Antonio Gabrić

I help people write cold emails that convert 🚀 | Marketing @ Hunter.io

Hey! I'm Antonio. I help SaaS companies grow their brand's presence and revenue with outbound marketing.

Building backlinks that move the needle is hard. Here's how I can help you:

- Set up hyper-personalized and automated link building outreach campaigns
- Build contextual backlinks from relevant DR70+ domains at scale
- Get your brand featured on Hubspot, Zapier, Wordstream, and more
- List your brand in high-traffic listicles (top X tools)
- Grow your brand's presence, authority, and revenue

Why me?

- Grew Hunter's organic monthly sessions from 100k to 300k
- Built semi-automated processes for effective link building (7,000+ referring domains in 2 years)
- Sent tailored outreach campaigns with 12% conversion rates
- Featured on industry-leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Wordstream, and many more
- Managing a Slack community with over 100 active SaaS link builders (SERanking, Toptal, Hubspot, and others)

Ready to leverage link building to grow your SaaS into a multi-million dollar success?

🔔 I'll be posting SEO and cold email case studies – so hit that "Follow" button! 

Cheers,
Antonio.

Outreach Manager

Some of the current responsibilities and achievements:

- leading the link building at Hunter
- establishing and reworking processes
- hiring freelancers
- managing a team of link builders and writers
- running a Slack community of amazing link builders
- experimenting with different outreach approaches
- managing affiliate program approvals
- working with influencers
- ensuring Hunter is featured on most authority industry-relevant websites consistently
- increasing organic traffic by 78%

I’m looking for 20 people to join an exclusive SEO partnership circle.

The vibe: 
✅ Real SaaS brands only (No PBNs/Farms)
✅ High-authority guest post collabs (Zapier, Moz, G2, and more)
✅ Editor intros & networking 
✅ Bi-monthly "Win/Fail" syncs
✅ Weekly catch-ups to discuss new strategies and tactics

If you’re tired of shouting into the void and want a small community of peers to grow with, this is for you.

The keyword: "Value".

Comment "SaaS" below, and I'll send you the details.

(I'll go through all comments and messages. But, I'll just respond to people who meet the criteria (e.g., not interested in resellers, agencies, etc.))

Marketing @ Hunter.io | Author on Moz, Zapier, G2 & 50+ top industry sites | Writing on SEO, content marketing, B2B sales & lead generation

Only 1 in 20 cold emails gets a reply.

My colleague Ziemek Bućko did a fantastic job analyzing 31 million emails and pulling this report together. I went through the findings and pulled the 14 stats that actually move the needle.

Some of these surprised me:
→ Turning off open tracking increases reply rates by 68% 
→ Emailing 21–50 people outperforms blasting 500+ by 158% 
→ 3 follow-ups double replies. 4+ kills them. 
→ LinkedIn is now the preferred channel for 50.5% of decision makers

Cold email isn't dead. Lazy cold email is.

The full breakdown is in the carousel 👇

Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments. Curious what resonates most.

(Full report link in the comments)

Email outreach stats

If someone told me you could win $1,000 by writing one email, I'd have laughed.

Which means most people reading this won't bother entering.

Less competition for you.

Messaging Madness 2026: entries close tomorrow, March 10. 

Write one outreach email based on a real scenario. It goes into a public bracket, head-to-head voting rounds, until one winner takes $1,000.

I'm judging one of the 4 scenarios myself.

10 minutes to write. $1,000 to win.

Full details + entry form below

Messaging Madness 2026

Can you write an email worth $1,000? Let’s find out.

Messaging Madness 2026 is officially back. 🎉

Last year, we launched an experiment: a bracket-style tournament to find the world’s best outreach. We saw thousands of votes and one undeniable truth: the "spray and pray" era is dead.

This year, the stakes are higher, the scenarios are tougher, and the philosophy has shifted.

From "Cold" to "Outreach"

In 2025, we called it a cold email competition. We were wrong.

Looking at the winning entries, none of them felt "cold." When you research a prospect and understand their pain so deeply that your message lands at the exact right moment, that’s not an intrusion. That’s a solution.

The theme for 2026: 

Turning a cold lead into a warm conversation through human-to-human connection.

How the Messaging Madness works:

Pick your scenario: Choose one of four specific prompts.
Write your email: Craft the perfect initial outreach.
The Selection: Our judges pick the Top 64 entries.
The Bracket: You go head-to-head in 6 rounds of public voting.

What we learned from the 2025 winners (@anne kar:

Relevance > Cleverness: "Smart" copy loses to "helpful" copy every time.

Length is a myth: Value-packed 200-word emails beat generic 50-word ones.

Be Human: If you sound like an AI template, you’ve already lost.

🏆 The Prize:

The "Follow-up 4" (Semi-finalists) all get a year of Hunter’s Starter plan.
The Champion takes home $1,000 cash.

📅 The Key Dates:

Entry Deadline: March 10

Bracket Announcement: March 16

First Round Voting: March 17

Stop sending spam. Start writing outreach that actually gets a reply.

I’m dropping the link to the scenarios and the entry form in the comments below. 👇

Brand mentions, backlinks that boost SEO, LLMs visibility & drive revenue | CEO @ GrowthMate | Startup Mentor & Speaker

Founder and CEO at GrowthMate.

We’re a relationship-based link-building agency that helps small and mid-size brands grow in SERP and generate more revenue.

GrowthMate helps SaaS and service companies boost Google rankings and AI visibility with editorial backlinks and brand mentions from trusted publications, driving authority, traffic, and long-term growth.

