Denis Acia

Co-Founder at SaasFluence | B2B Influencer Marketing for SaaS Brands

I’m Denis, Co-Founder of SaasFluence

We’re an influencer marketing agency helping B2B tech brands drive demand and visibility by partnering with LinkedIn influencers.

Currently — with over 200 influencers, we manage influencer marketing programs for B2B sales tech companies like Maildoso, Icypeas, Saleshandy, Fowla, and others.

Why We Started SaasFluence

Before SaasFluence, I ran an outbound agency, Applus Leads. Through that experience, we worked with some incredible B2B tech brands — companies with fantastic products and real value to offer. But despite outbound efforts (cold calls and cold emails), they weren’t getting the traction they deserved.

A big reason?

Their LinkedIn presence and engagement were minimal. Most had only a few hundred page followers and very little visibility in the market.

That lack of recognition made it hard to convert cold leads. Without social proof or brand mentions, prospects were hesitant to engage — especially in the highly competitive sales tech space.
What they really needed was a new approach — one that would:

1. Build credibility
2. Earn trust
3. And drive demand by establishing them as trusted solutions in the market.

That’s where SaasFluence comes in.

Our mission;
To help B2B tech brands leverage influencer marketing to drive demand, increase sales, and grow.

How We Can Help

☑ If you’re a B2B tech founder or business leader with an influencer marketing budget of at least $10K/month,
 ☑ And you don’t have the time to run campaigns or manage influencer partnerships,
We’ll handle it for you.

We’ve launched thousands of LinkedIn-sponsored campaigns, and our clients are seeing exceptional ROI.

If you’re curious, DM me and I’ll share a few of our client case studies so you can learn more about our systems and results.

Or, visit our website to explore further:
 👉 www.saasfluence.co

Lead Generation Partner - Outbound

If my team replies to my Slack messages in 30 seconds I get a little bit worried about our work.

In most agencies everybody feels a pressure to stay active so the boss thinks they are working hard. 

You feel like if you do not answer a DM immediately you might look like you are slacking off. 

But I think that culture is a mistake.

If you are answering me in 30 seconds it means you were not in the zone. You were just waiting to be interrupted. 

A brain cannot do its best work if it is getting interrupted every few minutes.

Tell your team to turn off notifications for a few hours and disappear. Go do hard stuff that requires deep thinking. 

I would much rather wait two hours for a brilliant strategy than get a "On it!" in three seconds.

Remember that you hired adults because you trust them to do the job. You do not need to watch their status bubble to see if they are sitting at their desk.

If your team is answering too fast they might be losing the chance to do their best work.

Fast reply or good work - what matters more to you?

Don't follow up with your prospects today. Trust me on this.

It is the first week of January. Everyone just got back to their desks. I know for a fact their inboxes are a total war zone right now. They have 300 unread emails. Maybe 500. 

They are stressed and they are just trying to survive the morning.

If you send them an email right now saying "just bubbling this up," you are not being a good salesperson. You are just annoyance number 301. 

I like to give people what I call Grace Week. Just give them some room to breathe. Let them delete all the junk and get back to normal life.

I am waiting until next Tuesday. When I reach out, I will tell them I waited because I knew their inbox was probably a mess. 

It shows you have some empathy. It shows you care about their sanity more than your quota.

People appreciate it when you don't act like a robot chasing a number.

Are you sending emails today or are you waiting?

I spent 3 months sending emails to SaaS founders who didn’t have a budget until I found this.

I used to spend a lot of my outbound efforts guessing. I would find a SaaS company through Sales Nav, find the CEO, and send them a pitch for our influencer services. 

Sometimes they replied. Most of the time they didn't. 

Then Matthew from Prospeo.io showed me what they built for their V2 update. It was crazy. 

I finally stopped searching for "companies" and started searching for "signals."

Here is how I use it now for Saasfluence:

→ I set a filter to only show me SaaS companies hiring for marketing roles.
→ I check the "Technographics" to see if they already use tools like HubSpot.
→ I also check "Intent Signals" to see companies that are researching Linkedin marketing.

This changes the whole game for me.

If a company is hiring a marketing leader (or other related roles), I know three things for sure:

1. They have a massive problem they need to solve.
2. They have the budget to pay for a solution.
3. My timing is perfect because they are already thinking about growth.

