7 Best Cleverly Alternatives And Competitors For Lead Generation

Cleverly is a top-tier lead generation company that helps assist businesses in expanding their sales pipeline by leveraging LinkedIn and cold email lead generation services. 

Their main approach involves combining a team of experienced sales reps and an advanced LinkedIn lead generation tool to deliver a suite of services to generate high-quality leads and help businesses achieve their growth objectives by way of LinkedIn sales outreach. 

These services include prospecting, outreach, a dedicated account manager, a LinkedIn automation tool, creating a sales funnel, and putting all marketing efforts to help you generate leads and your dream clients.

We can’t say for sure, but according to review sites like Clutch, the general sentiment about Cleverly services is overwhelmingly positive. 

In a nutshell, they garnered positive feedback from their clients, with many citing their professionalism, expertise, and ability to generate high-quality leads consistently.

However, if you’re reading this, we assume there is a valid reason for it. Our hypotheses are as follows: 

• their service didn’t align with your brand,
• you are comparing options based on pricing or overall service,
• you were dissatisfied with the services provided by Cleverly, 
• you found them too expensive for your business, 
• you don’t use your LinkedIn account as a lead generation tool,
• you didn’t receive the number of leads you expected, 
• etc.

If any of the above applies to you, then you’re in luck. In this article, we’ll be discussing 7 lead generation company alternatives to Cleverly, including our own B2B lead generation and appointment-setting agency, Nerd Joe. 

Our services are designed to deliver measurable outcomes to our clients at a reasonable price point. We tailor everything from prospecting to campaign management to meet your specific needs.

So, this post will begin with a comparison of Nerdy Joe to Cleverly. We will demonstrate why we are the perfect lead generation agency for your needs. We’ll then delve into seven other lead generation agencies and how they differ from Cleverly.

Why Nerdy Joe is the best alternative to Cleverly

So, are you tired of spending hours researching and reaching out to potential clients with little success to show for it? Like any other lead generation company, both Cleverly and Nerdy Joe have you covered. 

First of all, we share the primary lead generation goal of enabling connections between you and your potential customers, generating sales-qualified leads, and arranging meetings or appointments with them. 

One of the biggest challenges you face as a business owner or salesperson seeking to scale your sales activities is how to establish an effective process for active lead generation and customer acquisition. 

Plus, if you do sales or have been around salespeople, you’ll know that salespeople spend the most time researching and contacting prospects, with only 12% of their time dedicated to actual talks and closing deals. This is not the most efficient use of their time.

That’s where we come in. Our service takes care of these tasks, freeing up salespeople’s time to concentrate on what they do best: face-to-face selling and closing deals.

That cleared; with Cleverly, we mainly differ in how we approach lead generation and the channels we use. Here are the reasons why you may prefer our service over Cleverly. 

Important: Please note that we are not disparaging their service; we are simply comparing the benefits you will receive from each service.

Outreach services — Cleverly is a jack of all trades. We’re super focused on only one trick and perform it excellently

Unlike us at Nerdy Joe, who only offer cold email lead generation, