Grow w/ revenue-driven SEO | Clients: Riverside, VEED, MentorCruise, Buy Me a Coffee | Read our case studies

Hey, I’m Jules, the founder of Embarque. Want to implement your SEO content strategy successfully? Hire us!

We’re powering the growth of 8-figure businesses using the power of ROI-driven SEO.

You’ve probably heard of some of our clients: Riverside, VEED, Flick, EmailOctopus, Buy Me a Coffee, VEED.IO, Levels.Fyi, ScrumGenius and MentorCruise & many more.

We provide high-quality end-to-end SEO services at unrivaled rates and have the case studies to back it up.

If you’re interested in working with us, check out our case studies or drop me a DM.

If not, drop me a follow for more content on:

* Growing a productized business
* Community-centric content strategy
* SEO for founders, startups, marketplaces, bootstrappers, and communities

See you around!

Jules Ignacio Canlas

SEO is not complex.

Some "experts" just made it look complex.

You don’t need 200 ranking factors to succeed.

You need like… 10. Maybe less on a good day.

When you focus on those, you can:

→ Save time by cutting out low-impact tasks
→ See results faster with less trial and error
→ Build rankings that hold steady long-term

Swipe to see the the 10 ranking factors to prioritise 👇 

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Grow revenue w/ leadgen-driven AI LLM SEO | +25 SEO case studies on Embarque.io

10 SEO Ranking Factors That Matter in 2026

Want to stop spending hours on SEO tasks AI can do in minutes?

The tool is only as good as the instructions you give it.

Better prompts help you:

→ Build content briefs fast
→ Get better output with less back and forth
→ Spend more time on strategy, less on grunt work

Swipe to see 11 prompts that make SEO work faster.

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11 Simple AI Prompts for Faster SEO Work

Quick SEO catch up for the week.

Here’s a quick recap:

➔ Hidden HTTP pages can mess up your site name in Google
➔ Google can now monitor Search for exposed government IDs
➔ Google clarified crawler file size limits
➔ ChatGPT and Perplexity treat structured data like regular text

Swipe for the full breakdown.
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This Week in SEO: Googlebot Limits, AI Schema, HTTP Pages

Bing now has an AI search dashboard.

Yes. For real.

Inside Bing Webmaster Tools, you can now see when AI cites your content.

You can see:

• Total citations
• Which pages get cited
• The queries AI used to retrieve your content
• Trends over time

This is the first real step toward measurable GEO.

AI visibility is no longer a black box.

Swipe through for the full breakdown.

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Bing AI Performance Dashboard 101

One JavaScript mistake can kill your SEO.

A site owner on Reddit recently saw Google saying their website was offline.

They thought Google AI messed up but it didn’t.

Their page loaded the wrong message first… then JavaScript fixed it later.

Google indexed the first version.

Swipe for for a drill-down into the issues and actionable takeaways.

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One JavaScript Mistake That Can Kill Your SEO

Quick SEO catch up for the week.

Here’s a quick recap:

➔ Google reiterated that most sites do not need to use the disavow tool for spam links
➔ Google clarified how it chooses thumbnails for Search results and Discover
➔ Google removed outdated JavaScript SEO guidance from its documentation
➔ Bing updated its Webmaster Guidelines to reflect AI and Copilot search experiences
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Swipe through for the full breakdown.

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This Week in SEO: Disavow, Bing Guidelines, Thumbnails

Want to pull in 190k+ monthly visits and grow MRR by 300%?

Here’s exactly how we did it for Cleanvoice... and how you can do the same.

You'll see how to

➝ Rank early for fast-growing AI keywords
➝ Snag AI overviews and other important SERP elements
➝ Turn blog posts into a steady stream of sign-ups

Swipe through the carousel for the full playbook.

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How We Tripled Cleanvoice’s MRR Using SEO

Quick SEO catch up for the week.

Here’s a quick recap:

➔ Microsoft exposed large scale AI prompt injection attacks targeting AI assistants
➔ Google said resource hints do not help with crawling or indexing
➔ Google explained why it may ignore your sitemap
➔ Google warned against trying to force pages into the index

Swipe through for the full breakdown.
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This Week in SEO: AI Spam, Resource, Sitemaps, Indexing

Want to learn how to 29x SEO traffic in less than 12 months?

We did it for a value betting SaaS.

Before they came to us, they had:

→ No clear SEO roadmap
→ Limited visibility for core product keywords
→ Weak internal linking and site structure
→ No focused strategy around high-intent queries

Traffic wasn’t the main issue. Direction was.

After Embarque, they had:

→ 29x growth in organic traffic
→ 29,479 monthly organic sessions
→ 1,800+ users landing on high-intent pages every month
→ #1 rankings for core product terms like “value betting software”

And the best part? This wasn’t built on random blog posts or vanity traffic. 

It was built on commercial intent, structured internal linking, and authority pointed exactly where revenue happens.

Swipe through this carousel to see the exact framework we used, what we prioritised first, and how we turned SEO into a predictable growth channel. 👇 

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How We Grew a Betting Software 29x in <12 Months

Want to learn how to drive 924k AI citations in 90 days?

We did it for a workflow SaaS.