The data is refreshed every 7 days and 98% of the emails are verified. I don't even scrub the list anymore!

I’m moving almost all our internal searches over to Prospeo.io now because it saves me so much time on cleaning CSV files.

Swipe through the carousel to see how I set this up and the exact email template I use.

I’ll put a link in the comments if you want to try Prospeo.io yourself.

Signal based outreach

Is work-life balance just a lie we tell people so they don’t quit?

I have been looking at my own life lately and I see a pattern that makes me a bit angry. 

Every single time Saasfluence is winning and we are managing MORE clients, my health automatically goes into low priority mode.

I skip the gym and I eat whatever is near me because my brain is always on the next meeting.

Then I get tired of feeling slow and I focus on my fitness. I spend more effort on my health and I eat clean. 

And what happens? My to-do list piles up. I am not pushing the business as hard because my energy is somewhere else.

I'm starting to think you can't have every area of your life in the green at the same moment.

I see these influencers on Linkedin say "My work is my life.” If you spend 14 hours every day building a company, doesn't something else need to die?

Maybe it is your relationship with your kids or your physical health. You only have so much energy in the tank.

Does anybody here have it all figured out? Are you winning at health, money, family, and work at the same time? 

Or are we all just choosing which part of our life we are going to neglect this week?

(Please no AI comments below. I want to hear from humans.)

I used to spend 4 hours a day on LinkedIn trying to grow. Now I use these 4 tools to do it in 45 minutes:

Trigify.io → I use this to find social signals. I don't message random people anymore because that is a waste of time. 

I find people who are leaving comments on my favorite niche thought leaders. These people are already interested in what I'm interested in. Higher chances of converting them.

Extrovert → I used to spend forever thinking of what to say on 20 different posts every day. This tool helps me stay active in the comments. 

It keeps my name visible where my customers are hanging out and I don't lose my mind doing it.

MagicPost → When my brain feels like a dry sponge and I have no ideas, I open this. I don't let it write for me. That is a mistake. 

I use it to kickstart my drafts. I can get a post done in 30 minutes instead of an hour of staring at a blank screen.

Aimfox → This is the heavy lifter for the DMs. Once the other three tools have warmed up my profile and people recognize my name, I use Aimfox. 

It handles outreach at a scale I could never do by hand.

The point is not to use bots to manage my Linkedin. These tools just let me be more human faster. 

I spend less time on boring stuff and more time talking to people who can grow the business.

How much time do you spend on LinkedIn every day?

I have a confession: I am not passionate about B2B influencer marketing.

Do not get me wrong. I love my team and our clients say we do great work…

But I do not wake up every morning dreaming about creator briefs or looking at invoices for software.

I think gurus tell founders a big lie. They say you must be obsessed with your product. 

You must live and breathe your niche every second and I think that’s totally unnecessary.

What I am obsessed with is getting our clients a win. I like when a founder tells me their sales calls are finally converting because of the work we did.

I love the game of building a company. I love finding great people and making a plan and seeing it succeed. The "thing" we sell is just the car we drive to get to the goal.

It is okay to not be in love with the tool. It’s okay to just be in love with the results you get for people.

We shame founders who are not obsessed with their specific niche and it just makes people feel like they are doing it wrong. It’s fine to just love the win.

Are you in love with the product or are you in love with the game?

I found a way to stop the "Day 1" onboarding chaos with one single link.

Do you send an email asking for your client's logo? Then another email with a Google Form? Then another one asking them to book a kickoff call?

The client is already overwhelmed and you haven't even started the work yet.

We stopped doing that. We use a tool called Flowla and we create one "Onboarding Room" for everything.

Here is exactly what we put inside:

→ A 30-second welcome video:

Record it right there in the room. Say "Welcome! Everything you need to get started is right here."

→ A checklist:

They see a list of what they need to do and what we are doing. They know exactly what is happening next so you never have to send "just checking in" emails.

→ An intake form:

We embed a form in the page. No PDFs to download. They fill in their KPIs and their target audience and we get it instantly.

→ A calendar link:

Our Cal(dot)com link is sitting at the bottom. They book the kickoff call as the final step.

