• All posts
• Success Stories
• How Heirloom Uses Mailshake to Sell a Product Nobody Has Seen Before

How Heirloom Uses Mailshake to Sell a Product Nobody Has Seen Before

Sujan Patel

Sujan Patel is the founder of Mailshake, a sales engagement software used by 38,000 sales and marketing professionals. He has over 15 years of marketing experience and has led the digital marketing strategy for companies like Salesforce, Mint, Intuit and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies.

Read more articles by Sujan Patel →

• March 12, 2026

Heirloom’s creates video books for consumers. This is a physical book with a built-in screen that plays photos and videos the moment you lift the cover. The problem is that most people have never seen anything like it.

Cold outreach is already difficult. When your product creates an entirely new category, it becomes even harder. Every message has to do two jobs at once: explain what the product is and convince someone why it matters to them.

On top of that, Heirloom isn’t speaking to just one audience. Wedding photographers, university teams, and memory care facilities all use the product for completely different reasons. Each group needs its own language, visuals, and story to understand its value.

To solve this, Heirloom uses Mailshake to run highly customized outbound campaigns that test messaging across multiple niche markets at once. This makes sure every prospect feels like the email was written just for them. Let’s take a deeper look.

Introducing Heirloom

Heirloom turns videos and photos into physical keepsakes called video books. Each book is a tablet inside a custom cover, pre-loaded with content that plays the moment you lift the cover. There’s no internet required.

The video book looks like a coffee table book, but it works like a television in your hand. It is used for family memories, wedding photography delivery, university donor thank-yous, and memory care for dementia patients and for hundreds of businesses to showcase their products and services.

But Heirloom didn’t start as a company. It started as a solution to a family problem.

During the COVID lockdowns, the founder’s 92-year-old mother had videos of her new great-grandchildren but couldn’t figure out how to watch them on her iPhone. The technology that was supposed to connect her to family instead created a barrier.

So her two adult children (a videographer and a software engineer) decided to build something better. They placed a tablet inside a book cover and pre-loaded it with family videos and photos. All she had to do was lift the cover and have the immediate joy of seeing her family.

Over time, the family kept sending updated books to their grandmother as new moments happened. Soon, friends heard about it. Then those friends began asking for their own. That’s when the prototype quietly turned into a business.

Now, customers upload photos and videos through Heirloom’s online builder, arrange them in any order, and preview the book live on screen before ordering. Heirloom handles the manufacturing, preloads the content, and ships the finished video book directly to the recipient.

When the package arrives, the person on the receiving end never has to touch a single piece of technology. They just open the cover and watch the memories come to life.

Heirloom’s Outreach Challenges Before Mailshake

“I really wish we sold chairs,” says Randee, who leads Heirloom’s outreach. “Because you know what a chair is. You don’t know what a book that plays videos does.” That single line nails the challenge Heirloom faced every single day.

Selling something familiar is easy, but selling something nobody has seen before is a completely different game. Here’s what made it so difficult.

1. They were selling a new category. Most prospects had never heard of a video book, so every email required an explanation. But long emails didn’t get read, and short emails couldn’t convey something so unfamiliar.
2. Multiple ICPs and messages. Heirloom’s product is for wildly different audiences, and each audience sees it through a completely different lens. So what worked for one group would feel irrelevant to another.
3. Manual outreach didn’t scale. Heirloom couldn’t afford to send physical samples to everyone or a massive sales team. But they also couldn’t send emails that felt mass-produced. Their product required a human touch, but they couldn’t do that at scale.
4. Proving the concept. Every prospect needed to understand what the product was and what it could mean for them. And that lesson had to be taught differently to every audience.

So Heirloom’s outreach had to prove that the idea itself made sense. Before someone could buy a video book, they first needed to understand it.

Before they could understand it, the outreach had to meet them in their own world, using the language, visuals, and use cases that mattered to them. This detailed information is exactly what Heirloom had been challenged to succinctly message.

Why Heirloom Chose Mailshake

Heirloom needed a platform that could do four things at once:

1. It had to handle highly segmented campaigns for completely different audiences without forcing them into a one-size-fits-all template.
2. It needed to support rich visuals. Heirloom’s product has to be seen to be understood. Emails needed images of custom covers, real customer examples, and visuals that made the concept click.
3. The outreach had to feel personal at scale, like someone who actually understood the person on the other end.
4. It needed real-time data. Heirloom needed a platform that could show them what was working while campaigns were still running.