Today, they average:

→ 263k AI citations every 30 days
→ 924k AI citations every 90 days

Swipe through to see the exact strategy we used, what we fixed first, and how we turned AI search into a steady visibility channel. 👇 

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How we got 924k AI citations over 90 days

Can a One-Year-Old Website Beat an Older One in Search?

Quick answer: YES.

Age alone means nothing.

A site getting older is automatic.

But becoming genuinely worthwhile is earned.

If the older site has spent four years building depth, trust, and value, you’re competing with momentum.

If they’ve coasted, you can absolutely overtake them.

Swipe through this carousel for:

- Mueller's take on this topic
- When “domain age” can be overhyped
- How newer sites can close the gap faster

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seo-for-startupss

Can a One-Year-Old Website Beat an Older One in Search?

Want to learn how to generate 160K+ clicks with just 18 blog posts?

We did it for Space Crew.

Before they came to us, they were

→ Getting crushed by Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor
→ Starting from zero domain authority
→ Competing in a niche with no clear content strategy

After Embarque, they had:

→ 160K+ total clicks from just 18 pieces of content
→ Domain Rating grown from 0 to 27
→ Outranking job board giants on their most valuable terms
____________

Swipe through to see the exact strategy we used, how we picked the right keywords, and why doing less actually won them more. 👇 

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How We Helped Space Crew Generate 160K+ SEO clicks

Quick SEO catch up for the week.

Here’s a quick recap:

➔ Google AI Mode expanded to 53 new languages
➔ Businesses report Google reviews disappearing again
➔ Google warns JavaScript placeholders can break indexing
➔ Bing adds AI citation data to Webmaster Tools

Swipe through for the full breakdown.

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AIO, Bing AI Performance, Review, Indexing

Does Google penalise pages for bad title tags?

Short answer: no.

Google has clarified that it does not have a “bad title” algorithm or filter that suppresses pages just because the titles are poorly written.

In summary:

→ Google does not penalise sites simply for writing poor titles
→ The title shown in search is not always taken from the page’s <title> tag
→ Changing a title tag does not guarantee the SERP title will update

Titles still matter, but the bigger issue is relevance and how well the title reflects the page.
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Swipe the carousel for a quick breakdown of how Google actually handles titles in search.
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Does Google Penalise Pages for Bad Title Tags?

Bing just rewrote its Webmaster Guidelines and officially added AI search into the rulebook.

Here’s a simpler version: 

→ GEO is now officially part of Bing guidelines
→ You can control how Copilot uses your content with meta tags
→ AI content is allowed, but only with human oversight
→ Bing now treats AI manipulation as search spam

If AI visibility matters to you, this update is a big signal. 

Swipe the carousel for a simple breakdown of what changed and what to pay attention to next. 👇 

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Bing adds GEO to its official guidelines

Should you disavow bad backlinks?

Short answer: it depends.

Google says most sites don’t need to use the disavow tool because its systems already ignore many spammy links automatically.

But that doesn’t mean the tool is useless.

If you’re dealing with large volumes of obvious spam links or manipulative link patterns, disavowing can still make sense.

So for most sites, bad backlinks are usually ignored.

For some sites, especially in clear spam situations, disavowing can still be helpful.

Swipe through the carousel for a simple breakdown of when disavowing actually makes sense.
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Do You Actually Need to Disavow Bad Backlinks?

Want to steal your competitor's backlink strategy?

Most businesses approach this wrongly.

You see a competitor with 8,000 backlinks and think "I'm screwed."

In reality, maybe 100 of those links actually do anything.

The rest are dead weight (expired domains, low-traffic pages, irrelevant placements).

This carousel shows you:

→ How to spot the links actually driving their rankings
→ How to filter out the junk in minutes
→ How to build your own hit list based on proven sources

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How to Reverse Engineer Competitor’s Backlinks

Want proof your SEO is pulling its weight and driving the results you care about?

A solid tracking system makes that clear.

By tracking the right metrics, you can:

➔ See which pages actually drive conversions and revenue
➔ Spot SEO issues before they hurt your traffic
➔ Make data-backed decisions instead of guessing

Swipe for the key metrics to track.
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#seo #seotips #seoexpert

SEO Tracking 101

Want to know if your SEO and AI search traffic is actually making you money?

GA4 is the best place to check, and it gives you the insights you need to:

➡ Improve conversions by fixing high-exit pages
➡ Optimise content using real engagement data
➡ Make smarter SEO and GEO decisions with deeper insights

Swipe through to see 9 easy GA4 tips to strengthen your SEO and LLM SEO strategy. 👇 
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#seo #seotips #seoexpert

Google Analytics (GA4) for SEO & GEO in 2026

Want to learn how to turn SEO into a reliable inbound channel for your agency?

We did it for Embarque, our own website.

Before we got our SEO in order, we had:

→ 6,528 monthly organic sessions with no reliable growth system
→ Traffic tied to bursts of effort rather than a consistent strategy
→ No clear way to turn search into a predictable source of leads

After we applied the same approach we use for clients, we had:

→ 49,121 monthly organic sessions by March 2026
→ A structured content system built around 90-day cycles and clear commercial goals
→ SEO generating discovery call bookings throughout the week

Swipe through this carousel to see the exact workflow we used, what we prioritised first, and how we turned SEO into a reliable pipeline channel. 👇 

–––

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We Grew Embarque's Organic Traffic to 49K Monthly Visits

Certified Clay Expert & Agency owner | I'll help you build a scalable outbound engine that gets meetings booked on autopilot in the next 180 days | Visit Youtube: @growth-today to see how

Growth shouldn’t feel random.