→ An upload section:

We ask them to drag and drop everything into the room. It keeps our inbox clean.

We send one link. 

The client feels like they hired a professional team instead of a messy freelancer. It sets the tone for the whole relationship.

Do you have a smooth onboarding process or is it a mess of emails?

fix your onboarding

Why does a lead from a creator close 3x faster than a cold lead?

It’s because of "Distance to Trust."

When you get a cold lead the distance is very long.

Path A:

It starts with a Stranger. Then you send a cold email. They feel scepticism. 

You have to do 3 demo calls to prove you can solve their problem. You earn trust and you close.

That path takes a lot of time.

The distance shrinks when you try to convert a lead from a trusted creator’s post.

Path B:

It starts with a stranger. But then they see a creator's post. The creator hands their trust over to you. 

The prospect comes to you already believing in the product. You do 1 discovery call and you close.

Influence is a shortcut.

Do you want the long path or the shortcut?

I think most of us on LinkedIn are aiming at the wrong target and here’s why…

We look at viral posts and think "I need to post about how to get 10k followers."

Or we post generic advice about "how to be a better leader."

We are fighting for attention at the very top of the pyramid.

It is crowded there and honestly, there is not much money in it.

The "money" is hidden at the bottom of the pyramid.

It is where people are looking for boring solutions to boring business problems.

A post about "How to get 100 likes" might get you a dopamine hit. But a post about "How to fix a messy CRM so your sales team stops quitting" might get you 10 likes.

But 3 of those likes are from CEOs who have that exact problem right now. And they have a budget to fix it.

If you want to be a famous creator, stay at the top. If you want to build a business, go to the bottom and solve a boring problem.

Do you post for likes or for leads?

If you are a SaaS founder, here is how you make one creator post last for months...

I see this all the time. A brand pays a lot of money for a creator to post. The post goes live, it gets some likes for a day, and then it is gone.

This makes the math very hard for your business because you paid a lot for something that only lasted 24 hours.

You need to turn that one post into a content engine. Try using this playbook:

Day 1: 

You do the obvious stuff. The creator answers every comment. You share it to your company page. You make sure everyone sees it.

Day 7: 

Take the main lesson from that post and put it in your email to your users. Tell them a story about why this creator uses your tool. It feels more human than a standard marketing email.

Day 14: 

You take the video or the image from the creator. You run it as a paid ad.

It looks like a friendly recommendation instead of a boring commercial. Usually your cost per click goes down.

Day 30: 

When someone books a demo on your site, show them that creator's video on the thank you page. Tell them "While you wait for our call, see how this person uses us." 

Day 40:

Write a simple blog post on your site. Title it "How [Creator Name] solved this big problem using our tool." You are just telling their story again.

You paid for the post once. But now you are getting value for more time, and you can repeat this playbook for all creator posts.

Are you reusing your creator content?

Creator marketing tactics

Before I started my influencer marketing agency, I did cold emails for SaaS clients.

And I found one framework that worked for pretty much any tool I was selling.

Here is the exact structure I used to book hundreds of meetings:

1. Salutation

"Hey [Name]" is fine. 

2. Relevant Personalization

This is where everyone messes up. Do not just say "I saw you went to X college." That is weird. You need to connect the observation to the problem you solve.

Example: "I noticed you run a pay-per-meeting model at your agency. That means you cannot afford to waste credits on bad data, right?"

See? I am proving I understand their business model.

3. The Offer

Connect it right back to the personalization. Tell them why you are emailing them now.

Example: "Asking because we just launched a new verification feature at [Tool Name]. It helps you find verified emails without burning your credits on the wrong people."

4. Social Proof

Give them a reason to trust you. A number or a name works best.

Example: "We are already helping 50 other lead gen agencies keep their bounce rates under 1%."

5. CTA

Do not ask for marriage. Just ask if the topic is relevant.

Example: "Would this be relevant to you right now?"

That is it. 

What is your go-to cold email framework?

I haven't used this tool yet, but I'm obsessed with the idea behind it.

When one of our creators puts out a post, we see the likes and comments. But we have to spend hours reading through hundreds of comments just to see if people like the price or if they like feature X.

I saw Trigify.io and it looks like it can fix this mess. 

