How PublicRelay built a $2.25M pipeline in six months with Uptown's LinkedIn Outbound and Content

Enterprise deals only came from events and referrals. Cold outreach was not opening the same doors.

PublicRelay combines human analysts and technology to track and analyze media coverage for corporate communications teams, so a communications leader can hand the CEO numbers they trust. Its customers are Fortune 1000 companies in banking, pharmaceuticals, energy and other regulated industries, and its contracts run into six figures.

PublicRelay’s enterprise reps relied on events and referrals to build pipeline. Cold calling and email had struggled to generate conversations with senior communications leaders. Chief Revenue Officer Travis Day needed another way to reach those buyers, rather than more of the same outreach they were already ignoring.

Communications leaders were also facing a new question: how their companies appeared in AI-generated answers. PublicRelay had the answer, but they needed help getting in front of the people asking.

"We've tried a few outsourced prospecting vendors, and to be honest, the results have been consistently poor."

 Travis Day

Chief Revenue Officer at PublicRelay

Uptown ran outreach and content from one senior seller’s LinkedIn profile, so the leaders receiving PublicRelay’s messages also saw him in their feeds.

PublicRelay ran the program through Darren Sleeger, its SVP of Enterprise Solutions, who has spent more than 15 years selling to the communications leaders the campaign needed to reach. PublicRelay picked about 650 target accounts, and Uptown targeted the director-and-above communications, public relations, and public affairs leaders inside them.

Uptown’s team worked the profile every day. They sent each connection request by hand, answered every reply, handled the objections and follow-ups, and carried each conversation through to a meeting booked on the calendar of Darren or the rep who owned the account. Every booking was tagged and logged in a shared dashboard that PublicRelay loads into Salesforce, and Uptown adjusted targeting and messaging as the replies came in. The first positive reply came three days after launch, and the first meeting was booked within two weeks.

The message kept improving. Prospects kept saying “GEO” (Generative Engine Optimization), so Uptown built the message around it, and four meetings were booked in the first full month. When PublicRelay changed its lead offer three months in, Uptown rewrote the sequence to match. Five months in, the first message became a direct introduction and a plain request for a meeting. Three of its first five positive replies became meetings, up from one in three.

A short interview every few weeks became twelve posts a month, one a week tied to the outreach theme. Posts championing the communications profession outperformed industry commentary, so the plan was rebuilt around them.