Sales Development

SeeSaw Labs Case Study

About SeeSaw Labs

SeeSaw Labs is a digital production company, taking businesses’ big ideas and transforming them into production reality. It offers two major services: digital product consulting, and software design and development, particularly passionate about getting startups quickly up and running. SeeSaw Labs maintains everything it builds, modernizes clients’ legacy systems, and helps companies transition toward internal hires when they are ready to build an internal product team.

What sets SeeSaw Labs apart from its competitors is the commitment to helping graphic designers and software engineers work collaboratively to avoid overambitious and unrealistic product designs. By bringing these different teams into closer alignment, SeeSaw Labs helps customers save money and satisfy their expectations as they embark on their digital transformation journey.

Jeff Winesett

Partner and CEO

Industry

Information Technology & Services

Website

seesawlabs.com

The Story of SeeSaw Labs

Founded in 2011 by Jeff Winesett, SeeSaw Labs began as a business that provided general software solutions for many different industries. The team worked with an eclectic mix of companies, from architects and asset managers to textile recyclers and beauty product retailers. 

Because SeeSaw Labs had not fully devised a business development or marketing strategy for a particular niche, the team was working on all cylinders for clients that may not necessarily fit their ideal customer profile (ICP). They realized that a broad approach to outreach might jeopardize the company’s growth goals. By selecting an industry to specialize in, SeeSaw Labs could focus all its data collection and research for a targeted group. 

SeeSaw Labs wanted to be able to confidently look for opportunities that aligned with their new business ambition, secure in the knowledge of the company’s vision and direction. Although it had many worthwhile and successful collaborations behind them, it was time for SeeSaw Labs to take the next step toward its growth in the healthcare industry. 

Having decided to narrow its value proposition and specialize in one particular industry, SeeSaw Labs conducted market research. Given that healthcare organizations were increasingly aware of compliance and security concerns, and thus investing heavily in transformative digital technologies, transitioning to healthtech seemed a promising decision. It made sense to rebrand SeeSaw Labs as a company exclusively focused on providing healthtech solutions.

As it embarked on this transition, SeeSaw Labs tried outbound with a small service, which was primarily focused on LinkedIn outreach. As this service did not meet their expectations, the company then experimented with hiring an in-house specialist that also did not hit targets at securing qualified leads. SeeSaw Labs continued its search for a company with strong experience in outbound lead generation and a proven track record of successfully prospecting in the healthcare industry.

Challenges & Scope

CIENCE was the perfect company to help SeeSaw Labs enlarge its footprint within the healthtech space, with experience orchestrating outbound campaigns in the healthcare industry. If SeeSaw Labs was able to overcome the challenging transition to healthtech, the potential opportunities and rewards would be enormous.

Challenges

As SeeSaw Labs realigned its brand, the major challenge was getting established in a lucrative and highly competitive niche. It needed to precisely define its new customer base, effectively carry out market research, and gain a comprehensive understanding of the industry’s marketing norms. SeeSaw Labs then needed to get its message to the healthtech market. 

There was also another major challenge SeeSaw Labs needed to overcome: Because it switched from a broad to narrow targeting strategy, its pool of prospects was now smaller. This meant that SeeSaw Labs would be competing against companies that had spent years refining their outreach strategies, making it crucial for the company to deliver its messaging to the market as quickly and as effectively as possible. 

Need

SeeSaw Lab’s previous marketing model was based primarily on referrals, networking, and chance. To break into the healthtech industry and establish a strong presence there, a high-quality outbound marketing strategy needed to be implemented that could regularly and predictably secure a steady flow of new prospects into its sales funnel.

Opportunity

By outsourcing its outbound marketing to an expert lead generation company, SeeSaw Labs’s team would be better able to focus its efforts on other opportunities, such as further refining and developing its product. Given that its team was mostly made up of engineers, it made more sense for them to focus on their area of expertise and let sales experts take over the outbound outreach. 

Why CIENCE?

Unlike some other outbound services that fire off hundreds of template emails or read off a single phone script, CIENCE understood that each prospective company is unique. For each targeted company, CIENCE was able to identify decision-makers and influencers who were responsible for making strategic decisions and conduct highly personalized outreach campaigns to hit their pain points and business needs.

CIENCE’s unique approach involved identifying and targeting prospects’ trigger event flows, for example, reaching out to a company that has made a dramatic shift in management or business goals. 

Exploiting trigger event flows is a very effective marketing tool but requires a large input of time and expertise to be carried out properly—CIENCE had the extensive research capabilities to successfully attract prospects in the healthtech niche.

