About CustomChannels
CustomChannels offers a simple, reliable, and effective solution for businesses to enhance customer experiences with quality licensed music. Their team, passionate about music, works closely with businesses to craft the perfect playlist tailored to their unique atmosphere and customer base.
Impact of our partnership: dream-client deals
Over 9 months, CustomChannels booked 115 appointments with decision-makers at multi-location businesses. Within the first 6 months, the company closed deals worth $10K to $25K each, including contracts with several of its dream clients.
- 115 appointments in 9 months
- Deals of $10K–$25K closed within 6 months
- 10,834 leads researched, with lead volume growing from 1,500 to 2,000 per month
- 7,000 leads from restaurants, about two-thirds of the total and the largest segment
- 50–55% open rate and 8–10% reply rate on cold email
Targeting only businesses with multiple locations drove these results. A single account could put CustomChannels’ music into many venues at once, which made each appointment worth more than a single-venue sale.
Client’s challenges
CustomChannels wanted to close more deals and to reach companies operating multiple locations across several sectors. Two things stood in the way.
First, the value of business music isn’t obvious to every buyer. The team had to show stakeholders how music shapes customer experience and reach them when they were ready to make a decision.
Second, the company’s deal sizes were smaller than those of the larger companies that typically hire appointment-setting vendors. That made it harder to find a lead generation partner that fit.
Why they chose Belkins
CustomChannels had explored several lead generation options without finding one suited to its deal size. Belkins built a campaign around that constraint: precise targeting of multi-location businesses, so every appointment had the potential to cover several venues.
Partnership objectives
The goal was to book appointments with decision-makers at multi-location businesses and raise the number of deals CustomChannels closed, while expanding its reach across sectors in the US and Canada.
Strategy and implementation
The campaign ran on cold email. It started with a narrow definition of the ideal customer: businesses with more than one location.
Defining the ICP
Working with CustomChannels, the team targeted multi-venue businesses in the US and Canada: restaurants, dental clinics, property management companies, franchisors, and retailers. Outreach went to the people who decide on in-venue technology and customer experience: CEOs, Presidents, Directors, heads of operations, IT managers, and marketing leaders.
Researching location counts
Industry databases don’t reliably show how many locations a company runs. The research team checked prospects one by one to confirm they operated multiple venues and to estimate the number of locations. As the campaign scaled, lead research grew from 1,500 to 2,000 leads per month. Restaurants turned out to be the deepest segment, with 7,000 of the 10,834 leads.
Using internal-reference approach in emails by industry
Our team used a colleague-mention approach: each email named a colleague at the prospect’s company and asked whether that person or the prospect handled the decision. Every template carried a value proposition written for the prospect’s industry and closed with one clear call to action. The approach performed well from the start, so the team kept refining it rather than switching to other strategies.
Quick and substantial results of this project proved that this approach fits companies with mid-sized deal values that sell to businesses with many locations. A company selling to single-location businesses at the same price point would need far more appointments for the same revenue.
Challenges we encountered
Finding businesses with multiple locations was the hardest part of the campaign. At the start, the team had to identify which industries had enough multi-venue companies and then confirm each prospect’s location count before outreach. That research kept the campaign aligned with the client’s core requirement and focused on accounts large enough to justify a deal.
