GrowthRise Mastermind #12 Recap

How B2B Marketers Are Scaling Smarter: Cold Email, Content Machines, and Demo Incentives

Welcome to another GrowthRise mastermind recap. This week’s mastermind call was packed with real insights from seasoned B2B marketers across industries—from RV park SaaS and enterprise asset platforms to digital signage, compliance software, and beyond. Our goal? Help each other grow smarter and scale faster.

If you’re not already a GrowthRise member, apply to join us at www.growthrise.com.

Here’s what we talked about in today’s mastermind followed by a written summary from ChatGPT:

The GrowthRise Mastermind call covered several key topics:

1. Content Creation and Distribution
   • Use of AI (ChatGPT 4.0) to convert meeting transcripts into blog posts
   • Content distribution across multiple channels: blog, YouTube, LinkedIn, email newsletter
   • Achieving 2.6M content impressions for SaasRise and 500K for GrowthRise
   • Process: Record calls → Upload to Wistia → Get transcript → Convert via ChatGPT → Edit/add images → Distribute

2. Partner Programs

• Two types: Affiliates (20% commission) and Resellers (25% commission)
• Tools like Partner Stack, Rewardful for tracking
• Success story: 6000 affiliates recruited, 1000 active, generating 20% of acquisitions
• Cold email outreach strategy for partner recruitment

3. Lead Generation Services

• Discussion of SweepLift platform using Amazon gift cards ($50-75) as incentives
• Considerations about lead quality vs. cost
• Conference strategy focusing on smaller, targeted events ($7000) over large conferences

4. Marketing Channels

• Cold email effectiveness with proper inbox deliverability
• Conference attendance for networking and partnerships
• Content machine approach for organic growth
• Paid advertising challenges with increasing costs

5. Marketing Challenges

• Increasing competition in paid advertising
• Rising costs of Google Ads
• Budget constraints for smaller companies

6. Community Updates

• GrowthRise reaching 140 members
• Weekly mastermind calls for peer support
• Focus on B2B marketers and growth professionals

7. Vertical-Specific Marketing

• Specialized approaches for different industries
• Targeting specific segments like accounting firms
• Customizing messaging for different business types

8. Other Topics discussed today:

• Introduction of GrowthRise community members from various B2B companies
• Discussion of marketing challenges in different verticals
• AI chat bots implementation
• B2B outbound lead generation
• Advertising budget considerations
• Marketing automation integration
• Intent-based outbound systems

9. Tools Mentioned:

• Wistia: Video hosting and transcript generation
• ChatGPT 4.0 (with $200/month plan for larger context windows)
• Instantly: Cold email platform
• Partner Stack: Partner program management
• Rewardful: Partner tracking
• Reditus: Partner management
• HubSpot: Partner portal and form management
• Tremendous: Gift card distribution
• User Interviews: Research participant recruitment

Cold Email: Testing, Tracking & When to Let Go of Over-Analysis

Jane from Forwardly kicked us off with a great question: how do you track performance changes across cold email variants—especially when you’re constantly tweaking copy and targeting segments like accountants, restaurants, and logistics?

She’s using Instantly and testing subject lines, call-to-actions, and AI-personalized lines with Clay (connected to Claude). Her challenge? She’s getting stuck in the weeds trying to attribute reply rate jumps to specific line edits and wants to know if deeper tracking is worth it.

Here’s what the room said:

• Jane’s current setup: Segmenting audiences heavily, doing constant A/B and A/C testing, watching reply rates. But no granular tracking of which edits caused what changes.
• My take: At SaasRise, we send 180K cold emails/month. We focus mostly on clicks, not open or reply rates, due to deliverability volatility. We’ll compare variant A vs. B, but avoid over-analyzing micro changes due to fluctuating inbox placement.
• Others echoed: Too much micro-analysis creates paralysis. Often it’s better to ship more campaigns, not build giant spreadsheets. Focus on performance at the campaign level, not line-by-line.

Pro tip: For landing pages and ads, go granular. For cold email, focus on macro-level metrics and test variants simultaneously if possible to offset inbox deliverability shifts.

Content Machines: Multiply Your Reach With One Hour a Week

Lawrence asked: how do we efficiently create content that gets distributed across LinkedIn, Substack, YouTube, and newsletters without it becoming a full-time job?

