Outbound Success With AI-Powered Sales Engagement | David Lopes from Human Linker

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have David from Human Linker, head of growth with them. How are you doing today, David?

David Lopes: Hello. I’m well, thank you, Andrew.

Ernesto: I’m doing great. Great. Thank you so much for asking. And I’m sure our listeners are tuning in wondering what Human Linker is all about, so let’s kick it off with that. David, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

David: Yeah, sure. So Human Linker is specialized in a sales engagement platform. Basically, we use big data and AI to help you convert more leads with personalization. We are a SaaS, so you can create impactful and personalized campaigns. You can send automated messages and track return on investment effectively. We have four main features right now. The first one is AI-built copywriting, so we can create the highest level of personalization in campaigns in one-to-one emails and in LinkedIn outreach. We also do multi-channel outreach with email and LinkedIn. After that, we have two main features more focused on data. The first one is AI lead recommendation. We have a large database of contacts and companies. And the last one is advanced sales and marketing intelligence, which includes trigger detection like buying signals and disc analysis and profiling.

Ernesto: Okay, interesting. I’d love to hear that. So that way our listeners who are tuned in can get a good understanding of Human Linker. What would you say is the key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

David: The main problem we solve is the inefficiency in outbound sales processes. For example, the actual response rate is under 5% globally. With Human Linker, we aim to get a 10% to 30% response rate with the power of big data and generative AI. So that’s the main problem we solve with Human Linker. We have many services, like I mentioned before, contact enrichment, copywriting with AI, multi-channel outreach, and all this stuff brings value to our customers.

Ernesto: Definitely important. So then, I mean, you guys are in over 120 countries with more than 15,000 clients. Is there a certain vertical segment that you guys like to go for? Is there an ideal ICP for you guys?

David: Yeah, of course. Basically, we started by focusing on sales teams, especially those that had expertise with Salesforce because the integration was smooth with Human Linker. That was our first ICP, targeting companies with around twelve to 100 employees, with many salespeople in the team, in industries like sales, tech, finance, and services. The Persona was mainly simple; it was sales teams, account executives, and all the people who are doing outbound outreach sequences. We also targeted ops teams for implementation, so it was a lot of DevOps, marketing ops, and also the managers like head of sales or VP sales to track the ROI of the tool.

Ernesto: Okay. All right. Interesting. Love that. So is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys? How do people usually find out about Human Linker?

David: We have different channels actually at Human Linker. The first one I would say is paid channels like LinkedIn ads, Google Ads, and Meta ads. Just to let your audience know, Human Linker is PLG and SLG, so we need to have both a unique strategy to get clients in PLG and in the sales-led motion. Actually, the marketing strategy is pretty simple. We have paid channels like LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads, which serve acquisition in PLG. We use Meta ads for retargeting, and we also focus on SEO and content production to generate the perfect message for our audience. We do a lot of outreach campaigns with our tool, obviously, and we get significant traction with referrals and partnerships with high-content creators in our industry. So I can say right now we have four channels: paid ads, SEO, outreach, and referrals/partnerships.

Ernesto: That’s awesome to hear. Love to hear that. So that way our listeners who are tuned in can go ahead and visit you. They can always check you out at humanlinker.com. What role does the website play for client acquisition?

David: Well, our website actually plays a crucial role in our marketing strategy because we drive a lot of traffic to this website with all the different vertical channels I mentioned before. So it’s basically the first touchpoint for clients to learn about us and see which services we can offer them. They go on our website to request demos and try the solution in self-serve. So yeah, it’s very important to have a clean website with content and a user-friendly interface. We work on improving our conversion rates daily to be better, but yeah.

Ernesto: Okay, awesome. So on that note, is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners for website lead generation?

David: To get lead generation across the website? It depends on the budget, but what I can say is if you can do ads, you can test and go very high in velocity and test messages to your audience with ads, especially in LinkedIn Ads, because you can segment your audience easily. If you drive traffic to the website, you can create great landing pages for them to deliver the best message with the best audience. My recommendation would be, in ads, to segment your audience as best as you can and to create verticals in messaging to get the best feature to show them for each audience. In outreach, I wouldn’t show the website early on. I prefer to create a relationship with my prospects before directing them to the website. I don’t drive traffic to the website in the first message of my outreach campaigns, but obviously, they go there to see more data. But it’s not the main call to action.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for sharing those tips and methods with us. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit here, David, and let’s talk about you as a leader. You being the head of growth there for Human Linker, what are some key tasks you like to focus on in your day-to-day work?

