Automating Outbound Using Ad Engagement Data

Context

At adam.ai we had LinkedIn campaigns running successfully for a couple of months generating a pipeline of $300K. We wanted to capitalize on this with an added layer of outbound campaigns.

Instead of starting from scratch and looking at outbound as a separate activity, we decided to use Fibbler's ad engagement data as a trigger for our outbound. This way we're squeezing more out of these ad dollars.

Of course, you'd want to run other outbound campaigns besides this. This of this as one of your trigger based campaigns.

1. Setting Up LinkedIn Ads

We started by running Text Ads and Lead Gen Ads on LinkedIn to reach professionals who might be interested in what we offer. But honestly, you can apply this method to any ad format, like Thought Leader Ads. The key is to get your brand in front of the right audience. This is important because it can save you some time (and credits 😉) in step 5 of this exercise.

2. Fetching Engagement Data with Fibbler

Once the ads were running, I wanted to know which companies were engaging with them. This is where Fibbler.co comes into play. It allowed us to fetch ad impressions and engagement data at the company level over the past 90 days and send it directly to HubSpot. Refer to this guide on this.

Ideally you'd want to run this on a shorter time frame since this is an outbound trigger and you want to be more top of mind when you do the outreach.

At the time of setting this up, we were running a small campaign on LinkedIn so I opted for a longer time frame to fetch a bigger pool of prospects.

If you're running tons of campaigns and accumulating lots of impression and engagement data with your ads, try adjusting your Fibbler account to collect data for the past 7 or 30 days, this way you're gathering more recent prospects. The more recent, the more top of mind, the more likely your outbound will get replies.

3. Creating a List in HubSpot

With the engagement data flowing into HubSpot, I created a dynamic list (aka Active list) of companies that showed relatively significant interest. Focusing on companies with 100+ impressions and 5+ engagements ensured we were zeroing in on prospects who were already somewhat familiar with our brand.

Keep in mind you'll need to adjust these minimum thresholds depending on your timeframe and volume of data.

Steps I followed:

• Navigate to lists in HubSpot.
• Create a new company-based active list. Make sure it's "Active" so new companies that match can get added automatically.
• Set the criteria using Fibbler's new properties in HubSpot:
  • Ad Impressions greater than or equal to 100.
  • Ad Engagements greater than or equal to 5.

Exclude companies already in the pipeline. This is important, you don't want your sales team coming at you all guns blazing that you're reaching out to their precious pipeline opportunities :).

You can either do this step here if you have a clear way of identifying companies in the pipeline in HubSpot. Otherwise you can do this step later in Clay.

Save and name the list something like "LinkedIn Engagement (Fibbler)".

4. Send data from HubSpot to Clay using Make.com

To streamline the process, I used Make to automate data transfer from HubSpot to Clay.

Now here's a little tricky part. Clay has a native integration with HubSpot where you can easily fetch companies. However that integration is only available on the Pro plan which costs $800/month. We only have access to the Explorer plan for $349/month. As a workaround here's what I did.

• Create a workflow inside HubSpot that sends companies in the list created in step 3 of this exercise to a Google spreadsheet.

• Create a scenario in Make that fetches companies from the Google spreadsheet and send it to Clay via HTTP request. You might think why didn't I just fetch the companies from HubSpot directly using Make. What I've found is that the HubSpot module inside Make can only fetch contact lists, not company lists. That's why we need that Google spreadsheets step.

By setting this up, every time a company was fetched by Fibbler and sent to HubSpot, it was added to a HubSpot list then sent to a Google spreadsheet then sent to a Clay table automatically.

5. Enriching and Filtering Data in Clay

With the data automatically populating in Clay, I moved on to enriching it. Clay allowed us to fetch any details we need e.g. domain, company LinkedIn URL, Industry, Employee headcount, tech stack, etc.

I was then able to find decision-makers in these companies and fetch their contact info; emails and LinkedIn profiles.

You can filter to your ICP. Keep in mind, most if not all leads in this table should be relevant assuming your LinkedIn ads targeting was on point.

If you haven't excluded companies already in the pipeline, you can do that here in this step. For that to work automatically, you want to first pull companies in the pipeline from HubSpot in another Clay table named "Active Pipeline" (via Make) then use the Lookup feature to check if any company exists in the "Active Pipeline" Clay table.

Clay is also great at personalizing your outreach message e.g. we personalized a PS line mentioning that our tool can integrate seamlessly with their [insert tech stack name].

Make sure to keep the auto-update feature in this Clay table turned on as you want this to be a streaming table, updating as data comes in.

6. Reaching out through Email and LinkedIn

With a refined list of decision makers, you are ready to reach out. I used Smartlead for email campaigns and HeyReach for LinkedIn outreach. You can use any sending tool of your choice as long as it can connect seamlessly with Clay.

Let's recap the context here. These are prospects that could have potentially seen and/or engaged with your ad in the past x number of days. However, this might not apply to all prospects you're reaching out to because remember Fibbler only gets you company-level data. The decision makers you've fetched from Clay might include people that have not seen your ads.

So you don't want to necessarily mention your ad or the fact that they might have seen or engaged with your ad. You want it to be a delightful serendipity :)

Similar to most other outbound triggers, you don't want to necessarily mention the trigger.

7. Wrapping It Up

By automating this workflow, we've transformed ad engagement data into a steady stream of high-quality outbound leads. The combination of LinkedIn Ads, Fibbler.co, HubSpot, Make, Clay, Smartlead, and HeyReach makes the process scalable. Once you have the setup in place, this workflow can run seamlessly in the background.

As you accumulate more ad engagement data, your outbound lists will grow giving you more room for message testing and all that good stuff.

Happy prospecting!