Mailshake gave Heirloom the ability to build campaigns around specific niches, such as wedding photographers, university advancement, and portrait studios, with imagery and copy tailored to each audience.

The platform’s visual-first approach meant Heirloom could walk prospects through custom product examples directly in the email. Multi-step sequences also helped Heirloom introduce the concept, create curiosity, and gradually push prospects toward action.

And the clean interface meant Randee, who calls herself the “conductor” of Heirloom’s outreach, could manage everything without a technical background.

How Heirloom Uses Mailshake to Reach Niche ICPs

Here’s how Heirloom uses Mailshake:

1. Niche-Based Campaign Segmentation

Segmentation goes far beyond simple industry labels for Heirloom. Each ICP gets its own campaign structure, messaging approach, and visual examples. Here’s how they use the platform to make it happen:

• They build separate campaigns for each vertical. In Mailshake, that means a dedicated campaign for wedding photographers, another for universities, and another for portrait studios.
• They customize subject lines at the campaign level. “A recent one was… basically what started the word with how,” Randee explains. “How nonprofits use, how universities… trying to have the words that are in their head all the time, all day, because of their position, in the subject line.”
• They draft copy that speaks to one specific use case. The email a photographer gets talks about delivering final films to clients, and the email a university gets talks about donor recognition.

This works because when prospects see their own world in the subject line and opening sentences, they feel spoken to directly, not sprayed at.

2. Visual Personalization for Each Market

In Mailshake, Heirloom builds campaigns where the imagery changes completely by audience:

• Wedding photographers see happy couples on custom covers. The book looks like something their clients would display on a coffee table.
• Portrait studios see children’s faces on sample books, the kind of memories they spend all day capturing.
• Memory care facilities see the product in a care setting, like a resident holding a book or a familiar face on screen.

“We can customize the internal pictures that are in the email,” Randee says, “because a wedding photographer wants to see a happy couple on the cover, and a portrait photographer of children wants to see three beautiful babies.”

Mailshake’s campaign-level customization makes this possible. Each niche gets its own visuals.

3. Iterative Rebatching Instead of One-Time Blasts

Heirloom doesn’t have the budget for focus groups, formal A/B testing software, or market research firms. So they built their testing lab inside Mailshake.

Here’s how their method works:

1. They launch a campaign to a batch with their best guess at subject lines and copy. The first pass is educated.
2. Use keywords that are “in their head all day” for each ICP, the phrases their audience is already thinking about.
3. They monitor everything in the Mailshake dashboard. This includes opens, replies, bounces, and which emails in the sequence are getting attention. Mailshake helps them see the patterns as they happen.
4. They adjust based on what they see. If a subject line isn’t working or the imagery isn’t landing, they make changes on the fly. Mailshake’s data tells them what to change.
5. Then they “rebatch” the improved version to a fresh list of contacts.

“We’re doing it almost in real time,” Randee explains. “We have many thousands in the pipeline, the funnel of emails, that we can just rebatch it.” Each campaign teaches them something they can apply to the next.

4. Multi-Step Sequences for Education

When you’re selling something people have never seen before, one email is not enough. Prospects need time to absorb the concept. They need to see it, sit with it, and let the idea take root.

Here’s how Heirloom uses Mailshake to create cadences that work for them:

• Email 1: Create awareness. They introduce the concept, show visuals, and hint at use cases without being overwhelming, just enough to make someone curious.
• Email 2: Nurture curiosity. They get more specific about benefits and build on whatever caught their attention the first time.
• Email 3: Drive to action. They offer a custom quote or make the ask clear and easy to say yes to.

“We tell them a little bit in the email, maybe present the starting price, or maybe we show them a few images of what they could consider,” Randee explains. “But then, of course, the second and third email allows us to even shrink down those keywords.”

Mailshake’s automated sequences make this possible without manual follow-up. Once a campaign is set, it runs. Email 2 goes out a few days after Email 1, and Email 3 a few days after that.

5. Pre-Qualify Sample Requests

Heirloom uses Mailshake email campaigns to find high-intent prospects. These are people who actually raise their hands and ask for a sample. Those are the ones worth investing in. “The call to action in it is usually… ‘Can we send you a sample?’” Randee explains.

