As a fast-growing startup, CustomGPT was seeing a surge of free trial users (250–400 every month) interested in its AI platform. However, the sales team was small and had little visibility into who these trial users actually were.

"Before First Touch, we really didn't have visibility into who our leads were," Abhi explains. The leads spanned many industries and company sizes, but identifying the most promising ones was a guessing game. Every trial user received the same generic email sequence, and without deeper research, the team couldn’t tell which sign-ups were high-value customers.

This lack of insight led to a backlog of unqualified trials. "Every time you have a trial come in and you're not acting on it in a meaningful way, efficiency is hindered," Abhi notes. The team often wasted time manually qualifying poor-fit leads while missing out on the good ones hiding in the crowd.

To build an efficient engagement motion around its trials, CustomGPT’s team looked for a solution that could:

• 1
  Identify and prioritize the highest-potential trial sign-ups immediately.
• 2
  Personalize outreach using relevant data like industry, role, and company news.
• 3
  Engage every trial user with timely, multi-step touch points to ensure no warm lead falls through the cracks.

CustomGPT turned to First Touch to kickstart a scalable approach. The platform analyzes each new trial sign-up, enriching profiles with firmographics and AI-sourced news, allowing the team to immediately see who the lead is and why they might be a good fit.

"How First Touch works is it’ll show me each lead and I can prioritize the good ones," says Ali, Account Executive. The system generates tailored action plans, allowing her to tweak messaging for key accounts while automating the rest.

Importantly, this approach preserves the “human in the loop” element while operating at a speed and scale that would be impossible manually. First Touch’s AI-driven insights feed into each email, inserting custom use cases relevant to the prospect’s industry so it reads like a consultative note.

Tiered Outreach

First Touch enabled CustomGPT to implement a multi-funnel system. The most promising leads are funneled into a high-touch sequence (with Ali heavily personalizing messages), while lower-tier trials receive automated yet personalized emails. This ensures the team’s time is focused where it counts.

Personalization at Scale

Every email is enriched with personalized details. If a trial user’s company just raised funding, First Touch’s AI surfaces that info so Ali can weave it into her message. "We’ll include tailored use cases for their title and industry, so naturally the conversations become more consultative," Ali notes.

"It's been amazing that I can give each lead a personal touch while also automating at scale. First Touch allows that human-in-the-loop personalization at a speed that we couldn't have done any other way."

Implementing First Touch turned the free trial funnel into a reliable pipeline driver. In just one quarter, qualified opportunities jumped by 40%. The team is now booking ~25 meetings per month with users who likely would have been overlooked before (previously near zero).

Crucially, these meetings are not just more numerous, they’re more qualified. Prospects often arrive to meetings already aware of how CustomGPT can help them. "We’ve noticed a higher level of preparation," says Ali. Because the outreach emails included tailored use cases, prospects come to the call with specific questions and a sense of urgency.

By deploying First Touch, CustomGPT’s lean sales team effectively gained the ability to scale each rep's impact 10x without adding headcount. Routine tasks like lead research are automated, allowing Abhi, Ali, and team to focus on engaging the hottest prospects.

Abhi concludes, "First Touch lets our reps act like a team ten times the size. We can concentrate on the human aspects of selling, while the rest is automated in a hyper-personalized way."