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?

B2B Growth Partner @ Leveraged Outbound

Inconsistent lead flow is the #1 revenue killer for marketing agencies. 

Here’s how we fix it 👇

I help ambitious B2B agencies build predictable revenue through systematic demand generation. 

Using battle-tested frameworks refined through 2.5M+ outreach messages and 2,000+ campaigns, we’ve cracked the code on turning cold prospects into closed deals.

Our clients routinely achieve $100k+ in new ARR within 90 days without adding to their workload (or headcount).

As a doctor turned entrepreneur, I’ve built my career around solving complex problems. Today, I use those same skills to help businesses like yours escape feast-or-famine sales cycles and unlock predictable growth.

Based in London. Learning Spanish. Strategising fantasy football (soccer) wins.

If revenue instability is something you're facing, let’s talk about building your dream pipeline today: https://leveragedoutbound.io/

Papa A. Sefa

We were in the top 5% of Smartlead users for replies generated last year.

Out of 87,000+ users globally.

After running 2,000+ campaigns in 2025, I've figured out exactly what separates systems that generate predictable pipeline from systems that waste money.

Most agencies focus on messaging and ignore the other 4 components.

It's why their SDR fails. It's why their lead gen partner disappoints. It's why they're stuck on referrals.

The 5 components every outbound system needs:

→ Infrastructure (domains, warming, deliverability)
→ Targeting (beyond basic firmographics)
→ Messaging (not templates)
→ Follow-up systems (where 70% of deals happen)
→ Inbox management (where most systems break down)

I just published a full breakdown:

→ How each component works
→ What it costs to build in-house vs. outsource
→ A real case study of an agency that tried building internally
→ Complete 10-week implementation checklist

13 minutes that could save you $100K+ in mistakes.

Link in comments.

We Book You Sales Calls with Your Dream Prospects | Smartlead Certified Partner | Founder @ Leveraged Outbound

6 months.

That's how long it took me to sign a client after starting my first agency.

6 months doesn't sound like a long time until you're in it. 

Prospecting. Taking sales calls. Being rejected.

At any point, it would have been easy to quit.

But here's what I realised:

I wasn't valuable enough.

Yet.

That's the beauty of entrepreneurship.

Solve real problems. Prove you can deliver. Back your claims with results.

When you do that, the market can't ignore you.

If you're going through hell...

Keep going.

Cold email has been "dead" since 2003.

Some notable "deaths" include:

→ CAN-SPAM Act (2003)
→ Gmail Promotions Tab (2013)
→ GDPR (2018)
→ iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection (2021)
→ Google/Yahoo Bulk Sender Rules (2024)
→ Gmail Gemini AI (2026)

Here's the reality:

→ 4.7 billion email users globally (and growing)
→ Email is still the most direct B2B channel
→ Regulations killed spam, not personalised outreach
→ The people saying it's dead usually can't make it work

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

The bar is higher. The spray-and-pray game is over (and has been for a while now).  

But for those who adapt, it's still the most predictable way to start conversations with people who've never heard of you.

Block out the noise. Keep sending.

Most agency owners know they should be prospecting more.

They know pipeline dies when they get busy.

They know blocking "sales time" is the answer.

But they still don't do it.

Here's why:

When the person responsible for growth is the same person responsible for delivery, you'll always pull your punches.

You won't push hard on sales because you know what happens next: more work lands on your desk.

So you unconsciously ease off. You tell yourself you'll prospect "when things calm down."

But things never calm down.

This isn't a discipline problem. It's a structural one.

The only way out is to separate the roles - either by hiring, outsourcing, or building a system that generates opportunities without requiring your time.

Until then, you'll keep choosing delivery over growth. 

Not because you're lazy, but because the incentives are broken.

A lot of agencies hire SDRs to 'own' outbound.

6 months later, the pipeline is inconsistent and the SDR is gone.

Here's why that keeps happening:

SDRs are measured on activity: emails sent, calls made, meetings booked.
But activity doesn't equal results.

What actually drives pipeline:

→ Infrastructure (deliverability, sender reputation, domain management)
→ Targeting (lists that match ICP, not just "D2C brands")
→ Messaging (copy that addresses real pain points, not templates)
→ Follow-up systems (most deals come from far later touchpoints)

Your SDR is probably decent at a lot of these. 

But they're spending 60% of their time on busywork (list building, technical troubleshooting, A/B testing subject lines) instead of actually selling.

That's why the pipeline feels like a rollercoaster.

The agencies that crack this? They separate pipeline generation from pipeline conversion.

Let someone obsessed with infrastructure and volume handle the system. Let your closers close.

What's your take?

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Founder

Certified Expert Agency

If outbound has failed for you, it's usually not one thing.

I've talked to 50+ agency owners about this. The pattern is clear.

Bad targeting and weak qualification from a partner will waste your time.

But a sales process built for referrals will struggle with cold leads too. They're skeptical, comparing options, need to be sold differently.

Most agencies that struggle have problems on both sides. Fix one and you'll still lose. You need both working.

I made a 5-minute video breaking down:

→ The metrics most agencies use to evaluate partners (and why they're wrong)
→ What to look for instead
→ Signs your sales process isn't ready for cold
→ Why referrals might have made your sales muscle atrophy

Plus there's a free checklist in the description: 10 questions to ask yourself and any potential partner before you engage.

