How SmartLead Generated 1,203 Conversions and 4.8M Reach with a Creator-Led Growth Engine

Key Results

4.8M+ Organic LinkedIn Reach
Creator-led distribution generated millions of organic impressions across LinkedIn.

1,203 Attributed Conversions
Campaign performance translated directly into measurable conversions.

31,833 High-Intent Clicks
Audience engagement drove tens of thousands of qualified visits.

650% Increase in Weekly Meetings
Creator content significantly accelerated pipeline velocity and meeting volume.

A Negative Brand Narrative and No Creator Infrastructure

SmartLead had built a product trusted by 87,000+ businesses — one of the most powerful cold email platforms on the market. But their own growth engine had a problem: the brand narrative on LinkedIn was being shaped by detractors, not advocates.

Despite a product that had improved dramatically, negative sentiment from earlier iterations lingered across social media. Users who had experienced early friction were the loudest voices online, while SmartLead’s thousands of satisfied customers stayed silent. The result was a perception gap — the product had evolved, but the conversation hadn’t caught up.

“We previously used to probably have a few negative sentiments around a few of the product features. And I think that has completely vanished with a lot of — the product, yes, has improved a lot over the past six months. But influencer pushes has also helped us a lot build that.”

— Sanjana Kotak, Marketing Lead, SmartLead

Meanwhile, SmartLead’s outbound team was stuck in a high-volume, low-signal cycle. The team was sending 20,000 emails per day to generate just two meetings per week — burning domains, tanking deliverability, and stacking tools that cost over $25,000 per year just to keep the machine running.

“I was blasting out 20,000 emails per day and barely scraping together a couple of meetings. In reality, I was guessing in the dark.”

— Cynthia Handal, GTM Leader, SmartLead

When the marketing team looked at building a creator program, they had no infrastructure in place. No formal creator strategy existed. Outreach to potential creator partners was ad-hoc, contracts were nonexistent, and there was no centralized system for managing content, payments, or performance.

The core challenges were:

• Zero creator infrastructure: SmartLead had no formal creator strategy, no centralized management platform, and no way to track creator performance at scale.

• Negative brand sentiment: Outdated perceptions from earlier product versions were dominating the LinkedIn conversation, drowning out the voices of satisfied users.

• Broken outbound economics: 20,000 emails per day yielding two meetings per week, with a fragile Zapier-stitched tech stack costing $25k+ annually.

• Global payment complexity: Many of SmartLead’s ideal creators were based in India and other markets where Stripe wasn’t the default, creating friction in onboarding and paying creators.

• No measurement framework: The team lacked a system to track impressions, engagement, and conversions across creator content — making it impossible to prove ROI or justify budget increases.

Building a Creator Engine from Scratch with Limelight

SmartLead adopted Limelight as the operating system for their entire creator program — going from no formal creator strategy to a structured, multi-channel engine in a matter of months. The partnership solved three core operational gaps: centralized creator management, brand narrative control, and signal-based lead generation.

1. Centralizing Creator Operations

Before Limelight, SmartLead’s creator relationships lived across scattered email threads, Slack channels, and spreadsheets. Sanjana Kotak, who manages the program, was manually tracking budgets, chasing creators for analytics, and juggling payment processes across multiple systems.

Limelight consolidated everything into a single platform: discovery, outreach, campaign briefs, content tracking, and payments. The team moved 70–80% of their active creators onto the Limelight platform, creating one source of truth for the entire program.

“Streamlining all communications to one single place — it has been really helpful. Probably every single day I wake up, the first thing I open is Limelight.”

— Sanjana Kotak, Marketing Lead, SmartLead

2. Flipping the Brand Narrative

SmartLead’s primary goal wasn’t lead generation — it was brand rehabilitation. The team needed to replace negative sentiment with authentic, positive content from trusted voices in the cold email and outbound community.

The strategy was deliberate: recruit creators who were genuine SmartLead power users, not just paid promoters. These creators shared real workflow wins, actual results, and honest product experiences. The content guidelines emphasized authenticity above all else — the brief explicitly stated that content should look “as genuine and organic as possible, sharing real results and wins.”

This approach worked. The negative sentiment that had plagued SmartLead’s brand perception effectively vanished from the LinkedIn conversation, replaced by a steady stream of credible, experience-based content from practitioners who used the product daily.

3. Activating Niche Creators Over Broad Influencers

Rather than chasing macro influencers with massive followings, SmartLead focused on niche creators in the 10k–50k follower range who specifically served their ICP: agency owners, lead generation specialists, and GTM professionals.

