Case Study · Agency campaign · March 2026
+19%
More positive replies vs equal split · 10,000 HR leads · Agency campaign
StaffCircle
01 / Setup
StaffCircle’s agency ran three subject line variants across 10,000 HR leads. Same list, same sending schedule. The curiosity-style variant beat the direct pitch — a finding invisible in standard A/B testing. 31% of clicks were bots that Instantly never filtered.
02 / The Shift
33%
Day 1 start
~60%
Day 7 · leader emerging
95.7%
Day 12 · fully optimised
03 / Results
95.7%
Sends to winning variant
Losers kept at a small share to protect deliverability
+19%
More positive replies vs equal split
6,600 leads protected from inferior variants
31%
Of clicks were bots
Instantly reported 7.88% — real human rate was 5.41%
04 / Insight
“
The curiosity-style variant beat the direct pitch from the first 1,000 sends — a surprising result we wouldn’t have found without the engine sending more of it early.
Apex Overlay · StaffCircle campaign analysis
05 / Why it matters
- 31% of clicks were email security bots, not humans. Instantly doesn’t filter these. Every optimisation decision on unfiltered data is a decision made on noise.
- Same list, same emails, filtered data = £18,600 incremental pipeline. The engine routed sends to the winning variant using real human engagement — not bot-inflated click rates.
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