Woodly is a Finnish startup producing wood-based plastic alternatives. Their material is genuinely different — fully recyclable, bio-based, and designed for food packaging. But having a great product and selling it are two different problems.
They needed to establish a presence in the UK food-to-go segment. The barriers were significant: a complex stakeholder landscape including wholesalers, brands, and café chains, and a sales cycle that required reaching the right people at exactly the right time.
Defining the right audience
Before any outreach, we needed to understand who to talk to. We worked with Woodly’s team to define their ideal customer profile for the UK market — mapping decision-makers across packaging buyers, sustainability leads, and procurement teams at café chains and food brands.
Using Clay and Apollo, we identified over 10,000 potential contacts across the target segments. Each contact was enriched with firmographic data and scored by relevance.
Personalized outreach at scale
Generic outreach wouldn’t work in a market where Woodly was unknown. Every message needed to feel relevant to the specific recipient.
We built AI-assisted email sequences in Instantly — personalized for each segment. The AI handled research and first-draft personalization. Woodly’s team reviewed and refined the messaging to ensure it matched their voice.
We also created targeted marketing assets for LinkedIn ads, personalized email templates, and comparison sheets adapted for each buyer persona.
Building prospect lists and running campaigns
Using Apollo and Clay, we built verified prospect lists for each target segment. Every contact was validated before outreach began.
Campaigns ran through Instantly. We managed the full campaign lifecycle — from list building to sequence optimization to reply handling.
Results
In five months of systematic outreach, Woodly generated over 120 qualified leads in the UK market. Several conversations advanced to technical testing phase with major UK café chains.
More importantly, Woodly now has a repeatable process for entering new markets — the same approach can be applied to any new geography or segment.
