GrowthRise Mastermind Recap

🚀 GrowthRise Mastermind Recap: Supercharging B2B Marketing with AI, Cold Email, and Conversion Strategy

In this week's GrowthRise mastermind, we dove deep into what's working right now in B2B marketing—from AI-powered proposal automation and AI-personalized cold outreach to trial conversion strategies, paid ad layering, and high-converting landing pages.

If you're leading marketing, sales, or growth at a B2B company—this is your playbook. 💼✨

💡 1. Automating Proposal Responses with AI Agents & Custom GPTs

Mahala kicked things off with a big question: "How do I 5x the number of RFPs I respond to each month without burning out?"

Two AI-first options:

• Chatbase: Upload answer libraries and past RFPs. Manually paste in questions to get AI-generated answers. Increases output 3–4x.
• Custom GPT: Hire a dev via Upwork (~$500) to build a ChatGPT Pro agent that ingests entire RFPs and generates responses. Scalable, fast.

💰 Cost: Chatbase is $40/month, better than NotebookLM's 50-file limit.

"You can go from raw proposal to draft output in one step with a Custom GPT."

🔧 Pro Tip: Map your manual process before building agents like:

• 🤖 Ingestion Agent
• 📚 FAQ Agent
• ✍️ Drafting Agent

📚 2. AI Knowledge Assistants for Your Business

Ryan showed how SaaSRise built a Chatbase-powered bot trained on 400+ masterminds. Prospects can ask it anything and get instant, personalized guidance based on real GrowthRise content.

✅ 70+ source docs
✅ Trained on real insights
✅ Available 24/7 on the homepage

💸 3. Cold Email + Paid Ads = Omnipresence

Here's the data behind SaaSRise's growth engine:

• 500,000 SaaS CEOs targeted
• 2M cold emails sent
• 6,000+ applications (1.1%)
• 550 customers, $3.7M ARR
• $30K/month in paid ads

🎯 Key: Cold email drives discovery, ads reinforce trust, warm content closes.

"99 new customers in April—60% from cold email, 30% influenced by ads."

🧠 4. AI Personalization That Actually Works

Basic cold email: 2% click rate
With Clay AI personalization: up to 34%

📬 PS line examples that work:

• "Saw you're a 9x Burner—hope to meet on the Playa someday."
• "Your horse riding video made my day. Reminds me of my daughter's pony phase."

"AI can find the purple cow facts that make your message unforgettable."

🔄 5. Cold-to-Warm Lead Sequences That Work

• ✅ Click in cold email = enter 30-day warm sequence
• ✅ Continued engagement = added to CRM + newsletter

"Only add people to your CRM who know you, want you, and won't be surprised you're there."

🧪 6. Demos vs. Free Trials: Which Model Wins?

• 💡 <$800/year? → Free trial
• 💼 >$10K/year or MVP? → Demos

🧾 Always collect credit card upfront (delay billing):

"80% converted at GrowthRise vs. 16% when we waited to collect cards at iContact."

📈 7. Conversion Frameworks You Can Steal

Cold email sequence: AI intro → click triggers nurture → slide deck → 18 warm emails

Warm sequence: Weekly content, continued nudges, PS personalization

"The 1,480-slide deck got me hooked. I applied because of it." – Claude

🖥️ 8. Landing Pages That Convert

🏠 Homepage: full nav = low conversion
📄 Landing page: no nav = 2–3% conversion

Add ?minimal=1 to strip distractions. Focus the CTA.

"If you're paying for traffic, don't send people to a buffet—give them one damn thing to eat."

⚒️ 9. Tools Mentioned & Community Collab

🧰 Tools: Chatbase, GPTs, Clay, Instantly, Transpond, Baremetrics, Apollo.io, Lovable, Gamma.app

💬 Community: Mahala (AI RFPs), Claude (AI cold email), Shubhankar (PLG vs. demo), Lawrence (ad layering)

📂 Resources shared:

• 1,480-slide strategy deck
• Cold email templates
• Warm sequence insights

🧭 Final Words

This was one of our most tactical, insight-rich sessions to date. Whether you're scaling outbound, automating RFPs, or optimizing for conversions—you're building marketing leverage.

🙏 Thanks to everyone who contributed. We'll see you next Tuesday for the next GrowthRise mastermind.

📅 Bring your wins, your questions, and your curiosity.