Campaign results & playbook
What happened. What to do.
An anonymized LinkedIn campaign offering AI startup roles and collaboration opportunities to US startup founders. Replies are measured within 14 days of the first qualifying outreach.
Adapt this approach
- Choose a specific audience: US startup founders.
- Make one offer easy to understand: AI startup roles and collaboration opportunities.
- Ask permission to share a short overview, and let the reply determine the next step.
Reading the numbers: Replies are any recorded replies, not verified positive interest. Connection acceptances, meetings, sales and revenue are not established for this campaign. Counts use unique contact records in the defined 14-day cohort. Counts come from the reconciled SBL LinkedIn snapshot dated 15 October 2026. They are observational results, not guarantees. Read this case as plain text
16 of 87 contacts replied within 14 days — a 18.4% reply rate in this campaign’s measured outreach cohort. This case examines the audience, offer and recorded follow-up activity behind that result.
The business context
The campaign was configured around AI startup roles and collaboration opportunities. Its intended audience was US startup founders.
The useful message-design angle is Use a career-oriented conversation to explore founder needs. A reader considering a similar campaign can use this context to judge whether the offer and audience fit their own business; the reply count alone does not establish that fit.
What the campaign record shows
The measured first outreach ran from 24 September 2026 to 29 September 2026. The source snapshot was taken on 15 October 2026, with a complete 14-day observation window for every included contact.
- 87 contact records were reached through qualifying delivered or read outreach.
- 16 contacts replied within 14 days, equivalent to 18.4% of the measured cohort.
- The cohort contained 139 outbound messages and 49 incoming messages inside those windows. Message totals include multiple messages per contact.
How the conversation unfolded
Among the 16 responding contacts, 8 replied within 24 hours and 16 within seven days. The median time to a first reply was about 20.1 hours, measured only among contacts who replied.
15 contacts received more than one outbound message before their first reply or the end of their 14-day window. This describes the observed follow-up coverage; it does not prove that follow-ups caused the replies.
Have a clear next response ready from the first day; many of the recorded replies arrived quickly.
What to do in a similar campaign
- Choose a specific audience: US startup founders.
- Make one offer easy to understand: AI startup roles and collaboration opportunities.
- Ask permission to share a short overview, and let the reply determine the next step.
Track the stages separately: a reply, a positive response, a booked conversation and a completed sale answer different questions. Keep the campaign objective explicit before deciding whether a reply is a useful business outcome.
A first message you can adapt
An adaptable example based on the campaign’s offer; this is not a verbatim customer message.
Hi [First name], thought this might be relevant to your work: AI startup roles and collaboration opportunities. Would a short overview be useful?
Replace the greeting and add only context you can verify. If the offer needs explanation, keep that explanation relevant to the recipient’s work rather than adding a long list of features.
A follow-up with a fresh reason to reply
Hi [First name], one detail that may help: [a concrete example, useful resource or answer to a likely question]. Happy to share more if this is relevant.
This follow-up is a recommended adaptation, not a recovered message from the original campaign.
About these numbers
This is an observational case study from SBL’s LinkedIn snapshot, not a controlled test or a client interview. Contact counts are unique lead records within this campaign. Sender-contact pairs with earlier inbound messages or exposure to multiple recorded campaigns are excluded; contacts with multiple eligible sender records are deduplicated. Only delivered/read, nonempty outbound messages and recorded incoming text are counted.
Replies are any recorded replies, not verified positive interest. Connection acceptances, meetings, sales and revenue are not established for this campaign. Counts use unique contact records in the defined 14-day cohort. Later activity and contacts outside this cohort are not included. Names, account identifiers and private conversation text are omitted.
