From Niche to Scale: How Huntr.co Doubled Revenue and Cracked B2C Partnerships

First, Huntr.co conquered a niche: career services at coding bootcamps.

The team at the AI-powered resume builder brought in Apollo to focus on outbound and turned a tiny TAM into $1M in ARR.

"We started by focusing on increasing conversion rates on cold outreach campaigns," recalls Sam Wright, Head of Operations.

After setting their outbound foundation targeting a niche market and tackling an entirely new B2C partnership motion, they ended up with $1M in ARR.

The results? Numbers that deserve a spotlight before the full story.

• Revenue doubled within 10 months
• Reply rates rocketed to 20% — on 100% cold outreach
• Newly launched B2C outreach campaigns sat at nearly 30% reply rates
• And their growing team went from 2 to 6

Learn how Sam and his team did it with Apollo, plus they share seven tips for aspiring startups looking to do the same.

A/B Testing to Conquer a Market

At the start, Sam and his team focused on a very specific market niche: career services departments at code academies and bootcamps. With a total addressable market of only 1,000 businesses, they didn't have the luxury of burning through leads.

"You only have one shot at a first impression for an addressable market that small," says Sam. “We had to be really focused and careful with our language to get it right.”

To get that messaging right as early as possible, testing was key.

"We started A/B testing our language for our emails, which was super easy with Apollo,” said Sam. “It led to a 20% reply rate and a 7% interested rate, which was really great for our bottom line in conversions. It helped us get to the next level of growth."

Those tests were all conducted across targeted lists built from Apollo’s third-party database of 210M+ contacts, enriched daily.

Running strategic outbound from a tool that provided data and engagement in one place gave Huntr.co the ability to corner their market — and eventually achieve 10% total market saturation.

Above all, the platform felt accessible, a stark contrast from the bloated enterprise sales tools that Sam was all-too familiar with.

"I had brought Apollo into another organization I was working with prior to Huntr, moving away from more enterprise-y software," Sam explains. "I was blown away by Apollo's support, their UI and UX, and their startup-friendly pricing."

With the data to justify a market expansion, Huntr.co was ready to grow its B2C footprint behind a resume tool, built to stand out in a sea of sameness.

Evolution: From sales prospecting to partnership building

The company had always seen B2C partnerships as a huge green space. Strategically, they wanted to approach potential partners — like universities, LinkedIn influencers, and career bloggers — as distribution channels, giving them direct access to thousands of job-seeking folks in a B2C-like motion.

Running a new B2C playbook sounded more like fantasy than something a scrappy startup could will into existence. But they could turn to Apollo.

With their eyes down the field, Huntr.co evolved their outbound model, along with their use of Apollo, unlocking more functionality as they started to understand their new market.

"Since transitioning from more of a B2B business model to more of a B2C business model, we've started to use Apollo more for partnership outreach to other folks that are selling into similar spaces, complementary products that we want to co-market with," Sam tells us.

Built-in AI features made it easier to tweak the sales content that was effective, auto-personalizing subject lines and email copy fit for consumers, not companies.

"We're seeing 20-30% reply rates with our outbound email drip campaigns for partnerships,” reports Sam.

Sam’s team is putting up these numbers in a world where even the best cold emails are seeing reply rates as low as 1%.

They boil down their unique success for a few practical tips that you can apply, too.

Huntr.co's success playbook: 7 tips for startups

1. Start with targeted, niche outreach. Huntr.co began humbly by focusing on a specific market segment, mastering it, and expanding from there. This allowed them to build on what’s proven to work and achieve high conversion rates before scaling.
   
   
2. Leverage data to customize outreach. Using search filters like industry, role, and company size, Huntr.co found those 1,000 accounts with a level of specificity that ensured the team they were the right accounts — ones that reflected their ICPs.
   
   
3. A/B test messaging relentlessly. Huntr.co's 20% reply rates came from continuous testing and optimization of their outreach.

   Tip: Use Apollo's sequencing tools to test different subject lines, email content, and follow-up cadences.

4. Utilize AI to scale content creation. Apollo's AI features like AI prompting allow you to generate personalized emails based on deep research in seconds. Other AI pioneers, like Sam, have seen AI prompts nearly 10x their reps outbound productivity.

   👉 Recommended reading: How to Write Better AI Prompts for Prospecting

5. Evolve your outreach strategy as your business evolves. Be ready to pivot your outreach approach as your business model changes. As Huntr.co shifted from primarily B2B to including B2C offerings, they adapted their Apollo usage from sales prospecting to partnership development.
   
   
6. Focus on ethical, targeted outreach. Rather than mass-blasting prospects, Sam built spam-proof outbound with tools like sending limits and inbox ramp-up that protect Huntr’s domain.

   “Apollo really makes sure that you are doing outbound in a respectful manner and in an ethical manner, in a way that ensures that you're not going to be flagged for spam,” he says, “Apollo helps you be very focused with custom tailored content, getting to the right people at the right time, and that's going to grow your business."

7. Measure impact on revenue, not just activity metrics. Huntr.co tracked Apollo's impact directly to revenue growth, doubling within 10 months and eventually growing from $150K to nearly $1M in ARR.

When asked what the #1 thing he would tell other startups who are considering using Apollo, Sam places accessibility at the top.

"Apollo is one of the easiest tools to test out and try, and that is such an impactful and meaningful thing in the software space," he says.

"There are so many platforms that make you sit through a demo and do this song and dance before you actually get to start clicking around in the software."

Skip the song and dance. Sign up for a free Apollo account.