Source: [Indie Hackers](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/on-building-growing-a-document-automation-saas-to-2k-mrr-8abc4b43d8?utm_campaign=post-8abc4b43d8&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ih-series-growth-acquisition)
Interviewee: [Jacob Engels](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-engels-1166b5146/)

## How have you attracted users and grown Paperless?

Our first channel was cold email outreach. We created a pretty incredible process of finding leads on LinkedIn, enriching data via a personal assistant and then personalizing outreach at scale. We had opening rates of up to 80%, reply rates of ~40-45% and this was just crazy. We also tested various industries and verticals to see where we could find the biggest traction.

In more detail:

We were using the LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build solid lists of interesting contacts. Trying different batches of leads (company size and industry) helped us come up with around 30 different target groups we were contacting.

Through Phantombuster we were exporting those contacts into an Excel File. Our personal assistant later searched for the email addresses with different tools such as [Hunter.io](https://click.pstmrk.it/2m/Hunter.io/pxBB3ScN/g09c/b1wYDVrXAZ/LU1yOEJIQ0N4MjlMa2ZJUzBJYW0 "https://click.pstmrk.it/2m/Hunter.io/pxBB3ScN/g09c/b1wYDVrXAZ/LU1yOEJIQ0N4MjlMa2ZJUzBJYW0") Rocketreach, Leadleaper, Name2email, SalesQl, Signal Hire, Snovio and Clearbit.

The final Leads + email addresses were exported to a sales automation tool named [Klenty.com](https://click.pstmrk.it/2m/Klenty.com/qBBB3ScN/g09c/oeoAOd4Ntu/LU1yOEJIQ0N4MjlMa2ZJUzBJYW0). WIth simple A/B/C Tests we were steadily finding out which headlines and what content prompts leads to answer our emails. Four simple rules helped us achieve those crazy high numbers:

KISS - Keep it simple and stupid.  
Nail the tone - Don’t smell like a salesman or marketeer  
Simple yes/no CTA  
Follow-Up x3

Depending on the answer and considering the Self-SignUp was not yet ready we were pushing hard for a 30 min call to generate insights and create a need/urgency. In the call, it was all about asking the right questions, but that’s worth another story :)

Initially, we let our early access users into our platform in exchange for feedback. Some of them converted to paid customers and we’re still heavily focused on interviewing and speaking with these early adopters to really nail our positioning, find product-market-fit and determine our best customers worth focusing on.