---|---|
Low reply rates initially | Switched from broad "financial services" targeting to laser-focused ICP filter. Reply rates jumped immediately. |
Generic emails blending in | Added signal-based personalization. Each email referenced prospect's own content gaps. Opens stayed flat, but replies doubled. |
SDRs overwhelmed by setup | Built everything inside Finimize's Clay account with Loom walkthroughs. By month 3, the SDRs were editing prompts themselves. |
Deliverability concerns | SmartLead rotated domains automatically. Warm-up handled. No major inbox issues. |
Expansion to new markets | Once US/UK playbook was proven, we cloned it for CA, EU, MENA, APAC, and LATAM with localized messaging tweaks |
The key learning: narrow the ICP before scaling volume. It's tempting to blast more emails, but fewer, better-targeted messages outperform every time.
Why It Worked
Predictable growth rarely comes from radical change — it comes from doing the right things over and over. Here are the key insights from the Finimize project:
Narrow ICP + AI filter = fewer, better accounts. We didn't try to reach everyone in "financial services." We built an AI agent that only let through trading platforms, neo-brokerages, and robo-advisors serving retail investors. 458 qualified accounts beat 10,000 random ones.
Signals drive personalization; personalization drives replies. Generic "I saw your company is growing" doesn't work anymore. Referencing their blog content, job postings, or competitor activity makes the email feel researched — because it is.
Content-led first touch opens doors faster than a product pitch. The webinar invite outperformed direct pitch emails by a wide margin. Prospects want value before they want a sales conversation.
Build in the client's Clay, not ours — handover is 10x simpler. Every workflow lives inside Finimize's account. They own it. They can edit it. They can clone it. No dependency on us to keep running.
Real-time website follow-up converts warm interest while it's hot. When someone visits your site, they're curious. Hitting their inbox within 24 hours lifted meeting rates by 30%.
What's Next
The next stage for Finimize is all about scaling what works and experimenting where it makes sense.
Hold the core: Keep the trading platform / neo-brokerage engine running. Continue expanding CA, EU, MENA, APAC, and LATAM markets.
Clone the playbook for new verticals: Test adjacent ICPs like financial education platforms and investment newsletters.
LinkedIn content play: Ghostwrite thought leadership content for the BD Lead to attract inbound alongside the outbound engine.
Cold calling layer: Add a dedicated caller to follow up on high-intent signals — website visitors, email opens, LinkedIn engagers.
The foundation is built. Now it's about adding layers and optimizing.
"We ended with a library of workflows we can clone and tweak. That's the real ROI — speed plus ownership."
- Sebastian Salina,
BD Lead, Finimize
