"Micro-Campaigns"

The Signal

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Hey y’all!

It’s been a wild week with memecoins going parabolic entering the alleged “Memecoin Supercycle” (including the first AI bot to become a crypto millionaire). Hilarious, ridiculous, but fascinating glimpse into the likely future we’re heading towards.

Today’s post is a concept I’m still working out in my head, so feedback is very welcome! Just reply to this post or drop a comment in Substack (or on LinkedIn).

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Intro (why this has my attention)

• What is a “Micro-Campaign”?

• What makes Micro-Campaigns unique?

• Where does ABM fit in?

• Closing thoughts

Alright, let’s get into it.

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"Micro-Campaigns"

Why this has my attention.

I'm seeing this motion quietly, but quickly, become one of the most important ways of generating pipeline in 2024.

I posted about Micro-Campaigns on LinkedIn on Tuesday and wanted to unpack it a little more in this week’s newsletter.

Some context: since leaving Apollo, I have been consulting & advising while I figure out what I want to do next.

(I don't want to start another VC-backed company, and I don't want to join another Big Company; beyond that, I don't know!)

Anyway, I'm working with some of the smartest GTM teams at some of the best SaaS companies to help them build/scale their pipe gen engines. Some projects include: signal-based selling, automated outbound, lead scoring, and inbound optimization.

The most surprising thing I've seen is that building — what I'm calling — "micro-campaigns" seems to be a new motion that is *actually* working across companies today.

Generating pipeline has gotten incredibly difficult (you can read more about why, here). But, if you’re reading this, you’re probably already nodding along in agreement that’s it’s much harder than it was five years ago… or even two years ago. (If you don’t think pipe gen is hard right now, please reach out to me and tell me what you’re doing / what you’re selling… I’m all ears!)

What is a Micro-Campaign?

Here's how I define "micro-campaigns":

• Small, highly-targeted lists of, say, 50-250 contacts.

• These lists are generated using *very* specific filtering and/or signals (usually using AI/agents at least for certain parts).

• Each list (aka "micro-campaign") is relevant this week, but won't be next month.

The old way of "list building" is evolving, thanks, in large part, to gen ai. You just, quite literally, couldn't do this stuff before.
Unless you hire a VA overseas. But that comes at a cost. It’s slow, lists have mistakes, and the process is hard to manage. By the time the list is ready and passed to the sales team, the signals are stale and the leads are less likely to convert. Plus, it doesn’t scale.

Gen AI unlocks a new way of operationalizing creative experiments.

But, it breaks people's mental models of "doing outbound." Myself included, until very recently! (And big shout-out to Andreas for continually helping me see the light on this stuff — give him a follow on LI.)

What makes Micro-Campaigns unique?

Most GTM teams find companies+people on Sales Nav or a B2B database (or multiple). This is a good starting place, but (imho) no longer enough.

(It's worth noting: I have no skin in the game on this subject, so I am speaking honestly without any bias.)

The old way included things like:

• Basic filters.

• Static lead lists.

• Stale B2B databases.

• Stagnant "ICP" + "Key Buyer Personas."

• Fishing in the same pond as millions of other sellers.

• 1,000 contacts to get 1 meeting.

The new way:

• "RICH data" (I need a better name for this).

• Pieces of data that you can't find in B2B databases as "filters."

• Examples like: SaaS? PLG? # of Yelp Ratings? Tech stack based on job postings (accurate data). Warm intro in? Tier 1 investors? Hiring salespeople? And so much more. The list is endless.

• Your creativity is the only bottleneck with the help of AI to create micro-campaigns.

• 100 contacts to get 10 meetings.

Here’s how Clay’s founder described what they enable in a recent Pavillion podcast. It’s exactly how I think of building small, creative, thoughtful "micro-campaigns”:

Again it comes back to this creative part.

Where we’re going to give you all the tools to implement any idea.

But the alpha is always going to come from you knowing your business and your customers and how the market is evolving. 

And using clay to test out these ideas. Seeing what works and what doesn’t and adjusting.

We don’t try to automate all of that away. Because if you do, everybody else will do the same thing and you’ll just go back to zero. 