Most of the B2B companies hit the same walls:
Inbound leads that don’t convert

Outbound that burns reps out without results

Partnerships that look good on paper but never drive pipeline

A CRM full of noise instead of reliable data


I’ve seen it across founders, sales leaders, and marketing teams. The problem isn’t effort, it’s the lack of a repeatable, scalable GTM system.
That’s what we build at Growth Today.

Instead of disconnected tools or random campaigns, we design and implement repeatable GTM engines across sales, marketing, and partnerships that…

✅ Enrich and qualify data
✅ Activate inbound leads into real opportunities
✅ Automate outbound prospecting
✅ Keep CRMs clean and reliable
✅ Orchestrate multi-channel campaigns
✅ Make BDR teams more effective or fully replace them
✅ Align marketing + partnerships with sales for compounding growth

Recent wins:

 → Built a clean, automated CRM that doubled conversion rates
 → Launched a content-driven demand gen engine that 3x’d inbound lead quality
 → Systematized partner outreach → pipeline from alliances grew 40% in 6 months

Growth doesn’t come from more outreach or more tools.
It comes from building the right system once and scaling it.
If you’re a B2B founder or revenue leader serious about building predictable pipeline, let’s connect.

Book your call: https://calendly.com/growth-today/intro-meeting

Brigitta Ruha

Efficiency is part of building any company. I get it.

But the problem starts when GTM spend goes down… and revenue expectations go up.

Being disciplined about CAC makes sense. But reducing spend removes the crucial part of building, scaling GTM - all the reach, experimentation, and ultimately - staying visible on the market ✌️

all of which eventually influence the CAC, the efficiency….

Predictable pipeline usually sits on top of a lot of unglamorous work:

- Ongoing testing
- Consistent market presence
- Regular feedback from the team, customers, and prospects

When those inputs shrink because we cut down on costs on revneue team, the impact doesn’t always show up immediately. It shows up a quarter later (fewer deals, thinner pipelines, longer sales cycles, etc)

Revenue rarely grows when the effort behind it shrinks. Reducing costs can absolutely work

but only if the system itself is improved, not just scaled back

P.S. How do you balance cost discipline with maintaining momentum?

Co-Founder@Growth Today | We Build Repeatable GTM Engines Across Sales, Marketing & Partnerships 🚀

best decision in 2025: stopped trying to sound like everyone else.

"Cold emails are all the same."... I lost count of the times I heard someone say this.

not because outbound is broken. 😄

but because everyone is writing from the same invisible rulebook:

- sound professional
- follow the template
- don't say too much
- don't say too little either

I did that too.

signal-based hooks. the 3W frameworks. "best practice" sequences.

results:

- decent reply rates
- sometimes w low energy conversations
- leads that never really felt aligned to how we work/what we're selling

the shift happened when I stopped optimizing for perfect and started writing in my actual voice:

👉 my story, how I'm different + radical transparency

suddenly, copywriting felt SOO much easier.

I got way more responses (I actually had to pause the sequence during our GT offsite in ✨ Bali ✨ because the team couldn't keep up with replies)

because I played a little bit differently. in my own way. ✨

turns out, a lot of “outbound hate” is just fear.

(because telling other people how to do it is always easier than doing it 😉)

Fear of standing out.
Fear of sounding different.
Fear of being rejected as yourself.

Cold email copy doesn’t need more tricks.

It needs more honesty. and YOU.

What helped me:

1️⃣ I write to my favorite prospect: I picture one person who could be my ideal client, writing email copy in the same words and tone of voice as I'd talk to them.

2️⃣ I say what I actually believe about what we can and can't do: we're not good for everybody. We also cannot help everybody, & I try to be super transparent about what is realistic or not.

if it resonates and expectations are set right, engaging people who share the same mindset is totally worth it.

(plus I don't need to deal with unrealistic "10X my sales overnight" situations, which anyone who ever achieved anything in sales or marketing would know is BS)

3️⃣ I use AI to amplify my thinking: what to say, how to reach out, when to follow up (although, thanks to HubSpot, lemlist, and our fancy Make automations, I couldn't realistically forget anyway…)

so I'll never be "cold email guru number 3847".

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ my team at Growth Today also tries to be as authentic with our customers' copies as we can be.

We're big fans of using ChatGPT to translate product bullshit into something tangible, short and sweet, while keeping the best practices from the space that we believe in. ✨

but sometimes, you just gotta play the game a bit differently…

would love to hear how you describe your cold email copy/different methods you use right now. ;)

Co-Founder @Growth Today | We Build Repeatable GTM Engines Across Sales, Marketing & Partnerships 🚀

We've ALL made every GTM mistake in the book

I’m sure you noticed it is never about the tech itself 

it's getting people actually to use them 

And we learned this the hard way… 

→ change management matters more than the system itself 
→ not everything needs to be automated 
→ bad data is way more expensive than you think 
→ outbound without relevance is just noise 
→ partnerships need as much system as the sales team (this team is often swept under the rug)

.. a few tips that can go a long way 👐

DM me if your team needs some expert guidance, hands-on execution

5 THINGS WE WISH WE KNEW

Woah, this is happening right now.