Link in comments.

An agency owner I spoke to hired a lead gen company that promised 20 meetings a month.

They delivered 5.

And, more importantly, it took 2-3 months per lead to figure out which ones were real and which were just exploring.

Here's the problem:

They were optimising for the wrong thing.

Most agencies evaluate partners on metrics that don't reduce wasted time:

→ Cost per meeting
→ Number of meetings booked
→ Reply rates

But none of that tells you what a closed deal actually costs.

What actually matters:

→ Are they the right company profile?
→ Did they engage meaningfully in the conversation?
→ How frequently do calls lead to next steps?

You can't eliminate tire kickers. That's sales.

But you can reduce the months you spend chasing leads that were never ready.

The difference between a good partner and a bad one isn't the meetings they book.

It's the signal-to-noise ratio.

What's one red flag you wish you'd spotted earlier in a deal?

Anthropic released Claude Cowork this week. 

It's not revolutionary. It's iterative. And that's exactly why it matters.

Until now, I've been running Claude Code from my terminal. 

Terminal commands, file edits, building automations by describing what I want. 

Powerful, but you need some technical comfort to use it.

Cowork is the same power with a friendlier interface. Point it at a folder, describe what you want, walk away.

For technical people, it's a nice option. For non-technical founders, it's a door that wasn't open before.

Two years ago, you needed a developer for most digital tasks.

Less than a year ago, tools like Claude Code gave technical people superpowers.

Now that same power is reaching everyone else.

The democratisation of building isn't one big moment. It's a thousand small steps that compound.

And with each step, the gap widens between those who learn to use these tools and those who keep waiting.

Which side of the gap are you on?

Every time you say "that's too expensive" to a growth opportunity, you're making a bet.

You're betting the cost is higher than the return.

But most agency owners have no idea what the return actually is.

They're saying no to things that would 10x their investment because the number sounds big in isolation.

Meanwhile, agencies with worse services are scaling faster.

The difference? They actually ran the math.

They know:
→ Their lifetime profit per client
→ Their cost to acquire one
→ The ratio between them

Once you know those numbers, "Can I afford this?" becomes the wrong question.

I made a video breaking down the 4 numbers every agency owner should know cold. 

Plus there's a free ROI calculator in the description.

Link in comments.

Most agency owners know their monthly revenue.

Few know what it costs them to acquire a client.

One agency I spoke to:

Each client brings in $30K+ lifetime gross profit.

When I asked what it currently costs them to acquire a client, the answer was the same one I usually get:

"I've never actually calculated it."

That gap keeps agencies stuck at $2M.
The ones who break $5M know their numbers cold.

They can tell you:

→ Lifetime gross profit per client
→ Target cost to acquire a client
→ Calls needed to close one deal
→ Cost they can afford per conversation

Once you know those numbers, everything changes.

Outbound stops feeling risky.
Ad spend stops feeling scary.
You stop "testing" and start investing.

Example:

→ A client is worth $30K in lifetime gross profit.
→ You're targeting at least 5:1 LTGP:CAC.
→ You can spend up to $6K to win that client.

If it takes 10 sales conversations to close one deal, you can spend $600 per qualified conversation with full confidence.

Growth becomes a system. Not a feeling.

If you had to write down your cost per client on a whiteboard today, could you do it?

49% of agencies I spoke to in 2025 rely entirely on referrals for new business.

And most of them are doing $2M-10M in revenue.

Here's why that's more dangerous than it seems:

The problem with referral-based growth:

1) You can't control timing. 

Your best prospects aren't ready when YOU need them to be. They're ready when THEY have a problem.

2) You can't forecast. 

Q1 could be 10 referrals or zero. You don't know until it happens.

3) You can't scale it. 

You hit a ceiling where your network taps out. Going from $5M to $10M on referrals alone is nearly impossible.

4) You're always reactive. 

You're waiting for the phone to ring instead of proactively filling your pipeline.

The reality is referrals are incredible. They close at 70%+. They're pre-qualified. They trust you from day one.

But they're not a growth strategy. They're a retention strategy.

The agencies breaking through $5M-10M still get referrals. But they also build a predictable COLD traffic system that runs parallel.

They're not choosing between referrals OR outbound.

They're doing both.

Referrals for high-trust, fast closes. Outbound for predictable pipeline when referrals slow down.

That's how you avoid the feast-or-famine cycle.

18 months with Hunter Ballam and the MODO STUDIOS team. Here's to many more!

As I wind down in my time at MODO STUDIOS, just wanted to take a moment to shout out a great partner of ours and someone I'd highly recommend.

Papa A. Sefa and his team at Leveraged Outbound have been an awesome part of some of the different pieces that have helped Modo to grow over the past few years!

If you are looking for someone who can help plug right into your sales process, I'd definitely recommend Papa and the team. They specialize in outbound and lead generation, helping us book meetings and really better our sales processes along the way.

Papa's team has been organized, has amazing communication, and have really done their best to work with us and be a part of our team. It's refreshing to have a positive experience like this when I know so many of us have struggled to find the right partners and people for jobs like these.

Thanks Papa A. Sefa and excited to see how you and the Modo team continue to grow!

PS - This is not an affiliate code and I'm not an influencer with skin in the game, but happy to make introductions for anyone that needs it and maybe I can twist Papa's arm into a good first month rate 😉

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