Delve drives $1M in attributed pipeline, 52x ROI through TLDR ads
- Book quality demos
- Generate high-value enterprise interest ahead of Series A round
- 25 demos generated from their first three primary placements
- 41 demos generated from their fourth primary placement, achieving a 52X ROI
- $1M in directly attributed pipeline
- Attracted outsized number of enterprise leads compared to other channels
About Delve
Getting compliant doesn’t require 60 hours of busy work anymore. With Delve, AI agents handle the heavy lifting, making it easy for companies to achieve and maintain certifications like SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR. Think of it as the TurboTax for compliance: it automates security evidence collection, scans code for vulnerabilities, and even auto-fills security questionnaires. Backed by YC, Delve gets compliance done 75% faster than any other platform.
Selling to founders in a place they enjoy visiting
When Taher Lokhandwala joined Delve as their first growth hire, he knew he needed to take a bold approach to move the needle on ARR. With some splashy launches and a large social push, Delve blew past their initial target, but the work was far from done. With a Series A round on the horizon, Taher needed to keep the momentum going and up pipeline numbers on the highly-lucrative enterprise side.
“Newsletters presented themselves as a really great way to reach our target audience—founders. Founders are always looking to be sold to where they enjoy going, which tend to be places where they can be educated. They want to stay up to date on the best new tech, and they’re usually pretty willing to adopt new solutions if they make sense for them and there’s some social proof.”
Already a subscriber, Taher decided to give TLDR a real shot after a Google search for “top newsletters for founders” led him right back to us.
Achieving high ROI with plenty of road ahead
It didn’t take long for Taher to determine that, put simply, TLDR worked. Across four primary placements in two newsletters, their ads generated 66 leads with a significant chunk coming from enterprise. A high return on ad spend was the cherry on top:
“TLDR performed insanely well, our Slack was buzzing like crazy. The first TLDR-attributed deal I closed brought in 5x what we paid for the corresponding primary placement. That’s especially impressive given that newsletter ads tend to have significantly longer timelines. We expect our existing placements to generate even more business in the coming months, and we already have another placement on the calendar.”
In terms of process, Taher appreciated the swiftness and flexibility of the TLDR team.
“The intake process from demo book to placement was super clean. As a startup, your needs are always urgent. The TLDR team understood that and worked with us to get our placements up as quickly as possible. They’re great at just making it happen.”
Learning from experience: Taher’s wise words on newsletter advertising
An all around growth expert, Taher offered some thoughts on how newsletter advertising should fit into a larger growth strategy:
“There are a lot of tangential benefits to newsletter ads. Even if attribution—via UTMs or self-reporting—says they came from a Google Ad, if they’ve already seen you in a newsletter they trust, they’re much more likely to click on that ad. It’s all about being in front of your target audience all the time, wherever they are.”
Delve ad examples