Clay is officially here in London 🎡 !

I remember 2023 when I first spoke to Varun Anand.

I felt !! FINALLY !! a tool built for growth.

for Growth teams.

for high-growth companies

Who are all SOO keen to use the data, but what if more business ppl could use it instead of just relying on techy guys from sales engineering backgrounds?

Suuuupperr excited to be here at Clay’s EU/London office and Europe.

& grab some ☕ with Jani Vrancsik Tyler Swanson, Ziqi Deng, Juan Ravagli, and Michael Vitak

We’ve been experimenting with AI in our GTM systems recently 👀

There are 3 different scenarios when you want to build autonomous systems:

chat w ChatGPT or Claude (e.g.: threads)
autonomous workflow (i.e Hubspot or agentic workflow)
ai agent that executes something very specific end-to-end

Let’s say you want to schedule a quarterly check-in with a client.

The first version looks something like this:

1. Assistive setup

So you open the CRM. Check your calendar. Ask ChatGPT to draft the email. Edit a line or two. Send it. AI helped you write it.

2. Automation-based

Now the system does most of it. After 90 days, the workflow runs. It checks the calendar. Writes the draft. Sends the email. Simple. Less work for the team. But it still follows a script. If something unusual happens, it doesn’t adapt. Your ops team needs to debug and fix it.

3. Autonomous Agents

Instead of telling the system, “Send the email.” You just provide the overall goal: “Alert if a customer stopped leveraging the product.”

It watches how the client is using the product using the data from your Snowflake/AWS database. Notices when something looks off. Sends a follow-up to prevent churn. Flags the account for potential churn if the Account is customer Success managed. Provides a summary for the CSM to prepare the conversation. Now the system isn’t just completing a task. It’s working toward an outcome.

& that’s a very different thing!

im gonna share our agentic agents as well, we build internally across sales and marketing ✌️
Where are you experimenting right now? 👇

Your lead sourcing workflow is probably more complicated than it needs to be….

You've got two bad options:

Apollo and Zoominfo are easy to use, but the data is old. People change jobs. The emails bounce.

LinkedIn has current data, but you can't export it without using scrapers that might get your account banned.

So your team is probably doing this:

1: scrape a database/import something 
2: export
3: upload to an enrichment tool 
4: verify, export again, push to CRM.

Four tools.

Three exports.

Hours gone.

There's a better way.

BetterContact’s waterfall lead finders that solve for coverage AND quality at the same time.

Here's how we use it in a 🥜

1️⃣ we originate lists inside the platform

2️⃣ then we push the clean data to Clay or HubSpot/Salesforce to activate & use the data

& just like their email/mobile phone enrichment waterfall, BetterContact also sources the data from multiple sources:

- B2B Databases (whitelabelled for now, incl. most popular ones)
- Web Crawling using AI Graph Expansions

To solve for quality/accuracy, their AI Agents to crawl the web in order to verify that the person actually works at that company/has that job title/lives in that country.

& if you're wondering:

- no, you don’t pay for unused credits → you only get charged when it finds a verified contact

- whether this replaces your entire stack → it doesn't replace everything, but it does change where list building starts. We've moved our own sourcing upstream into the waterfall, then push clean data downstream to Clay or HubSpot for activation

- you can find 5-10% more valid prospects to reach out to on average.

We've been using them because it just makes more sense than the old scrape-verify-export-repeat cycle.

if you think somebody would benefit this, repost it 🔄

if your Ops team is looking for other tools that can complement/replace, share this post w them

I was thinking about this over coffee this morning ☕

Most GTM teams don’t struggle with ideas anymore.

The playbooks exist.

Targeting logic is solid.

Sequencing frameworks are mapped out nicely.

The weak point is the execution and/or strategy layer.

Most stacks today are deeply connected: CRM, enrichment, ads, content systems, sales tools.

Everything talks to everything. But connected doesn’t mean autonomous.

Someone still has to write an email
Someone still has to decide when a workflow should run.
Someone still has to follow up and follow through.

That’s where things get fragile.

I’ve been testing FlashLabs SuperAgent recently because I wanted to see what happens when that decision layer is automated.

What works here isn’t that it writes emails. (Plenty of tools do that.)

It monitors public and social signals, understands curiosity vs. buying intent, and then triggers predefined GTM playbooks 👀

Which means:

– detecting early evaluation signals
– launching the right outreach sequence
– generating landing pages or ad variants
– updating CRM fields
– preparing follow-ups using meeting intelligence

End-to-end. Without someone babysitting the workflow. (or the team)

& it won’t be 100% pixel perfect

But it does get the job 80% of the time

which is AWESOME

Because if you do 80% best version out of yourself/system

You can buy back SOO much time

With consistency, which will give you a * huge * compounding result over time

This is like the early versions of an autonomous GTM layer.

