How we helped Classmate Studio find its ICP and open $362K in deals in 21 days

Introduction

Classmate Studio is a brand design studio with studios in Helsinki and Budapest, founded in 2015. It builds brand strategy, naming, visual identity and web design for cultural, consumer and industrial clients, and its work has appeared in Slanted and at the French Pavilion. Like most design studios it had grown on reputation, which meant lead flow arrived in waves and the founders could never predict the next client. They asked us to make new business something they could switch on.

The Challenge

A studio that could design for anyone, and therefore had never decided who to sell to.

No clear ICP → the client list ranged from restaurants to architects to magazines. Every outbound list would have been a guess.
Inconsistent lead flow → referrals came when they came, so some months were full and others empty.
No outbound history → nobody at the studio had run a cold campaign or knew what reply rate to expect.

What We Built

We let the studio’s own history choose the market, then went after it hard for three weeks.

1. Analysis of past clients. We went through the studio’s previous projects to find the pattern: which clients had paid well, bought the full range of services and been easiest to win. The answer was Finnish startups building a brand from the ground up.

2. One segment, one campaign. Instead of spreading across every type of company the studio had ever served, we built a list of Finnish startups at the stage where a brand becomes a priority and wrote the campaign for them alone.

3. Fast execution. Lists, copy and sequences were live within days, so the first results arrived inside the first month of the engagement.

The Outcome

Three weeks of outbound to one well-chosen segment produced more qualified pipeline than the studio had seen in months of referrals.

• 33 meeting-ready leads in 21 days → Finnish startups asking to talk about their brand.

• $362K in deals opened → pipeline value of the opportunities created in the same three weeks.

• A defined ICP → the studio now knows who it sells to, which makes every later campaign, referral ask and portfolio decision simpler.

Why It Worked

1. The data picked the segment. Past clients revealed where the studio wins, which is a better guide than a founder’s hunch about who might buy.

2. Focus beat breadth. One segment with one message produced traction that a scattered list never would have.

3. Speed to first signal. Going live fast meant the studio knew within weeks whether the ICP held, and it did.

Ready To Own Your Pipeline?

If you can serve anyone and your pipeline shows it, this is where we start. We find the segment where you already win, build the list for it and run the campaign until the calendar fills.

Book an outbound strategy call and we’ll map what an owned outbound channel would look like for you.