It isn’t about the tool (Clay is just a spreadsheet with APIs into LLMs and other data providers). It’s about the strategy.

I believe this is going to become a much bigger part of overall pipe gen strategy. And the good news is, it won’t replace your job. Because, it requires a creative, strategic, and thoughtful HUMAN driving the process (who can then use AI as a tool, to scale their experiments).

It’s worth repeating: “the alpha is always going to come from you knowing your business and your customers and how the market is evolving.”

Where does ABM fit in?

The main use-case I’m seeing for Micro-Campaigns is around pipeline generation (something that is hella broken these days — I’m sorry for saying hella…). Eg: SDR and AE Teams.

This is what I’m seeing with my consulting clients right now. Again, it’s early, and the data is just anecdotal (sorry Professor StatSig, I cannot report back to you with definitive results yet). But, I’ve found the alpha is oftentimes in the anedcodotal, small, weird experiments. (See: my opening comments about the first AI meme/bot that became a crypto millionaire… phew, didn’t know how I’d tie that into B2B GTM).

With that said, one of the comments in my LinkedIn post mentioned an ABM use-case. And that’s what I’m curious to explore over time.

For example: what if something could auto-triggers these small ~weekly lists (micro-campaigns") into ads across different platforms + AI-generated web pages through something like Mutiny + sends emails from your Marketing Automation tool. Sounds dope.

This would “pre-warm” the audience(s) in each micro-campaign before the sales team engaged.

Let me know if you’re doing something like this today on the ABM-side of the house.

Closing thoughts

I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my brain on this subject (and a ton I’m still learning as I work with customers and talk to other people running these micro-campaigns).

My current thinking is this: we’re living in an incredibly noisy world (and getting noisier, with AI). I hate spam and inefficiencies. I like automation and doing things smarter. I want more thoughtful outreach to exist. More consultative selling. And AI will be a massive lever/unlock for this new motion. The early signs of “Micro-Campaigns” show promise to check a lot of these boxes.

BUT, it’s hard to do right now. The right tools don’t exist to really support this motion (outside of building one-off campaigns using Clay). People aren’t fully grasping the creativity required to do this stuff (it’s subtle, but very different than doing “segmented lists.”).

Let’s see where it goes from here… as the saying goes, the next big thing will start out looking like a toy.

PS - I'm still working through this concept of "micro-campaigns," so let me know your thoughts/ideas (and where you disagree!).

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Portals to interesting corners of the internet that I explored this week:

• Anthropic dropped the wildest AI update in months (imho). You can now have an AI agent use your browser! This is bonkers. Seriously, the path to having a digital/AI co-worker.

  • Coincidentally, I had just asked about finding a tool to do something like this on LinkedIn right before this news dropped — tons of crazy ideas in the comments (even more horrible ideas haha).

• The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Bret Taylor: The AI Bubble and What Happens Now | How the Cost of Chips and Models Will Change in AI | Will Companies Build Their Own Software | Why Pre-Training is for Morons | Leadership Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg.

  • Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. And is on the board of OpenAI. Previously, Co-CEO of Salesforce. Founded Quip. And was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps.

  • My favorite part was Bret’s description of the biggest opportunity in AI today: “The Death of the Phone + Website.”

• ICYMI → Last week, I published my first sponsored deep dive post with Amos Barr-Joseph, the Co-founder & CEO of Orchestra.inc, on How AI is Changing Enterprise Sales. I think Amos and his team are thinking about things in all the right ways. If you sell a product or service that is more than $20K year, give it a read.

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Quote of the week:

“A river of material flows through us. When we share our works and our ideas, they are replenished. If we block the flow by holding them all inside, the river cannot run and new ideas are slow to appear.

In the abundant mindset, the river never runs dry. Ideas are always coming through. And an artist is free to release them with the faith that more will arrive.

If we live in a mindset of scarcity, we hoard great ideas.”

― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
(Tons more nuggets of wisdom from his book here; I suggest listening to the full thing on audio, Rick narrates and it’s incredible)

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Thank you for continuing to explore the new gtm playbook with me. Your attention is greatly appreciated.

See you next time,
Brendan
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