Innovate Energy Group grew pipeline by $15M in their first month with Unify

Accelerating deliverability across email-based outbound campaigns 

With over 15 years of experience in enterprise sales, Drew Mays, CRO of IEG, has an impressive track record of standing out in inboxes. His years spent growing the clean energy consulting company have been no exception, that is until Google and Microsoft’s strict updates to email deliverability standards disrupted his tried-and-true outbound strategy. Seemingly overnight, it was nearly impossible to reach leads without going to great, manual lengths to warm inboxes and rotate IP addresses.

Deliverability wasn’t the only barrier to hitting IEG's pipeline targets. Like many early-stage companies, IEG doesn’t operate with a dedicated marketing team, meaning Drew and his nimble sales team drove the majority of their pipeline through manual outreach. While this approach generated plenty of opportunities in the early days, he knew it wasn’t scalable. 

The team initially experimented with several email warming services to raise deliverability and reclaim their most lucrative channel. However, these solutions relied primarily on artificial engagement pools, which continued to negatively impact IEG’s domain reputation, resulting in more messages landing in spam folders than primary inboxes. 

Frustrated by the lack of results, Drew sounded the alarm to IEG’s CTO, Jonah Rotholz, who immediately embarked on a comprehensive search for an end-to-end solution. If they wanted to get messages out of spam into as many high-intent inboxes as possible, they needed a tool that could:

• Improve IEG’s email deliverability and unlock access to high-intent prospects
• Identify and enrich qualified leads with powerful intent data (including firmographics and ESG goals)
• Deploy personalized outbound sequences at scale

Fortunately, Jonah soon found a solution for Drew’s team that covered all these bases: Unify. After witnessing how the platform could enhance IEG's email deliverability while automating multi-step outbound workflows, Drew was convinced this was just the solution they needed.

“When Google and Microsoft tightened up deliverability restrictions, many of our outbound emails stopped getting into inboxes. Unify’s managed deliverability fixed that almost overnight."

Managed deliverability and automated outbound create enterprise opportunities at scale

Within a month of onboarding Unify, IEG was already outpacing its initial pipeline goals. But the real transformation happened when Drew connected with Cole Courson from Unify’s product growth strategist team, whose guidance helped them rapidly optimize their use of the platform. “Cole’s dedicated support, availability whenever we had a question, and deep expertise were instrumental in helping us unlock Unify’s full potential for driving massive wins,” Drew says.

The most immediate benefit Cole helped them tap into? Unify’s managed email deliverability. This takes care of domain creation, mailbox setup, warming inboxes, and more. Plus, with Unify's automated bounce checking and prevention, IEG's emails reliably land in their prospect's inboxes rather than getting lost in spam folders.

The benefits don't end at deliverability. Cole also showed them how to take maximum advantage of Unify’s dozens of native signals, which give Drew a 360-degree view of his warmest leads at any time. Now, his team leverages a wealth of data points (including firmographic, contact, and intent data) to create tailored Plays targeting decision-makers at key accounts.

Their most powerful Play targets manufacturing plant managers at companies with ambitious ESG goals. To set the wheels in motion, Drew deploys a bespoke AI Agent to automatically scrape company websites for signs of plans to reduce their carbon footprint and cut energy costs. Then, the Agent weaves this information into highly personalized emails detailing how IEG’s solar energy solutions can adapt to each account’s infrastructure and help them hit these benchmarks.

Since Unify owns the sequencing process, Drew’s team doesn’t need to step in until the enthusiastic replies start populating their inboxes. “I thought the increase in outbound volume might create more work for us,” he explains. “But because Unify automates all the initial touchpoints, we can give our all to responding and closing deals.”

According to Unify’s dashboard, the Plays are also driving substantially more traffic to IEG's website, including several multibillion-dollar companies. These insights aren’t just a win themselves; they’re all the proof of warm intent the team needs to keep retargeting until they close.

"Unify saves us hours of valuable time. Between automating our outbound motion and driving more traffic to our website, it does the work of a sales and marketing team combined.”

Massive time savings, major pipeline growth, and an 8x increase in booked meetings

When asked about Unify's impact on his team, Drew says the platform is “worth its weight in gold.” With Unify, his team overcame deliverability restrictions and launched a powerful outbound engine that drives interest and generates pipeline at an unprecedented rate.

All the while, his team saves countless hours on manual outreach, freeing up bandwidth for higher-leverage work. In addition to nurturing existing opportunities, they’ve been using their time back to dream up creative new Unify Plays to run.

What’s next? Expanding the geographic reach of IEG’s automated outbound. Now that Drew has seen the pipeline punch Unify can pack in just a couple of states, he’s eager to run Plays that speak directly to the unique, region-specific needs of accounts across the country.

"Today, I’m preaching the Unify gospel far and wide. If your reps aren’t getting into inboxes, Unify gives them all the tools they need to reach leads at scale with highly personalized messaging."