One thing I want to do is sentiment analysis. I want the tool to tell me if everyone is complaining about a specific part of the dashboard. 

Instead of me guessing, I can get a clear report on what the market hates. That is pure gold for a product team.

The other part is even more crazy. They say they can connect social signals to your pipeline. 

If I can show a client that a single comment from a prospect led to a closed deal in their CRM... that is holy grail.

Right now, the link between a LinkedIn comment and a dollar is very blurry. I think this might be the tool that finally makes it clear. 

Do you track the sentiment of your comments or count the likes?

Sending a cold connection request to a stranger is just weird.

If a random person stops you on a dark street you get nervous. Most LinkedIn requests feel like that. 

You get a notification from a face you never saw before and you probably hit delete because you have zero clue who they are.

We use a method I call the Shadow Strategy. We use a tool called Extrovert for it and it has changed everything for our team.

→ I pick 50 people I want to work with.
→ I add their names into Extrovert.
→ Every time they post anything the tool sends me a notification.
→ I leave a helpful comment within the first hour of them posting.

I do this about three times in two weeks. I'm not trying to sell them anything yet. I'm just sharing my thoughts on their ideas.

When I finally send the connection request they already know who I am. 

They see my name and they think 'hey this guy has been leaving some good comments'. It is not a cold request anymore.

Our acceptance rate is about 60 percent (for prospects).

You spend 15 minutes a day doing this and your outreach stops being an intrusion.

Do you message strangers or do you let them get to know you first?

GTM Engineer | Uber driver turned sales guy

Creative and analytical GTM Engineer with 3 years of experience in tech sales, now focused on building advanced go-to-market, workflows and automation. I am experienced in leveraging tools like Clay, Leadmagic, HubSpot, Make, and Apollo to build scalable outbound systems, streamline prospecting, and drive measurable results. I combines technical expertise with frontline sales knowledge to deliver systems that generate pipeline and revenue.

Particularly interested In AI, great founders, products, and people!

I believe talent exists everywhere and is not bound by location - which is why I champion global hiring and remote work.

Need anything? Let's connect!

Chris Mbanta

POV: when a client makes joke on a call.

Salespeople ⬇️

While I was away for the holidays,
Daniel was in the motherland.

We planned to link up on the evening of Dec 29.

I had returned from Cotonou 🇧🇯 in the morning to make sure it happened
Because he was flying back to Dublin 🇮🇪 the next day 30th Dec.

For some unforeseen reasons we couldn't see on the 29th.

Past 9pm, my phone rang.

“Chris, it’s Dan.”
I screamed, “DANIEEEEL?!”
It was all joy and happiness on both ends of the call.

He said he couldn't leave Nigeria without seeing me
So we made it happen
We saw the next morning, the same day he was to travel.

That was very intentional
And that’s what great friends would do.

Here’s to meeting people on LinkedIn
Who turn into real-life friends…
And friends who become family.

Cheers to more of that in 2026 🤍

Go where you can win the most.

When I was an SDR I was heavily focused on old calling 
Because that was where most of my meetings came from....

Don’t get me wrong,
I was using other channels.

Email sequencing
Social selling (LinkedIn DMs, even tried X for a bit)

What didn’t work was trying to be great everywhere at once.

The phone was the channel that consistently gave me pipeline,
So I anchored on it.

I even had personal KPIs to hit,
Minimum number of calls I must make every day.

Once I mastered the phone
(confident on calls and consistently booking meetings)

I moved to other channels,
Doing multi-channel became easier and more successful.

𝐌𝐲 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬

Focus on one channel until you’re good at it.
Then layer the rest

That’s how you'll win faster.

Agree or disagree?
Let me know In the CS.

I wouldn’t do a 100% commission-based role.

I've done a few in my career especially in my early days.

I thought it would “build grit” and fast-track my growth.

What it actually did was drain my time
Every day became about survival
I was chasing quick wins
To get paid.

I avoided learning curves I couldn’t afford
There was no room to get better at the craft
No room to slow down and understand what actually worked.

At the end of the day I realized I was wasting my time
I was better off working for free.

WHY?
Because working for free is intentional 
With growth as top focus, I wouldn't expect 
Anything in return and that'll help me learn and grow fast.

