How we took RPDK from zero outbound leads to €3.4M in pipeline in 90 days

Introduction

RPDK is a product design and engineering firm for medical devices, working with device companies in the UK and the US. Its work is technical, regulated and high value, which makes it exactly the kind of service that is hard to sell by cold email: the buyer is specialised, the decision is slow and a generic pitch is ignored. RPDK had tried outbound before and never produced a qualified lead from it. It asked us to build the motion from scratch.

The Challenge

A specialised service, a specialised buyer and an outbound history of zero.

No MQLs from outbound, ever → earlier attempts had produced nothing, which made the team sceptical that cold email could work for a technical service.
A narrow, expert buyer → heads of engineering and product at medical device companies know their field and dismiss anything that does not show the same knowledge.
Two markets at once → the UK and US have different regulatory language, company landscapes and expectations, so one campaign would not fit both.

What We Built

We treated outbound as a research-led motion, with Clay doing the work of understanding each company before the email was written.

1. Clay-powered personalisation. Each target device company was enriched for its products, stage and regulatory context, so the opening lines spoke to what that company was building rather than to medical devices in general.

2. Separate UK and US campaigns. Lists, language and proof points built per market, run in parallel, so both pipelines started filling in the same quarter.

3. A second channel for the CEO. Alongside the campaigns, we connected RPDK’s CEO with dozens of public-speaking agents, opening a route to conference stages where device companies gather.

The Outcome

Ninety days after a history of zero, the pipeline had seven figures in it.

• €3.4M in pipeline in 90 days → qualified opportunities with UK and US medical device companies, from a channel that had never produced a lead.

• Two markets live → parallel campaigns gave RPDK conversations on both sides of the Atlantic from the first month.

• A speaking pipeline for the CEO → introductions to dozens of agents who place experts on industry stages.

Why It Worked

1. Research before writing. Personalisation built on each company’s real products earned replies from a buyer who ignores generic pitches.

2. Market-specific campaigns. Treating the UK and US as different audiences made both work instead of neither.

3. A technical service needs technical emails. Showing knowledge of the prospect’s device and regulatory world was the difference between zero leads and a seven-figure pipeline.

Ready To Own Your Pipeline?

If your service is technical and your buyer is an expert, this is where we start. We research every company before we write, build the campaign per market and run it until the pipeline has numbers in it.

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