The payoff is enormous. “Almost all the ‘yes, send me a sample’ become customers,” Randee explains. “We don’t need a salesperson to do a cold call to hundreds to get somebody to want a sample.”

What Success Looks Like for Heirloom After Mailshake

For Heirloom, success looks like high conversion quality and results that justify their investment. “MailShake has proven to be well worth the expense.” Randee says simply. That’s the metric that matters.

Here’s what Mailshake has made possible for Heirloom:

• Scalable niche testing. They can now run campaigns to entirely different industries, test positioning per vertical, and adjust messaging based on response trends.
• Faster feedback loops. They see opens, replies, bounces, and deliverability issues, which helps them optimize on the go.
• Filter for genuine interest before the sales team invests time. This is one reason why sample requests convert at nearly 100%.

• Clone, customize, and rebatch campaigns. So, entering a new market doesn’t require starting from scratch.

Mailshake helped Heirloom create a system where every campaign makes the next one better, every test helps them find something to improve, and every sample request is a customer waiting to happen.

The Mailshake Features Behind Heirloom’s Success

Here are the Mailshake features that help Heirloom draw in customers:

1. Campaign-Level Customization

Most email tools let you swap a first name and call it personalization. Mailshake lets Heirloom go much deeper.

It helps Heirloom add different imagery for different ICPs (wedding couples vs university logos), create different copy for each audience’s daily vocabulary, and gives them the ability to pull real customer examples into prospecting emails.

When you’re selling something nobody’s seen before, showing is more powerful than telling. Mailshake helps Heirloom show the right thing to the right person.

2. Real-Time Analytics Dashboard

The visibility Heirloom now has into campaign performance is something they’ve never had before. Randee now uses Mailshake to check data almost every day. She can see which emails in a sequence are getting attention, where people are dropping off, and which subject lines are working.

This helps Heirloom react quickly to what’s working, not have to wait for weekly reports. Optimization happens in the moment.

3. Multi-Step Sequences

Mailshake’s automated follow-up sequences help Heirloom build relationships over time without manual work.

Every email is scheduled, consistent, and runs in the background. This helps Heirloom give prospects room to absorb the idea before asking for a decision. And it helps them maintain brand image consistency across thousands of contacts.

4. List Hygiene and Deliverability Controls

Heirloom uses Mailshake’s deliverability tools to protect performance before they ever hit send. So before scaling, they clean contact lists, remove invalid emails, monitor bounce rates, and make sure images render properly.

Images are also a huge part of what makes Heirloom’s email campaigns so successful. If images break, the email fails. Mailshake helps Heirloom make sure images render properly, every time, for every recipient.

5. Campaign Management

Before Mailshake, Heirloom’s outreach was spread across emails, LinkedIn, and other channels. Now they run all outbound through one dashboard.

Randee can now monitor every campaign live. She can see where they’re lagging, fix messaging on the fly, launch new tests on the spot, and keep her team focused on what’s working.

Heirloom’s 5 Rules for Outbound Success

Over years of trial and error, Heirloom has developed a clear process for outbound. These five rules are behind every campaign they build:

1. Speak their language. Generic templates don’t work for category-creating products. Every email should use the words your ideal customer profile (ICP) uses every day and show visuals they recognize as their own.
2. Shorten everything (even when you have more to say). Heirloom’s team is passionate. They could talk for an hour about their product. But in email, shorter wins. So, they test subject lines, cut copy, and get to the point quickly.
3. Use social proof visually. If you have existing customers in a niche, show their photos, videos, or more with permission. This will validate that their product is actually worth checking out, thinking, “My colleague is using it, so there must be something about it.”
4. Show, not tell. If you have a product that needs to be seen to be understood, push customers toward a sample or a demo. These high-intent actions convert at rates that make the rest of the funnel easy.
5. Focus on reply quality, not reply quantity. You want to build your outreach around actions that show genuine interest, like a sample request, a demo, or a custom quote. Those high-intent replies are worth more than a hundred “not right nows.”

Final Thoughts

Mailshake gives Heirloom the flexibility to talk differently to photographers than to universities, test messaging in real-time without a big budget, and build relationships across thousands of contacts, without ever sounding like a robot.

And when a prospect raises their hand, when they say “yes, send me a sample,” Mailshake has already done its job.

So if Heirloom can use Mailshake to teach the world about video books one niche at a time, think about what you could teach your market. Take a demo to see how Mailshake can help you tell your story.