How we helped Skiller Whale turn one conference into $120K in pipeline

Introduction

Skiller Whale runs micro-workshops for engineering teams. Created by tech leaders for tech leaders, its short, powerful, interactive sessions condense learning from experience.

The Challenge

Skiller Whale sells to engineering leaders, one of the hardest audiences to reach with cold email.

A crowded inbox → engineering leaders get pitched by training vendors constantly, and most of it reads the same.
Fit isn’t about size alone → the right customer is a tech-first company with a real engineering team, which a simple headcount filter doesn’t capture.
Timing matters → a team only thinks about upskilling when something is changing, like new hires, a new leader or a new stack.

What We Built

We built Skiller Whale’s outbound around signals that show an engineering team is changing, and around the events its buyers already attend.

1. Tech-first companies with 20+ engineers. Every list started from companies with a real engineering team, across company sizes.

2. Signals of a team in motion. We targeted companies with open engineering roles, new engineering leaders and tech stacks visible in their GitHub repositories, so emails reached teams at a moment of change.

3. An event campaign for LDX Free London. Our biggest campaign for Skiller Whale was a dedicated cold email campaign to attendees of LDX Free London, a conference Skiller Whale took part in, so outreach built on a shared moment instead of a cold start.

4. ABM with their commercial leader. For the largest accounts, we now run account-based campaigns together with Skiller Whale’s commercial leader.

The Outcome

Our biggest campaign for Skiller Whale showed what the approach can do.

• $120K in pipeline from one campaign → every one of the 24 positive replies became an opportunity.

• 24 positive replies from 503 contacts → and 70.6% of all replies were positive.

• Paddle and Monzo in the pipeline → conversations that started with the campaign were still active more than three months later.

Why It Worked

1. A shared moment. Reaching people around an event they were part of gave every email an honest reason to exist.

2. Signals over size. Hiring, new leaders and tech stack changes showed which teams needed upskilling now.

3. Built to last. The pipeline kept moving months after the campaign ended, because the conversations started with the right people.

Ready To Own Your Pipeline?

If your buyers are hard to reach and easy to lose in a crowded inbox, this is the exact gap we close. We find the moments that make outreach relevant, from hiring signals to the events your market attends, and turn them into pipeline.

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