To provide the effort and expertise needed to execute strategic outreach, CIENCE offered a team of highly specialized SDRs to focus on areas of data research, email, LinkedIn messaging, and cold calling during the campaign. This team, supported by a project manager, account manager, copywriters, and landing page experts, was able to secure the desired results for SeeSaw Labs.

Results

Once the collaboration began, CIENCE spent two weeks onboarding SeeSaw Labs, walking them through what the process would involve, setting expectations and KPIs, and specifying their ICP. Then, in August 2021, a three-month-long outbound outreach campaign was launched. 

CIENCE’s team focused on top-level management positions at relatively small healthcare companies. CIENCE’s SDRs targeted prospects with an orchestrated sequence of emails and calls, social media messaging, banner advertisements, and landing pages.

The phone call channel performed exceptionally well and was the hero of the entire campaign. In fact, two-thirds of all appointments were scheduled via phone calls. CIENCE secured an average of five appointments per month for SeeSaw Labs, which is a very successful outcome for the healthcare sector.

“CIENCE is great at executing cross-channel outbound marketing campaigns,” said Jeff Winesett, CEO of SeeSaw Labs, who described CIENCE’s execution as “no-nonsense outbound marketing.” CIENCE received top marks for its proactive communication, clear goal-setting, and ability to meet campaign goals. 

Partnership Success

The partnership between CIENCE and SeeSaw Labs was extremely successful. Besides securing an impressive number of qualified appointments, the information CIENCE gathered during the campaign was invaluable for SeeSaw Labs, as it further reflects and refines its rebranding strategy.

The keystone which underpinned this partnership’s success was regular and productive communication between the two companies. Because SeeSaw Labs was relatively new to outbound marketing, CIENCE’s team made a concerted effort to guide them through the nuances and particularities of the outreach campaign. 

“Outbound marketing was a little foreign for SeeSaw Labs,” said Michael Shure, account manager at CIENCE. “But by listening to us go through the results and explain why some things were positive, negative or neutral, it was really beneficial for SeeSaw Labs and gave them a lot of key insights and things to reflect on.”

“It was really nice working with SeeSaw Labs,” said Ksenia Korbut, project manager at CIENCE. “They were interested, engaged, and helped us out whenever they could, always wanting to learn more.” 

Reflecting on what potential clients should know before working with CIENCE, Korbut stressed the importance of asking questions, as the best way to understand what is and what’s not working. Korbut also highlighted the need for client feedback, which SeeSaw Labs was able to reciprocate: 

“When the client is working closely alongside us, giving feedback, and doing their best to make the partnership work, success is practically guaranteed!” said Korbut.

By partnering with CIENCE, SeeSaw Labs ensured a successful transition toward the healthcare sector. Thanks to CIENCE’s research-heavy approach to orchestrated outbound, SeeSaw Labs gained confidence in knowing that their sales pipeline will continue to flow with targeted qualified leads in campaigns to come.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did SeeSaw Labs use CIENCE to break into the healthtech market?

SeeSaw Labs partnered with CIENCE after two earlier outbound attempts—a LinkedIn-focused service and an in-house specialist—failed to generate qualified leads. CIENCE ran targeted outbound campaigns aimed at healthcare decision-makers, using personalized messaging aligned to each prospect’s specific pain points. This let SeeSaw Labs focus its engineering team on product development while CIENCE handled pipeline generation.

What challenge did SeeSaw Labs face before working with CIENCE?

SeeSaw Labs was transitioning from a broad generalist agency to a specialized healthtech company, which significantly narrowed its addressable market. Their previous growth model relied on referrals, networking, and chance—none of which could reliably fill a sales funnel in a competitive, compliance-driven niche like healthcare.

Why did SeeSaw Labs choose CIENCE for outbound lead generation?

SeeSaw Labs selected CIENCE for its proven track record running outbound campaigns specifically in the healthcare industry and its research-driven, personalized approach. Unlike outbound services that send generic template emails, CIENCE identified the right decision-makers and influencers at each target account and crafted messaging tailored to their business needs.

What outbound strategy did CIENCE use for SeeSaw Labs?

CIENCE employed a trigger-event-flow strategy, targeting healthcare companies undergoing significant changes such as leadership transitions or strategic pivots—moments when buying decisions are more likely. For each targeted account, CIENCE researched decision-makers and delivered highly personalized outreach designed to resonate with healthcare organizations’ growing focus on digital transformation, compliance, and security.

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