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The company that makes testimonial videos for HubSpot, Gong, and DocuSign.

Testimonial Hero

From "nightmare" outbound to 92 calls in month one with SAS

Testimonial Hero already had the brand, the offer, and the logos. What they didn't have was cold email that reached the inbox at any real volume, or anyone they trusted to own it. Sales Automation Systems rebuilt that channel so their VP of Revenue could stop managing infrastructure and get back to closing.

01At a Glance

At a Glance

1,023,668
cold emails sent
SAS internal campaign data, first 13 months of the engagement.
457,720
unique contacts reached
SAS internal campaign data, first 13 months of the engagement.
647
positive replies
SAS internal campaign data, first 13 months of the engagement.
1.06%
bounce rate
SAS internal campaign data, first 13 months of the engagement.
92
outbound calls in month one
Dustin's team counted 92 outbound calls in the first month.
~50
outbound calls every month since
Ongoing monthly calls reported by Dustin.

The SAS numbers cover campaign sends, delivery, and replies. The call, pipeline, and revenue numbers are Testimonial Hero's own reported figures.

If you have the offer and the logos but outbound stalled on deliverability and volume, this is the system we build. Worth a conversation.

02Client Context

Who Is Testimonial Hero?

Testimonial Hero makes customer testimonial videos for B2B companies. Their customers include HubSpot, Gong, DocuSign, Grammarly, Zoom, Dropbox, Coursera, and Intercom. Companies hire them to run the whole process end to end and get their happiest customers on camera without much work from the internal team.

StorySnapProductHype
Professional testimonial videos for B2B brands
Core focus on B2B SaaS marketers and revenue teams
Client list is mostly well known SaaS companies
Two brands, TestimonialHero and ProductHype

03The Challenge

The Challenge

By the time Testimonial Hero came to SAS, they had tried "a whole bunch of outbound venues over the years, kind of with mixed success. Sometimes they worked for a bit, sometimes they didn't work at all, or they stopped working. The real rock bottom was we thought, hey, we can take this in house. That was a bit of a nightmare."

Deliverability was the core problem. As Dustin put it, "Our deliverability was really poor. Our emails weren't going through, weren't really getting many meetings booked. We were sending a few hundred emails a day. So not super high volume, not a lot of results."

The offer wasn't the issue. A company that serves HubSpot and Gong doesn't need help with credibility. They needed someone to own deliverability, infrastructure, scale, and iteration so the revenue team could stop babysitting outbound and start taking calls again.

04The Approach

The Approach

1

Referred in, copy approved in a week

Directive, an existing SAS client, referred Testimonial Hero. After the discovery call and kickoff, SAS and Dustin's team worked through copy, reviews, and spam checks together. Testimonial Hero approved the campaigns within a week, and the campaigns launched 13 days from kickoff.

2

Outbound moved onto managed sending infrastructure

SAS moved outbound onto its own sending infrastructure: hundreds of domains with rotation and reputation management, redundancy across Gmail, Outlook, and SMTP, and controlled ramp patterns. The goal is to get the emails seen without asking Testimonial Hero's team to manage a single DNS record.

3

Offer led copy built on the client's own social proof

Campaigns used what Testimonial Hero already had. Simple, offer led messaging built around their client list and the outcome a B2B marketer actually wants. No heavy personalization tricks, just relevance based on who they already serve.

4

Constant variant testing, with big gaps between winners and losers

SAS treats copy as an ongoing test. It rotated and scored multiple variants, and the top performers beat the original baseline by 19 to 26 times. That lift came from testing on a schedule, not from one lucky template.

5

New verticals, including a sprint the client asked for

Once the core campaigns were working, SAS and Testimonial Hero moved into new verticals such as building materials and franchise development. When the client suggested targeting event and field marketers, SAS turned that idea into a sprint plan in one day and launched it inside ten.

6

Two brands at once, no extra work for the team

SAS ran campaigns for both TestimonialHero and ProductHype. Message and targeting changed by brand, but infrastructure, reporting, and weekly video updates stayed under one managed system.

