Quality Data Meets AI: How One Agency Achieves 35% Better Reply Rates

After experiencing outbound challenges firsthand as a serial entrepreneur, Martin Aguinis built SendtoWin to help companies master their campaigns at scale.

Today, they manage hundreds of customers across more than 60 industries — from billion-dollar brands like Olipop and SoulCycle to private jet companies and commercial roofing services.

“For us, outbound has always depended on better data and enrichment, and that’s why Apollo has been central to our growth from day one,” Martin says. “Data is the oxygen of any business.”

Using Apollo for the past four years, SendtoWin has built outbound engines that deliver impressive results for their clients, like 35% higher positive reply rates.

Building a reliable foundation with quality data

For an outbound agency, data quality can make or break client campaigns. Before Apollo, SendtoWin struggled with critical bottlenecks: manual research, bad data, and a patchwork of tools. "We'd end up with invalid emails and incomplete info, forcing us to spend more on verification tools or extra manual work," Martin remembers.

These inefficiencies threatened their ability to deliver results. So Martin consolidated around Apollo as SendtoWin’s central hub for data enrichment and outbound campaigns.

The decision came down to three key factors:

• Superior data quality and coverage
• Scalable infrastructure for agencies, with sub-accounts for managing hundreds of clients without requiring separate log-ins
• Seamless integrations with their tech stack

"We're able to save a lot of time because we can trust and rely on Apollo's data," Martin shares.

Even when using industry-specific data sources to find niche companies, they always bring lists back to Apollo to enrich. "Now with Apollo, we get 30-40% more enrichment when we bring external lists back into the platform," Martin explains. "That additional company and prospect data makes all the difference."

Martin also wanted a partner for long-term growth. “We saw just a level of new features and innovations at Apollo that would put us at the forefront,” he adds. “Plus, the support of the Apollo team is always very strong. Whenever we have issues, we’re able to resolve them quickly.”

Unlocking deeper personalization at scale with AI Research

With clients across 60+ industries, SendtoWin needed a way to personalize outreach that went beyond basic firmographics. The challenge: how do you find unique targeting signals that don't exist in traditional databases?

Martin found the answer in Apollo's AI Research. "We can create new variables to really hone in on the right lists. That can be as simple as 'is this B2B or B2C,' or as complex as 'do they have at least three physical offices?'," Martin explains.

“With AI Research, we can go one layer deeper than other databases and actually find the signals that truly qualify a good prospect."

The impact is immediate: campaigns using AI Research see up to 35% higher positive reply rates than broad outreach. Here are two examples that showcase its power:

From cold email to customer: a 2% win rate with YC startups

Having helped several Y Combinator startups succeed with outbound, Martin knew they'd make perfect customers for SendtoWin. The challenge was getting to the right ones at the right time.

Here’s how it worked:

1. Started with a list of YCombinator companies in Apollo
2. Used AI Research to identify which companies are B2B and raised a Series A
3. Enriched to find the founders and decision-makers at those companies
4. Applied Waterfall Enrichment to this high-value list to ensure they had verified emails for every contact
5. Sent highly-personalized emails based on additional AI-enriched insights

From just 300 emails, SendtoWin closed six new customers, a 2% conversion rate from first touch to closed-won. It’s a remarkable metric considering many outbound campaigns struggle to achieve even 2% click-through rates.

A game-changing pain point campaign

SendtoWin's next example shows how AI Research can find unique targeting signals from public data. For a client offering review management software, they created a campaign targeting companies with poor online reviews.

Here's their process:

1. Used AI Research to find companies with low ratings on Google and Yelp
2. Enriched this target list to identify decision-makers at each company
3. Automatically pulled specific negative review content into personalized emails to highlight the pain they’re solving

It would have required days of work to manually find the bad reviews, pull them into a spreadsheet, and insert them into personalized emails before sending the outbound campaigns.

"This level of personalization was such a game changer,” Martin says.

The impact: better data for better results

This data-driven approach has transformed SendtoWin's ability to deliver results:

• Better data: 30-40% more enrichment coverage than industry-specific lists
• Higher engagement: 25-35% higher positive reply rates with AI Research
• Stronger conversion: 2% email-to-win rates on targeted campaigns

"This new age of AI in Sales is completely changing things for us. We're able to drive better performance for ourselves and our clients with the improvements in targeting and scale." Martin explains. "Apollo is core to helping us grow our business.”