David: Well, my day-to-day is very large, but mainly I oversee all the marketing strategy we’re doing, and I coordinate with the marketing team on current tasks. At Human Linker, we operate in sprints, within quarters. Each quarter, we have a sprint with many tasks to do. So I analyze all the campaign performances daily and optimize efforts in each channel. That’s my biggest task. Additionally, I work on a lot of content creation and partnerships to bring more value to our brand visibility. I’m also on calls with potential partners or content creators. I do a lot of ops and data work as well. I like to be hands-on with the product, see workflows, and determine where the product can bring value to our users. To do that, we need to track each feature, so I collect data directly from the product. That’s basically what I do.

Ernesto: Okay, interesting. So in your free time, when you have some available, how do you like to stay up to date with all the news in the marketing world, such as trends and strategies? Is there a preferred channel that you like to go with?

David: I would say there are maybe three ways to stay on top of the industry. The first one is to connect with the right people on LinkedIn because you can see a lot of valuable information there if you follow the best in the industry. My second piece of advice would be to talk a lot with your peers. For example, I was the first employee at Human Linker as the head of growth, so I needed to talk to others who had been in similar roles before. I learned a lot from them before I started at Human Linker. The next one, which is my personal preference, would be to create side projects. When you create side projects, you can learn a lot faster than in an enterprise. For me, that’s a good resource to learn on your own. But you’ll do a lot of things if you run side projects.

Ernesto: Definitely. Love your answers. So let’s jump into our next section here, David, which is our rapid-fire question round. Are you ready for them?

David: Yeah, sure.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. Awesome. First off then, David, what is the last book that you read?

David: The last book was by Patrick Lencioni, called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It’s about how you manage a team in your department and how you can create a good team, good synergy between people, and how to overcome common obstacles as a manager. I think it’s a powerful book for all the people who actually manage a team.

Ernesto: Okay. All right. Interesting read there for our listeners. Next up then, if there were no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

David: I would love to have an AI tool that provides me with real-time predictive insights on my customers’ behavior and on the product. I think it would be perfect for me and for all growth and marketing teams to tailor the messages and strategy based on the behavior on the product. So I think it would be perfect to have that in the future.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay, awesome. Great to hear that. Next, if there was one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

David: It would be my follow-ups in emails. I have a lot of calls with partners, content creators, and my team in marketing, and I need to write a lot of emails to create follow-up tasks and move to the next step. If an AI or another tool could do this exactly as I have in mind, it would be perfect because I send too many emails per day. Every week, I need to spend time on that, and I think I could save a lot of time if I could automate it.

Ernesto: Okay, awesome. Great to hear that. Lastly then, David, what would be that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

David: I would focus on three things. The first would be, as I said before, to connect with peers to learn from their experiences and insights. The second would be to document everything from A to Z because it will be so valuable for you and for other teams in your enterprise. If you can build in public with this documentation, you will create a real and strong audience between you and what you learn. The third would be to implement growth and marketing initiatives in sprints because it allows you to report daily and weekly. If you don’t like to dive into data, you’ll need to because intuition is good, but understanding data allows you to refine the strategy with perfect data and a perfect strategy.

Ernesto: Definitely way better execution, right? Well, we are coming to the end of our show today, David, but before we end, I want to give you the last word. Say someone forgets everything about the interview today. What is the one thing they should remember about Human Linker?

David: Human Linker is a sales engagement platform that revolutionizes outbound and outreach efforts. It’s a great tool to create sequences in multichannel easily. If you want to get great results, go on Human Linker and test it with the free version, free trial.

Ernesto: You guys heard it. You can always check them out at humanlinker.com. Personalized prospecting reinvented with AI. David, thank you so much for being on with us today, as well as to our listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, David.

David: Thank you, Ernesto.