From cold list to $950K+ retail pipeline
ATI sells electronic shelf label systems to multi-location retail chains across Canada and the US. In April 2025 they had no outbound function. Thirteen months later, cold email is a steady source of quoted deals, in two languages, across five retail verticals.
A great product nobody was asking about.
Electronic shelf labels save retail chains real money: less labor on price changes, fewer pricing errors, faster response to competitors. But store operations leaders weren't searching for them. The market needed to be told, store by store, chain by chain.
ATI's buyers are operational: VPs of store operations, pricing directors, owners of independent chains. They don't attend martech webinars and they don't click ads. Cold email, framed around labor savings rather than technology, was the only channel that put the message directly in front of them.
Vertical by vertical, in two languages.
Three plays did the work: build precise lists one vertical at a time, frame every message around operations in the buyer's own language, then route every reply into ATI's own CRM.
Built precise lists, one vertical at a time.
No generic blasts. Each retail vertical got its own directory-sourced list and its own copy, proof points and objections.
Spoke operations, in the buyer's language.
The message was always about labor and accuracy, never technology, and in French wherever the buyer worked in French.
Routed every reply into ATI's world.
Replies flow into ATI's own CRM and Slack, get worked by their team, and non-responders recycle on a fresh angle.
One product, five verticals.
The same shelf-label system, pitched on what each retail vertical actually cares about. The three that drove the most pipeline:
Thirteen months, compounding.
Monthly sending volume and interested replies from the Email Bison workspace, June 2025 through June 2026. The first closed deal came from the pharmacy vertical within six months.
Three phases over thirteen months.
Validate
An ethnic grocery pilot produced 15 interested leads in the first week and validated the model. Core verticals were chosen on that evidence, not guesses.
15 interested in week oneVerticalize
Grocery, pharmacy and hardware campaigns scaled up. Quebec French campaigns opened a second market. The first deal closed, in pharmacy.
First closed dealOperationalize
Pipedrive automation, re-engagement cycles, and US expansion through hardware directories. Positive reply rate climbed to 37% by April 2026.
37% positive repliesReal replies from real retailers.
Real prospect replies from across the re-engagement campaigns. Names, stores and contact details are withheld for privacy.
“Daniel and his team have run our campaigns for over a year at reply rates as high as 8%, with several converting into closed deals.”
MT
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