10 appointments in the first 10 days
How a US architecture and planning firm booked around ten appointments in its first ten days, with prospects it had been chasing for a year.
“Right when we started the campaign I was amazed how quickly I received leads and how positive the experience was. I was able to book many appointments and re-establish relationships for new business. It made the process very efficient and streamlined!”
Marketing Specialist, US
The situation
A US architecture and planning firm with four decades of work behind them had two problems at once. Their CRM was full of people who had gone quiet: developers who had enquired years ago, contacts from finished projects, relationships that had simply drifted. And there was a list of developers and owners they had been trying to reach for a year without getting through.
Business development ran on referrals, repeat clients and industry events. That works, but it only reaches people already in your orbit, and it is hard to turn up when the pipeline needs filling.
What I did
- Cleaned, de-duplicated and verified their existing CRM export, then merged it with a fresh list of development and acquisitions decision-makers in their target markets
- Wrote a three-step sequence that asked what was on their desk rather than pitching the portfolio, with two variations at every step
- Offered something genuinely useful in the follow-ups: a free feasibility look at a live deal
- Set up and warmed dedicated inboxes on US business hours so their main domain was never exposed to the volume
The result
Around ten appointments were booked in the first ten days, with what the client described as “prospects I have been trying to get for a year”. Conversations also reopened with former clients that had gone cold.
Across the campaign so far: 4,949 decision-makers contacted, 238 replies at a 4.8% reply rate, and 115 interested leads. Nearly half of everyone who replied wanted to talk, which comes down to who was on the list. Bounces stayed at 1.25%.
Nothing about the campaign was complicated. The list was accurate, the emails asked a real question instead of pitching, and the follow-ups were polite. Prospects who had gone unreached for a year were not holding out for a cleverer email, they just had not been asked properly.
All of that came from under 40% of the list, with 7,826 people still to reach.
Want results like this for your practice? See how we run cold email for architecture firms, or book a call and I’ll map it out.