05Results

Results

Over the first thirteen months, with the last month partial, SAS's internal data shows 1,023,668 cold emails sent to 457,720 unique contacts for Testimonial Hero and ProductHype. Those campaigns produced 13,750 replies, 647 of them positive, at a 1.06 percent bounce rate. The best single month: 50,182 emails sent, a 4.43 percent reply rate, and 129 positive replies.

On the client side, Dustin reports that "since working with Sales Automation Systems, we saw an immediate spike in outbound calls booked. So that first month we actually had 92 outbound calls, which is crazy. And consistently since then we've been around 50 per month." Testimonial Hero's team has "generated a few hundred thousand in pipeline and already closed a few deals" from the channel. SAS measures the sends, the delivery, and the replies. The client tracks the calls, the pipeline, and the revenue.

0k35k70k105k140kM1: 22,853 emails sent, 22,852 unique contacts reachedM2: 50,182 emails sent, 31,672 unique contacts reachedM3: 78,566 emails sent, 34,772 unique contacts reachedM4: 74,342 emails sent, 36,982 unique contacts reachedM5: 88,218 emails sent, 41,241 unique contacts reachedM6: 83,911 emails sent, 18,657 unique contacts reachedM7: 132,393 emails sent, 23,304 unique contacts reachedM8: 92,885 emails sent, 25,157 unique contacts reachedM9: 101,724 emails sent, 55,580 unique contacts reachedM10: 94,966 emails sent, 68,200 unique contacts reachedM11: 76,833 emails sent, 74,382 unique contacts reachedM12: 108,450 emails sent, 24,917 unique contacts reachedM1: 22,852 unique contacts reachedM2: 31,672 unique contacts reachedM3: 34,772 unique contacts reachedM4: 36,982 unique contacts reachedM5: 41,241 unique contacts reachedM6: 18,657 unique contacts reachedM7: 23,304 unique contacts reachedM8: 25,157 unique contacts reachedM9: 55,580 unique contacts reachedM10: 68,200 unique contacts reachedM11: 74,382 unique contacts reachedM12: 24,917 unique contacts reachedM1M2M3M4M5M6M7M8M9M10M11M12Emails sent (left axis)unique contacts reached (line)

Monthly cold emails sent and unique contacts reached, SAS internal campaign data, first 12 full months of the engagement.

If you want your outbound to look more like this case study and less like a side project you run on nights and weekends, let's talk through your TAM and your current setup.

06The Testimonial Story

The Testimonial Story

Four months in, SAS asked whether it had earned a testimonial. Testimonial Hero's CEO, Sam Shepler, replied the same day: "For sure! I'd be happy to give one. We can do it through our system as well so you get the best quality and can do this one at no cost."

They signed a zero dollar statement of work and ran SAS through the same delivery process they use for HubSpot, Gong, and DocuSign. They sell this service for a living. Volunteering their own system and their own team was a clear signal the partnership was working at the level that matters most to them. The finished video landed a few months later.

07What They Said

What They Said

Dustin Tysick, Testimonial Hero's VP of Revenue, on working with Sales Automation Systems. His words, not ours.

"Partnering with Sales Automation Systems was 100% the right decision for our team."

Dustin Tysick, VP of Revenue, Testimonial Hero

"They handle all the infrastructure, all the setup and the deliverability has been phenomenal."

Dustin Tysick, VP of Revenue, Testimonial Hero

"The biggest win is really just having a trusted partner where I don't really have to babysit this or set up things on my own. It frees me up as someone who works in sales and marketing to focus on actually closing the deal."

Dustin Tysick, VP of Revenue, Testimonial Hero

"If I was talking to another VP of Revenue or sales leader who is considering Sales Automation Systems, I would tell them just try it. Having the ability to hit a really large TAM, potentially you have hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in your TAM every couple months and know that it will actually show up in their inbox and you won't hit spam is priceless."

Dustin Tysick, VP of Revenue, Testimonial Hero

"Sales Automation Systems is the best choice for you."

Dustin Tysick, VP of Revenue, Testimonial Hero

08Common Questions

Common Questions

Ready to Talk?

If you're done cycling through outbound vendors and want one team to own the channel end to end, we should talk. Bring your numbers, we'll bring ours.