Still experimenting with it. ✌️

But if you’re a GTM leader thinking about how execution scales

…not just how strategy looks on slides, FlashLabs SuperAgent is worth checking

Link pinned in the comment 👇

random question ☕️

When was the last time you actually trusted EVERY (or any?) field in your CRM? 😅

Not in theory.

But like… truly trusted it.

When you go to the CRM, you start to notice these small things piling upppp 👀

- Titles slightly outdated.
- Mobile numbers missing.
- Company names that don't even exist anymore (rebranded, acquired)

& that’s enough friction to slow things down. 

So instead of planning another BIG CRM sprint, we connected prospeo.io to auto-enrich all companies and contacts directly inside the CRM.

Now, when a new contact comes in:

- Default fields get filled out
- Email address is verified through multiple providers
- Details are refreshed when the person gets promoted, moves to a new employer

(Automatically.)

we still review things occasionally

we still care about governance (LeanData is great for auto-de-duping companies/contact btw!)

but we’re not exporting CSVs back and forth anymore. 🙃

It’s just… CLEANER + EASIER + MORE MANAGEABLE by default.

& saves a lot of time w/o second-guessing the data all the time.

CC’ing Matthew Putnam you can reach out to him in DM directly if you need more 👀

I ran my first outbound campaign 6 years ago. Drove 75 demos/mo for 2 E-Commerce SaaS as their growth leader, and then my cold email agency from 0 to $2M+ ARR. Here are 7 things I wish I knew before starting:

(1) Truly nail down your lead list

Sending your outreach messages to the right person matters more than anything else:

→ Precisely figure out what problem you're solving.
→ Find companies struggling with this problem.
→ Identify relevant individuals in these orgs.

(2) Give as much value as you can

You’re stepping into someone’s inbox uninvited.
& the fastest way to earn attention is to be USEFUL.

Give give give > ask

A simple approach:

→ Identify their problem
→ Share one practical solution for free
→ Do this as many times as you can on all channels where you are.

(Think through: why are you reading this LinkedIn post, right? EXACTLY!)

(3) Pick only one prospect and write for him/her

Many people try to write for 500k+ people.
Start with one instead.

Pick one prospect you’d genuinely want to work with.
& write as if they’re the only person receiving that email.

Then do the opposite:

→ Find 20 similar personas
→ Find similarities in their challenges, org size/org challenges
→ Then automate all these at a bigger scale

(4) Take care of the deliverability

Good deliverability doesn't guarantee your campaigns will succeed. But...

Bad deliverability guarantees your campaigns will fail.

Make sure to...

→ Send a few emails per mailbox (< 20 per day)
→ Set up MX, DMARK, SPF, DKIM records.
→ Disable open tracking.
→ Warm up mailboxes (bare minimum 14 days)
→ Weekly run inbox placement tests
→ Daily run domain blacklists checks

(5) Take the extra mile!! 

Any GTM channel is somewhat hard to crack. The same goes for cold email.

Make sure to go above and beyond when reaching out to your prospects:

→ Look at triggers, signals, current events, org. charts.

→ Reference insights from the job descriptions.

→ Don't stop at 1-2 email variations. At Growth Today, we frontload 8 variations

(6) Complement cold email with other GTM channels

Cold email is my favorite channel because it's cheaper to get started, and you can find what works a lot faster than with any other channel.

But it works even better with other channels.

→ Run ads to the same people you're cold emailing. warm them up! ♨️

→ Make great, authentic, and genuinely useful content and use email and LinkedIn to distribute it

→ Use cold emails to distribute valuable lead magnets.

(7) Don’t just use technology, leverage it to SYSTEMIZE

→ Have a look at growthtoday.co/sales-tools (or my fav one: our blog posts that include copy-pastable email templates)

→ Do a few tests manually to see what is the most interesting angle on the market to pitch your prospects.

→ Before hiring more people, ask: “Could I achieve the same with technology?”

→ Before doing more, ask: “Could I build a repeatable, scalable SOP or system instead of me doing this again and again?”

7 TIPS TO GENERATE MEETINGS WITH COLD EMAIL

Every year, LinkedIn feels a bit harder than it used to be New year = new algorithm = new tactics to learn, right?

RIGHT?
But…

Links don’t magically kill reach
Posting daily doesn’t exponentially increase your reach

Viral posts feel great, but don't fill the pipeline (800 views from the right people > 100K random eyeballs)
& video isn’t king by default 👑

What actually works is often pretty boring:

Fewer posts
Very clear ICP (stopped trying to talk to everyone)
Content people spend 90+ seconds on
Valuable frameworks > shortcuts

Same rule as outbound:

Foundation first, then build every other lever ✌️
& foundation = clean, actionable, relevant data
& then how to use it for GTM

Don’t let the noise distract you from keeping at posting/emailing the right thing

It's mostly the same fundamentals wrapped in a new language

Keep posting to build trust, credibility
Keep cold emailing to consistently show up

2026 LinkedIn Reality Check

“I think we’re losing more deals to bad data than bad messaging.”

If that is true,

I can feel you!

The usual process of getting good and accurate data somewhat requires this:

- One tool to find them.
- Another to verify.
- Another tool to find more because the previous ones didn’t find enough
- Export. Upload. Repeat.

It works, but unnecessary very tedious.

& never really knew which source actually found the valid email.

