Case Study: How an Excavator Parts Exporter Grew Inquiries 2.4x in 90 Days
The company
A Chinese manufacturer of excavator attachments (buckets, rippers, quick couplers) with solid quality but a thin overseas sales channel. They had attended two trade shows a year, worked with a trading agent, and struggled to build direct relationships with distributors.
The problem
Trade shows were expensive and produced few qualified leads. The trading agent took a margin and owned the customer relationships. Direct outreach attempts failed because their emails were generic — and their domain reputation was already damaged from blasting unverified lists.
What we did
Week 1-2: Rebuilt the target list. 1,400 distributors and rental companies across 12 countries (Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America), filtered by: imports attachments, active website, 10-500 employees, buying signals like recent equipment listings.
Week 3: Restored domain health. Stopped the blasting, set up proper authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC), and ran a 2-week warmup. Bounce rate dropped from 11% to 1.3%.
Week 4-8: Launched personalized sequences. For each prospect, AI research summarized their rental fleet, market, and a specific angle. First lines referenced real details. Three touches over two weeks, each adding value (spec sheets, market data, case photos).
The results
- 32% open rate, 7.1% reply rate (vs. 1.8% before)
- 11 qualified conversations with distributors in 6 countries
- 2.4x more inquiries than the previous 90 days (trade shows included)
- 4 active deals in negotiation after 3 months
What the client says
“We spent five years hoping trade shows would build our export business. In three months with a proper pipeline, we talked to more qualified distributors than in the previous two years combined. The agent relationship ended — we own our customers now.”
How this applies to you
This isn’t magic — it’s the fundamentals done properly: precise targeting, domain health, and personalization. If you sell heavy machinery or industrial equipment overseas, see our heavy machinery lead generation playbook or try the POLALEAD engine that runs this pipeline.