100% commission shouldn’t be the norm.

It pushes people to optimize for short-term wins, 
Not long-term skill.

And that’s very different from working for free.

Working for free is a deliberate choice to learn, get reps, and build leverage.

Commission-only roles demand output before you’ve built any.

There’s a big difference between betting on yourself
and being set up to scramble just to stay afloat.

If you think otherwise,
Let me know in the CS.

The fight to “turn off LinkedIn” is real.

Every few weeks, 
Someone posts about why LinkedIn is noisy, or should disappear.

And honestly, I get it
People don’t like what they feel they hate
And make all sorts of opinions on what should be done to it.

I responded to one 
Saying "B2B can't survive without LinkedIn"

And this is absolutely true.

Because for B2B companies, LinkedIn isn’t a distraction
It’s infrastructure.

Where conversations start
It’s where trust compounds
Where companies find leads
Where careers change with/without applications.

So when I see “LinkedIn is useless” takes
I usually assume one thing:

They don’t sell to other companies/agencies.

You don’t have to love LinkedIn
Your personal opinion about it also doesn't matter
Because there are more than a billion people on here.

They love it
And they conduct business here
And in B2B, not being in the room is the real cost.

What do you think?

I wasted time building an outbound campaign the wrong way.

Started with job titles:

CISO
VP of Security
Head of Security

It made sense in my table
But in practice, everything broke.

I kept pulling in companies selling 
What I was trying to sell, rather than those who need it.

That’s when I realized my mistake, 
Was the flawed logic behind the campaign.

I was asking first, “Who should I talk to?”
Instead of asking, “What companies actually need this right now?”

Job titles answer the first question
But they don’t answer the second.

Signals do:

Infra changes
Expansion moves
Specific hiring activities.

This is the reason I started 
Planning out first before building any campaign. 

Once I flipped the order to these two

𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 → 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 → 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭
𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 → 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 → 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭

My workflow became better:

Cleaner lists
Fewer false positives.

Learning from my mistakes was my biggest play here
Growth forces you to confront the gaps in your thinking.

Most GTM Engineers come from one of two backgrounds:

Sales
Or engineering.

Sales folks usually understand:
ICPs
Messaging
Objections
What actually gets replies.

Engineers usually understand:
Systems
Data
Automation
How to scale without things breaking.

But to really level up, people coming from sales have to learn the engineering side: data, systems, automation, and scale.

And vice versa for folks coming from engineering.

Because the best GTM Engineers sit somewhere in the middle.

They take commercial instincts
and merge them with engineering execution.

They don’t just know what works.
They know why it works and how to operationalize it at scale.

That’s what turns a background into a GTM Engineer.

Which side did you start from?

If you think otherwise, 
Let me know in the CS.

Give inexperienced candidates a chance.

Every experienced candidate you admire today started somewhere
At some point, someone took a chance on them before they had the proof.

Early in my career, I didn’t have much to point to on paper.

What I did have was hunger, curiosity, and a lot of time to learn
A few people saw that and gave me room to grow.

That changed how I think about experience
It’s useful, but it’s not the whole story.

Progress usually comes from people who are willing to be uncomfortable, make mistakes, and improve fast.

Now when I look at early careers, I remember that growth has a starting point
And that starting point is often inexperience.

If you’re in a position to hire or mentor, consider the upside of potential.

And if you’re early in your career, remember that one “yes” can change everything for you.

Can you remember that one person who gave you a chance?

Giving your employees fair pay isn’t generosity.

It’s the baseline.

A lot of companies talk about “culture” and “loyalty"
That part makes sense.

But if you’re underpaying the people doing the actual work,
That’s not culture.

That’s cost control disguised as values.

Fair pay signals a few simple things:

- You respect the work
- You value your people
- You understand replacement cost
- You’re serious about retention, not just hiring.

People don’t leave teams first,
They leave when effort and compensation stop lining up with output.

You don’t build long-term results by squeezing short-term margins,
You build them by making staying worth it.

Think otherwise?
Let me know in the CS.

P.S. I went to the beach on a monday evening.

taplio

The Battle

Denis Acia

Chris Mbanta

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taplio

The Battle

Denis Acia

Chris Mbanta

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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