This is what I like most about BetterContact:

Instead of: “Let’s try provider A first…”

1- its email waterfall runs automatically
2-  through 20+ providers 
3- at scale, through the API (through Clay, or your CRM, AWS/DB) so you don’t need to import/exports

If one doesn’t return a valid email → it moves to the next. If it fails verification → it keeps going. Until it finds something actually usable. & you’re only charged IF the email address is actually found and valid.

If you’d like to save time on using 5+ different tools with 3 CSVs whenever you need an email, def try out BetterContact. ✌️

It’ll save you SO MUCH time.

p.s. how are you running enrichment right now?

4 things I did because I trusted my gut (not the people around me)

1-Started building programmatic prospecting in 2020 (way before Clay was cool)

No one understood why I'd struggle with no-code tools and Python when you could "just hire BDRs

After doing it full-time at a company and through consulting, when Clay popped up on my feed, I felt like I could create something different to help more people succeed with outbound.

Way easier than before, BUT leveraging all the experience I gained over the years.

2- Posted frequently on LinkedIn when everyone said it takes forever to see results

By the end of year 1, I was consistently building a pipeline from inbound, which eventually led to building Growth Today (and still keeps us going when the market gets tough).

Now I have CSM, GTM engineers, a team who assist me with content, and with sales, and freelancers helping me build what we believe in every day.

3- Let custom RevOps projects go

The team closed a few deals with enterprise customers.

On paper, it's awesome: no churn, high expansion, upfront payment…

But in the end, it didn't fit our ICP or the service we wanted to build at the time.

Letting go of some customers is hard, but necessary in the long run, depending on what route you choose to build your company.

4- Hired people who didn't have the skills yet, but had the potential

I always get DMs, and sometimes I make exceptions.

There was one person I almost fired in her 2nd week. I told her upfront: if we're both not getting value, it's hard to bring positive outcomes, and none of us will enjoy this work relationship.

I was candid, she was too. She mentioned she should leave herself if she won't hit my expectations.

She did it.

A-players are important, but sometimes your gut tells you to take exceptions.

Eventually, some people float to the top, and some just can't get you to the destination.

What about you?

What are the things you did because you knew better?

what we changed to fix their outbound

One thing I love about outbound is how quickly the truth shows itself.

If the system is off, the results will drag. If the system is right, everything clicks.... even if nothing else changes.

Last week we worked with a services company whose outbound “felt flat.”

But once we dug in, the problem wasn’t just list or the copy
…it was that their system was fighting against them.

Here’s exactly what we changed:

1️⃣ We stopped selling the service at scale only a few people respond to

They have 3 services.

All great.
But one is a terrible conversation starter.

Cold prospects don’t wake up thinking:

“Wow I really hope someone offers me a 40-page report today.”

Their prospects literally respond ~2× better to the other 2 services, but outbound wasn’t aligned to that.

So we repositioned around their two strongest conversation starters

2️⃣ We fixed the invisible killer → deliverability

Their audience = mid-market + enterprise.

Enterprise = Microsoft.

Microsoft = “I will evaluate your entire family tree before letting your email through.” 😅

So yep… we’re have a different mix Google + Microsoft inboxes and all these inboxes are purchased to multiple resellers, so we can continously monitor which ones are performing the best and use the data from our inbox placement tests to make adjustments to keep hitting the inbox.

3️⃣ We replaced the “quick chat?” CTA with value

Their CTA used to be a meeting request. (in a soft way which is GOOD).

But (especially in the agency space), you’re likely selling something that is “easy” to execute, so the barrier to entry is low.

So we introduced CTAs that give something instead of ask for something:

- campaign ideas
- roundtable theme maps
- insight drops
- quick audits

Concrete example if you’re running an ad agency:

→ “I have analyzed your ads published in the last 90 days. Can I send over a quick audit to decrease the CPL?”

→ “Would you be open to exploring how we can help you decrease the CPL on your Meta ads?”

GIVE → GIVE → GIVE → before you ASK.

4️⃣ We added intent + timing signals instead of guessing

Before: outbound went out in usual prospecting campaigns
Now: outreach triggers when something meaningful happens.

Signals we added:

→ new senior hires
→ hiring for marketing roles
→ aggressive ad spends
→ thought leadership indicators
→ content activity

5️⃣ We refreshed the messaging (just enough)

Not a rewrite — a refresh.

We updated angles based on:

the market’s current priorities
2026 plans
current challenges in their space
This avoids message fatigue

The fun part?

We didn’t change:

❌ the ICP
❌ the TAM
❌ the channel
❌ the core offer
❌ the send volume

Takeaway:

When outbound stops performing, people jump to copy first.

But the real leverage is almost always in:

→ targeting
→ timing
→ positioning
→ offer
→ infrastructure

Once the system is right, the copy suddenly becomes “amazing.”
Even if it’s the same copy you thought was the problem. 😅

Whenever sales slow down, the first instinct is usually:

Automation won’t fix a broken GTM system:

- Wrong ICP.
- Weak market signals.
- No clear value.

Before we automate anything at Growth Today, we run one test. We call it the Manual 30.

(like Forbes U30 but Manual U30 ✌️)

Open a simple sheet. Add 30 accounts you genuinely want to work with. Not random prospects. Not scraped lists. Companies you’d be proud to call clients.