Our clients:
 Ahrefs, Nextiva, Artisan, Modash, Aura, Semrush, Community Phone, Small PDF, Cloudtalk, Coefficient — just to name a few.

Published guest posts on:
 HubSpot, Freshworks, Envato, Sendinblue, Smashing Magazine, Mind the Product, G2, and 100+ more.

How we do it
🟢 We build links from high-authoritative editorial & SaaS websites with an av. DR 72.
🟢 Build brand mentions from listicles and other content cited by LLMs.
🟢 Strategize how to leverage link building for the biggest impact on traffic, rankings, revenue.
🟢 Audit, analyze, and improve your off-page presence.
🟢 Scale high-authority backlinks that 99% of brands won't get on their own.

Industries: SaaS, Marketing, B2B Sales, AI, CX, Cybersecurity, Tech Services & similar.

Summary of me
9+ years in B2B inbound marketing


Contributor to 100+ product & marketing blogs including HubSpot, Smashing Magazine, Mind the Product, Envato, G2, Hackernoon, and many others


Friends call me “networking guru” — I know people who know people and can help you with connections :)


Barista at Marketing Coffee Lviv — a professional marketing community


Startup mentor


Hard experience working with:

Content strategy, content creation, content distribution, LLM optimisation & visibility, guest posts, outreach, digital PR, influencer marketing, growth marketing, lead generation, video marketing, social media, email marketing, onboarding emails, A/B tests, retention, project management, hiring marketing/sales teams, and mentorship.



Andriy Zapisotskyi 🇺🇦

I remember my first hire… it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.

I postponed it for quite some time.

After that, over the years I’ve hired up to 50 people, but that first hire was the toughest.

It was more of a mental challenge than anything 🙃

I come from a background where I was quite shy, so stepping into a role where I had to manage someone, pay salaries, and take full responsibility was a big leap out of my comfort zone.

This helped me:

1. Mental shift first: you have to put yourself in a position you’ve never been in before — stepping into the role of a leader and entrepreneur
2. Delegate with clarity: I started by analyzing my own tasks, building a backlog, and writing a clear description of the role I needed
3. Financial preparedness: hiring your first employee comes with risks, so it’s important to have a buffer and a clear plan to support the role
4. Be ready that the first thousands you invest might not bring results, and that’s part of the process

The mental shift is everything; it helps you think bigger, take more risks, and move forward faster

After the first hire, there were challenges: I had to fire, rehire, and experiment to find the right fit.

But each hire became easier.

By the time we had five people on the team, I could delegate more confidently, expand our client base, and build processes that allowed us to scale.

MY TAKEAWAY:

Hiring ≠ filling a position. 

It’s more about creating space for growth, learning to trust others, and building a team that can achieve more than you ever could alone.

So, if you’re at an early stage of your entrepreneurial journey, you have to delegate if you want to grow.

***

BTW, we’re actively hiring new folks to join our team! Apply, link in the comments. (join us before I try to do everything myself again 😄)

Dear Andriy, 3 years ago, or any starting entrepreneur, 
manage finances and legal from day one!
Please please please…

From my experience, one of the most important lessons I learned from the very beginning is trust, but document ✍️

This is your must-have starting kit:

— Contract template for clients (scope, payment terms, revisions, IP rights)
— Contractor/employee agreement (who owns what, responsibilities)
— Invoice + payment terms template 
— Basic P&L (monthly)
— Cash flow forecast (even a simple Google Sheet)
— Expense tracking (subscriptions add up very fast)
— Salary/contractor cost overview
— Tax calendar 

Always have agreements with team members, contractors, and clients. 

Even if you trust people completely, things can go wrong. 

We’ve had cases where clients claimed they never ordered certain work, or simply didn’t pay, because we didn’t have a signed contract. 

It was a costly lesson.

The same goes for your financial setup. 

Knowing your cash flow and costs allows you to make confident decisions and plan ahead of time: whether it’s hiring a new team member, taking on a contractor, or scaling your business.

Contracts and basic financial infrastructure are your safety net. 

Build them early, and you’ll sleep much better at night 💫

Marketing Coffee is back ⚡️🔥

We’re organizing a new Marketing Coffee charity offline event in Lviv, with a fantastic speaker joining us.

Speaker:
Joshua Pratt
Head of Growth at Impressit
CEO & Founder at English L.E.S.S.

Topic:
Smarketing: Leveraging a Marketing-Oriented Sales Mindset to Grow Revenue

Marketing and Sales — enemies or best friends?
Neither. Dream team.

We’ll talk about how to properly align marketing and sales so that:
• brand awareness grows
• deals close faster
• leads actually turn into customers

Joshua will share insights on what sales and marketing teams should really focus on, how they can work together more effectively, and why both teams need to understand how to sell.

When?
March 12, 19:00

Where?
Kristal Plaza, 3rd floor
24A Panasa Myrnoho St.
Lviv, Ukraine

How to join?
Make a 600 UAH donation + register.
Reminder: this is a nonprofit community event.

💳 Donation: https://lnkd.in/dg69rs3g
👉 Registration: https://bit.ly/4rTLFpO

😎 Good vibe, Q&A, networking — join us!

🤝 Event Partners:
GrowthMate, SOLVA, Flying Age - Strategic Product Design House | UX/UI and graphic design, eventmate

taplio

The Battle

Antonio Gabrić

Andriy Zapisotskyi 🇺🇦

Followers

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taplio

The Battle

Antonio Gabrić

Andriy Zapisotskyi 🇺🇦

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Antonio Gabrić's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAndriy Zapisotskyi 🇺🇦's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreAntonio Gabrić's LinkedIn Performance