How Airwallex built an outbound engine that kept up with hypergrowth
Fresh funding, aggressive growth targets, and a two-person marketing team. Here is the outbound and paid programme we built with them, and what it produced.
The situation
Airwallex is an Australian technology company that lets businesses manage cross-border transactions, revenue and financing. It had just closed new funding and was chasing big growth targets, with investors expecting the growth rate to hold.
The pressure landed on marketing and sales. Both needed to scale inbound and outbound, and neither had the internal capacity to do it. There is plenty of guidance on B2C and eCommerce marketing; there is far less on B2B marketing that actually produces pipeline.
The risks they were carrying
They had never used an outside agency before. Budget was not the obstacle; being wrong was. Ad spend can be recouped, lost months cannot.
Team capacity
They had to grow the team to sustain long-term growth, which meant what worked this month might not work the next.
Time
They needed strategies already proven to work, but outside-the-box enough to earn attention from the accounts they wanted.
Expertise
They needed a partner strong in B2B lead generation and B2B sales. Leads are worthless if they do not convert.
“There aren’t a lot of agencies and marketers in general that have a lot of deep expertise with B2B. We needed to build out our outbound sales expertise, and the automation and platforms, and put it together quickly.”
What we built
An initial strategy designed to grow fast while staying flexible enough to change as the team scaled. Three connected motions, not isolated channels.
To potential clients, referral partners and channel partners, segmented by use case (eCommerce/payments, SaaS, agencies, technology).
Into key accounts, used for lead generation, retention and user activation where it earned attention that email could not.
Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, plus the marketing funnels behind them, timed to reinforce the outreach rather than run beside it.
Alongside the campaigns we advised on hiring, outsourcing, lead management and the sales process, because the constraint moved from “not enough leads” to “can the team handle them” within weeks.
The results
The direct outreach campaigns ran at open rates above 70%, with product demos booked straight off the back of emails. One representative campaign:
| Campaign metric | Volume | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Recipients | 405 | n/a |
| Delivered / sent | 405 | 100% |
| Opened | 291 | 72% |
| Replied | 161 | 40% |
| Unsubscribed | 0 | 0% |
- Consistent, high-quality leads from every campaign.
- Digital advertising became materially more efficient. Cost per lead fell by more than 50%, with lead-to-demo conversion rising at the same time.
- The marketing team grew from Brendan plus one colleague to more than 15.
- The sales team grew from two people to over 80.
Why it worked: messaging was written for the individual, not the segment. Reach the person who manages the finances, and you can save them money from day one. Every campaign was built backwards from that sentence.
“You felt like an extension to our team. Adding them to the team meant we were able to shortcut a lot of that success. If anyone’s considering them, feel free to reach out to me.”
What the same engine looks like for you
Every account is different, but the build order rarely is.
Targeting
ICP and use-case segmentation, verified lists, messaging written per segment and per persona.
Outbound
Email and LinkedIn sequences, plus physical mail into named key accounts where it earns attention.
Paid + funnel
Google, LinkedIn and Meta running in support of the outreach, with landing pages and tracking that prove what converted.
Conversion
Lead management, follow-up sequences and sales process support, so the pipeline you create actually closes.
Running the same play in your market
We build outbound, paid and conversion infrastructure for B2B companies between $2M and $30M in revenue, as one productized engine, not four disconnected agencies.