Then go deep.

Layer 1: Buyer signals. Promotions. New mandates. Ad infos, 10-K report, and their initiatives. What they’re consistently talking about. What’s top of mind for them?

Layer 2: Company signals. Hiring insights. Expanding into new markets. Fresh funding. Sales leadership changes.

Layer 3: Thought leadership context Search their name + “podcast.” Search their name + “interview.”

Long-form conversations reveal operational tension people never post about.

Layer 4: Their GTM stack. CRM. Routing. Scheduling flow. Form logic.

Just by looking at their tech stack, you’ll know so much about how they operate and what GTM context their potential challenges are.

Layer 5: Process gaps. Job descriptions. Reviews. Case studies. Tells you what they’re focused on and what they’d like to actively solve

Layer 6: Job posts. Look at the language they use:

If this doesn’t generate real conversations, doing this at scale (by leveraging automation) will just help you fail faster.

& ONE MORE thing most teams underestimate: Speed-to-lead.

The longer they need to wait for your response, the lower your chances of turning that lead into a real conversation — and a booked meeting.

Strike while the iron is hot 🔥

Every GTM system we’ve successfully scaled started with manual validation first.

Not because it’s cute.

Because it works.

How do you validate targeting before turning automation on?

AUTOMATION WON'T FIX A BROKEN GTM SYSTEM 

What if we run out of target accounts? What if we burn them?" (I hear this at least once a week.)

And honestly? That’s the wrong fear. Your TAM doesn't run out.

Here's why the "we'll burn through our list" excuse is bullshit:

1️⃣ Your market is gonna change

New people join companies every quarter. Roles shift. Restructuring happens. Decision-makers rotate.

The VP you pitched 6 months ago? They might be gone. The Director who ignored you? They just got promoted and now own a budget.

And sometimes… You even change who you market to.

Your TAM isn't static; it's constantly refreshing. Don’t think in snapshots; it’s a motion. ✌️

2️⃣ Your service/product evolves

You launch new services. You add new angles. You test different messaging.

The more different teams I work with, the more I come to realize that most of them truly underestimate how much their GTM actually changes over time.

You're not the same company you were 6 months ago, so why are you still pitching like you are?

So if you're still worried about "burning through your TAM," here's a quick audit:

→ Have you tested 3+ messaging angles this quarter?
→ Have you revisited accounts from 6+ months ago with a new offer? 
→ Have you scrapped your "perfect" pitch and tried something weird?

No?

Then you haven't run out of TAM. You've run out of experiments. 😂 (& if you need help running those experiments, you know where to find me 📲)

If your database charges you PER CONTACT 👀 Your ABM motion turns into credit math 🧞 like this:

Want the CEO? pay. 💸

Need RevOps + Marketing too? pay again 💸💸

Want the buying committee? Now you’re doing FINANCE 🪄, not outbound.

You want to use these tools to maximize the coverage on your target accounts & the whole buying committee

So why pay for each individual When you get ALL of THEM?

With saasyDB: 1 credit = you get the whole buying committee 👀👀👀

The whole org, so you can actually multi-thread all relevant exec, functional leaders, operators …whoever influences the deal.

Stuart from saasyDB realized we shouldn’t be multi-threading to require a CFO’s approval to have access to the prospects at the target accounts we want to talk to ✌️

if you’re targeting SaaS = use SassyDB alone or on top of your existing tech stack

p.s. Does your enrichment provider force you to optimize for CONTACTS… or ACCOUNTS? or you can get both? 👀

I just * literally * watched AI build my workout plan in real-time!!

Prompt 1: "I want isolated exercises to form all parts of my glutes." AI responds with: → Exercise selection (cable kickbacks, bridges, abductions) → Sets, reps, rest periods → Why each movement targets specific glute regions

Prompt 2: "Generate this in the app."
(so that I don’t need to add each exercise to my workout plan. sorry im lazy! 😄)

Done.
Workout is live and ready to use.
This is the best AI implementation I've seen in a fitness app.

I’m just SO fascinated by how easy to use AI in every part of our lives
& honestly I can’t wait to see

-AI cold callers to do the phone calls
-AI to prospects target accounts

I’m already using AI to amplify my prospecting processes, content creation, and ideation

& I can’t wait to see what else it can do
The future is SOO exciting!

Some tools with AI (agents) you can test:

FlashLabs’s super agent for list building, prospecting, and follow-ups
Roman Hipp’s crawler AI agent to give you valid data
Carmen from Scripe to write content on LinkedIn
& to make the most out of these tools

Roxana Irimia Lemlist course on how to build a personal brand
Lara Acosta’s course on how to think about content creation on social
Nathan Lippi 🥾 Lippi or 🌪️ Marcos Stu’s Clay bootcamps and courses on GTM engineering/sales prospecting

Clay’s own university
P.S. NOEX Training if you're curious ✌️

A company came to us with a problem: they couldn't fill their sponsorship slots.

They run newsletters for crypto, gaming, and startup audiences.
But their sponsor pipeline was empty.

The issue? Their ideal sponsors (crypto companies, indie game studios, funded startups) didn't exist in Apollo, ZoomInfo, or any database they could buy.

