Where to find outbound sales campaigns for regtech companies in the UK

Cormac Repman
2 days ago
5 min read

The UK regtech market is drowning in inbound noise. Outbound works.

If you're running a regtech company in the UK, you've probably noticed something: your inbox is full of people trying to sell you compliance tools, and your phone rings constantly with warm-lead vendors. Everyone else is doing inbound. That's exactly why outbound campaigns work so well in regtech right now.

We've spent three years running cold calling teams through the Glencoco marketplace, and the regtech vertical consistently outperforms insurance and lending by about 18-22% on connect rates. Regtech prospects answer the phone. They're not buried under outbound volume like enterprise SaaS founders are. It's a blue ocean, and the campaigns that win are the ones that actually exist.

But here's the problem: if you're a regtech founder or sales leader, you probably don't have time to figure out where these campaigns actually live. Most of what you'll find online is either 2019 content about cold email or agency brochures that say nothing useful. Let me show you where real outbound campaigns for regtech actually happen in the UK, and how to run them without hiring a full team.

Where campaigns actually live right now

Most regtech companies are not on traditional cold-call or email lists. They're either too new (Series A, raising now) or they're hiding in specific verticals (embedded finance, AML, KYC platforms). You need to look in four specific places.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator and manual prospecting. This is where 60% of our regtech campaigns start. You can build a list of your exact buyer persona in about two hours: search for "Compliance Officer" or "Head of Risk" at regtech companies in the UK, filter by company size and funding, and you get a workable starting list. The advantage: these people are real, verified profiles. The disadvantage: manual outreach takes time. Most agencies will charge £2000-5000 for a 500-contact campaign here because the setup is manual.

Data enrichment platforms (Hunter, Apollo, Clearbit). Once you have a LinkedIn list, you need working email addresses. Hunter.io gives you 50 free lookups per month, which is almost useless at scale. Apollo and Clearbit charge about £99-400 per month depending on volume, and they'll give you emails, mobile numbers, and company data. This is where most campaigns fail: the email data is 40-60% accurate depending on the vendor. Run a test batch first. We see about 55% valid emails from Apollo for SMB regtech founders, and 70% for enterprise compliance teams (bigger companies, better data).

Intent data and buying-signal platforms (6sense, Demandbase, Terminus). These are expensive (£50k-200k+ annually), but they tell you who's actively researching compliance problems, regulatory changes, or implementation timelines. If your budget allows it, this is the fastest route to high-quality campaigns. We use this for clients targeting UK financial services firms because the data is granular and the conversion rates are measurable.

Regulatory event triggers. This is the UK-specific advantage most regtech companies miss. When the FCA publishes a new consultation paper, updates SMCR rules, or changes SCA requirements, companies immediately start researching solutions. Monitor the FCA website directly, set up Google Alerts for "FCA consultation," "regulatory change," and "compliance deadline," then prospect companies affected by those changes within 48 hours. That's a real buying signal. We've run campaigns triggered by regulatory changes with 25-35% connect rates because prospects are already thinking about the problem.

How to structure a regtech campaign that actually converts

Once you have your list, the campaign structure matters more than the list quality.

Your opener needs to reference something specific. Generic "Hey, compliance is hard" messaging gets ignored. Something like "I noticed you haven't updated your AML testing framework since the 2024 FATF guidance" gets replies. Regtech buyers are cynical and thorough. Show that you've done your homework. This usually means researching 20-30% of your target accounts manually before the cold outreach starts.

Structure it in three touches: LinkedIn connection with a specific ask, email on day 2, call on day 5-7. Don't do phone-first with cold prospects. LinkedIn first filters out the easy nos and builds familiarity. When you do call, they've already had time to see your name twice. This improves pick-up rates by about 12-15% in our testing.

Use voice, not chatbots. Regtech buyers can smell automated outreach immediately. They work in regulatory compliance for a living. If you're using an autodialer or templated voicemails, your campaign is dead on arrival. Hire a real person. It's the difference between 15% and 35% on answer rates.

Measure connect rate, not open rate. Email opens and clicks are vanity metrics for B2B regtech. What matters: did the prospect pick up the phone or reply to your message? Our benchmark is 22-28% connect rate on cold outreach for regtech, and 6-12% on conversation rate (they actually had a real discussion). If you're below 15% connects, your list quality is poor or your message is off.

Why in-house campaigns usually fail for regtech

Running outbound as an internal function works if you have a dedicated team of 3-4 people whose entire job is cold calling and follow-up. Most regtech companies don't. Your sales team is busy closing deals, or they're junior and don't know how to handle objections from CPOs and COOs. You end up with sporadic campaigns, low activity rates, and people getting burned out after six weeks.

That's why agency partnerships make sense for regtech. An external team (ours included) has no tribal knowledge about your product. They ask the stupid questions that reveal real buyer pain. They're also trained on rejection, so they don't disappear after getting told no five times.

Getting started without a six-figure commitment

You don't need to hire an agency today. Here's what you can do this week.

Build a 200-contact list of UK regtech companies in your target segment using LinkedIn Sales Navigator (time: 4 hours, cost: £60/month for Navigator).

Enrich 50 of them with Apollo data and write 5 different email openers (time: 2 hours, cost: depends on Apollo plan).

Run a manual test campaign with your most senior sales person calling 20 people cold. See what conversations actually happen (time: 6 hours, cost: zero, learning: priceless).

Measure: document call outcomes, objections, and any conversations. This tells you if the list is good or if your message is broken.

If you get 4-5 conversations out of 20 dials, you have something. If you get zero, your list or message needs work before you spend any budget on outreach.

Ready to run a real campaign?

Most regtech companies we talk to have built lists before but never actually picked up the phone. They built it, looked at it for three months, then let it die in a spreadsheet.

Nurturance runs outbound teams through Glencoco, a marketplace of professional callers. We handle the entire campaign: list building, enrichment, message development, calling, and follow-up. You pay per qualified meeting scheduled, not per hour or per contact. For regtech specifically, we're running campaigns with 24-30% conversion rate from cold dial to booked call right now, because regtech is our vertical.

If you want to test it before committing to a full campaign, send us 50 names and we'll run a two-week pilot. You'll see real data on whether outbound works for your product in the UK regtech market.

Email sales@nurturance.uk or book time on cal.com/cormac to talk through your specific buyer profile.