Great question. Here’s our system:

GrowthRise Content Machine Breakdown:

1. We start with a 1-hour mastermind call. Like the one you’re reading now.
2. Upload the Zoom recording to Wistia (for hosting + transcript).
3. Drop the transcript into ChatGPT-4 (we use the $200/month plan for the larger context window).
4. Prompt GPT to write a 1500–2000 word summary blog post in a structured, linear way.
5. Our marketer (Joe) adds visuals from our slide deck of 1500 slides.
6. Publish the post on our Webflow blog and send it to:
   • Our email newsletter list
   • Our Slack & WhatsApp community
   • LinkedIn (split into 5–7 daily posts)

What We Track:

• Content impressions: includes ad views, email opens, website visits, video views.
• Monthly growth: In April, we hit 3.1M impressions across SaasRise + GrowthRise.

Lesson: If you run calls, webinars, or interviews—start with humans talking, then use AI to structure, summarize, and amplify. Never start with a blank AI prompt.

Recommended Tools:

• Wistia (video hosting + transcript)
• ChatGPT-4 (long-context writing)
• Webflow (blog platform)
• Clay + Claude (AI line personalization)
• LinkedIn Organic + Ads
• Email newsletters (via HubSpot, ConvertKit, or similar)

Demo Incentives: Do Gift Cards Actually Work?

Rob from EZO brought up a timely topic—using gift cards to drive demo sign-ups. He’s evaluating platforms like SweepLift, which offer Amazon gift cards for qualified leads who complete a survey and take a demo.

Here’s what we explored:

• Cost Math: Rob found potential to lower cost-per-demo by 30% vs. Google Ads.
• Risks: Leads may show up only for the gift card (especially if it’s $100+). Several of us have seen this firsthand.
• Suggestions:
  • Use a tiered system: $20 for the survey, $50+ for the demo (only if qualified).
  • Use a platform like Tremendous for manual gift card delivery.
  • Make sure the demo person isn’t the one qualifying them (avoid conflict).

We agreed it’s worth testing with clear qualification and tracking. Just be ready to handle gift-chasers gracefully.

What’s Working Now? Real-World Growth Tactics

We rounded out the call with open sharing:

• Jane (Forwardly): Conferences and small, influencer-focused retreats. $7K gets you in a room with 150 niche ICP decision-makers (like accountants). Social mentions + relationship building matter more than booth size.
• Lawrence: Long-cycle partnerships are finally bearing fruit. Biggest wins came after 2–3 years of nurturing. Looking to systematize it now.
  • Ideas shared:
    • Use cold email to recruit partners (targeting “head of partnerships” or similar).
    • Use PartnerStack, Rewardful, or Reditus to manage tracking, attribution, payouts.
    • Learn from Clay’s viral partner playbook—incentivize LinkedIn posts on announcement days, then boost those posts via paid ads.
• Rob: Managing MSP and reseller partners manually via HubSpot forms and spreadsheets. Looking at building a better partner portal. Tech partners include Zendesk + Square.
• Ryan’s iContact story:
  • Built 6,000 affiliate partners over 10 years.
  • Only ~1,000 produced customers.
  • 20% of all customer acquisition at peak came from partners.

Final Reflections + Actionable Takeaways

Every week, the GrowthRise mastermind serves as a lens into what real marketers are actually doing—not just theorizing about.

Top Tactics to Try:

1. Cold Email: Focus on campaign-level data, not line-by-line changes.
   • Use tools like Instantly, Clay, and Claude.
   • Track click rates and do simultaneous A/Bs to control for deliverability.
2. Content Engine: Systematize human-first content → AI → blog/email/social.
   • Use Wistia + ChatGPT to summarize events.
   • Break down one long blog into 7+ LinkedIn posts.
3. Demo Incentives: Use small gift cards wisely—test with tools like SweepLift or Tremendous. Pre-qualify carefully.
4. Partnerships:
   • Map out cross-promos, affiliates, resellers.
   • Outreach using cold email.
   • Build tracking with HubSpot, Rewardful, or PartnerStack.
5. Conferences: Niche, targeted events can deliver high ROI—especially when tied to content and social posts.

Next Steps: If you're part of GrowthRise, check the community for:

• Full call recordings
• Slide decks
• Templates and checklists

And if you're not a member yet, come join us. This is what modern B2B marketing looks like—no fluff, just results.

Until next week,

Ryan Allis
Co-Founder, GrowthRise & SaaS Rise
@ryanallis