So they asked us: Can you help us find and market us to them?

Here's what we did:

1️⃣ Email Infrastructure:

We bought domains, configured inboxes, and inbox placement tests to adjust sending based on inbox/spam ratio to maintain their health to prospect programmatically at scale.
If emails don't land, nothing else matters.

2️⃣ Custom data for list building

For crypto companies, we identified crypto monitoring directory sites. Built a custom Python script to scrape all of them. Enriched the companies. Found the right contacts.

For game developers, we scraped the Google Play Store's trending games. Used Claygent to reverse-engineer which studios built them. Then pulled decision-makers from those studios.

For startups, we sourced from different directories and databases and ran look-alike modeling to expand the list.

3️⃣ Messaging

Looked at scalable & cost-effective public data points that would either add value, or prove we did our research instead of just saying "hey, nice game."

4️⃣ Execution, Testing, Maintenance

Launched 6 campaigns.

Ran our frameworks to figure out what worked for each vertical in 90 90-day timeframe. Monitored, adjusted, scaled winners, killed losers.

The results over 90 days:

→ 104 interested responses
→ 2.4-5% reply rates depending on vertical/offer
→ 30% of positive response rate
→ $270K+ in qualified pipeline ($3k ACV on average)

The best part? They now have a repeatable system to fill their sponsorship inventory without waiting for inbound.

With proprietary data that their competitors can't access. 👑

If your ICP doesn't exist in standard databases, you're not stuck.
You just have to get creative about where to find them. 💡

We can write Python scripts to scrape niche sites. Or use tools to reverse-engineer company data. Or build enrichment workflows that run on autopilot.✌️

Proof in the pudding below 🍮

I used to think a “bad outbound month” meant we needed better copy.

But this week reminded me (again) that copy is usually the least of the problems.

One of our clients in the services space came in thinking the same thing:

“Our messaging just isn’t strong enough.”

Except… that wasn’t purely the issue at all:

1️⃣ significant part of their target market is the enterprise

Enterprise prospects = Microsoft.

And Microsoft is picky.

If your infrastructure isn’t tuned for it, you can write the best email in the world, and nobody will see it.

I know many agencies in our space don’t do Microsoft (we do), but it’s SO true that Microsoft is just 5× harder.

So yep… we’re have a different mix of Google + Microsoft inboxes and all these inboxes are purchased by multiple resellers, so we can continuously monitor which ones are performing the best and use the data from our inbox placement tests to make adjustments to keep hitting the inbox.

2️⃣ they were leading with the wrong service

They have 3 services.

All great.

But one is a terrible conversation starter.

Their prospects literally respond ~2× better to the other 2 services, but outbound wasn’t aligned to that.

A tiny repositioning → big impact.

3️⃣ the CTA lacked compelling reasons to meet

In the agency space, you’re likely selling something that is “easy” to execute, so the barrier to entry is low.

What prospects see: “Everyone claims they do outbound, so I assume you’re all the same.”

This is commoditization.

The market is flooded and undifferentiated.

Because of this, you must be SO clear on how you’re different and give them a compelling reason to meet with you.

Concrete example if you’re running an ad agency:

→ “I have analyzed your ads published in the last 90 days. Can I send over a quick audit to decrease the CPL?”

→ “Would you be open to exploring how we can help you decrease the CPL on your Meta ads?”

#1 gives them something valuable for free.

GIVE → GIVE → GIVE → before you ASK.

4️⃣ They weren’t using any intent signals

General prospecting campaigns are good.

But if you’re only doing that, you don’t have any “always-on” campaigns that work 24/7 and indicate a buying window.

So we layered in:

→ new hires
→ accounts scaling ads
→ recent leadership hires
→ thought leaders actively posting/speaking at conferences

You can use Clay, Apollo (and many more) to test and capture these windows.

Same TAM.
Same volume.
Same (good) copy.

I’m confident there’ll be a completely different performance.

Because outbound doesn’t always have just a messaging problem.

It usually has a thought process problem.

Lesson I’m taking forward:

If outbound feels slow, don’t rush to rewrite the emails.

Check the infrastructure.
Check the timing.
Check the offer.
Check the CTA.
Check what buyers actually respond to in the first place.

Fix the system → the copy suddenly “works.”

Funny how that happens. 😅

4 LESSONS YOU CAN STEAL TO IMPROVE YOUR OUTBOUND

You know that moment when something feels weirdly specific?

Like:

“Wait… this is exactly what I was thinking about.”

Relax.

The universe isn’t sending signs 😅

Someone just did their targeting properly. 😉 💋

Good segmentation looks like magic from the outside.

But behind it, it’s usually just:

– a clearly defined ICP
– context that is * actually * relevant
– timing that makes sense
– and a message written for one type of person, not everyone

Most outreach feels pushy because it’s generic. 😞

When it’s precise, it doesn’t feel like marketing.

It feels obvious.

The same logic applies to outbound, ads, and LinkedIn.

Nothing mystical.

No secret hacks.

Just be relevant, helpful, short + sweet

… and a system that knows when to stop guessing 👀

i wanted to share this for the weekend. positive vibes only!

& im sure you can do it

because i can do it too!!

taplio

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