This was a deliberate choice. SmartLead’s ideal buyer isn’t a generic B2B executive — it’s someone running outbound campaigns every day. By partnering with creators who lived in that world, every piece of content reached an audience that was pre-qualified by interest and professional context. The program grew from 3–4 initial creators to 20–22 active creators posting twice monthly.

4. Signal-Based Lead Generation

The most transformative piece was Limelight’s Social Signals product. SmartLead set up keyword tracking and persona filters within Limelight to monitor everyone who engaged with creator content, mentioned SmartLead, or discussed competitors.

When a qualified prospect — matching SmartLead’s ICP criteria for job title, company size, and industry — interacted with any tracked content, Limelight automatically pushed that lead to a dedicated Slack channel. This turned every creator post into a real-time lead source, giving the sales team a constant feed of high-intent prospects without any manual work.

“All of these qualified people — those leads will be automatically pushed to your Slack channel. So your sales and marketing team will constantly get leads into the Slack channel. I think it can be really powerful for a company like you.”

— David Walsh, CEO, Limelight

The impact on SmartLead’s outbound was dramatic. By supplementing high-volume email with signal-driven creator content, the team went from sending 20,000 emails per day for 2 meetings to a surgical approach yielding 15 meetings per week — a 650% increase.

From Zero Creator Strategy to a Full-Funnel Growth Engine

In seven months, SmartLead built what most B2B companies spend years trying to achieve: a creator program that drives measurable pipeline, reshapes brand perception, and operates as a self-sustaining lead engine.

“Leads in Apollo. Sequences in SmartLead. Scripts in a random Google Doc. Reporting stitched together with Zapier automations that broke every other week. My setup? Amateur hour.”

— Bojan Djakonovic, Head of Acquisition, SmartLead

That “amateur hour” is over. Today, SmartLead runs a structured creator engine that generates qualified leads around the clock — with Limelight as the operational backbone.

How SmartLead Runs Their Creator Program Today

SmartLead has evolved from having no creator strategy to operating a lean, structured program that drives both brand awareness and qualified pipeline. Here’s how the team operates:

Creator Strategy

The team maintains a roster of 20+ active creators in the 10k–50k follower range, specifically targeting agency owners and outbound sales professionals. Creators are selected for authenticity first — they must be genuine SmartLead users who can share real results and workflows. The program is scaling toward 30–40 creators in 2026, with expansion into YouTube, Instagram, and podcast sponsorships.

Content Approach

Every creator receives a brief with messaging pillars, product USPs, and calls-to-action (free 14-day trial). But the guiding principle is authenticity: content must look organic and share real results and wins. Creators post approximately twice per month on LinkedIn, with additional content on YouTube and Instagram for select partners.

Lead Pipeline

Limelight’s Social Signals product monitors all creator content and tracked keywords. When a qualified prospect — matching SmartLead’s persona filters for agency owners at companies with 50–150+ employees — engages with tracked content, the lead is automatically pushed to a dedicated Slack channel. The sales team actions these leads in real-time, creating a continuous feed of warm, high-intent prospects.

Measurement & Reporting

The team tracks impressions and reach as primary KPIs, supplemented by engagement rates, conversions, and click-through data from Limelight’s analytics. Monthly budget sits at approximately $6,000 for LinkedIn and $10,000 total across all channels. Biweekly syncs with the Limelight customer success team ensure continuous optimization of creator ROI.

Operations

70–80% of all creator payments and communications run through Limelight, consolidating what was previously scattered across email, Slack, and spreadsheets into a single platform. Limelight handles discovery, outreach, campaign management, content tracking, and payments — allowing a lean marketing team to manage 20+ creators without dedicated headcount.

“We have found our way to probably do it a little bit on our end from the manual side as well. But communication-wise and streamlining all communications to one single place, it has been really helpful.”

— Sanjana Kotak, Marketing Lead, SmartLead

From Brand Rehabilitation to Growth Engine

What started as a brand sentiment problem has become one of SmartLead’s most powerful growth channels. The creator program didn’t just fix the narrative — it built an entirely new acquisition engine that generates qualified leads, drives product adoption, and creates word-of-mouth at scale.

Going into 2026, SmartLead is focused on scaling the program to 30–40 active creators while expanding deeper into YouTube, Instagram, and podcast sponsorships. The team is also investing more heavily in Limelight’s Social Signals product to automate the full pipeline from content engagement to sales qualification.

For SmartLead, the math is simple: a small roster of authentic, niche creators — people who actually use the product every day — drives more qualified pipeline than 20,000 cold emails ever could. And with Limelight powering the infrastructure, the program runs with the efficiency of a product feature, not a marketing side project.

The negative sentiment is gone. The meetings are up 650%. And the creator program that didn’t exist twelve months ago is now a core part of how SmartLead grows.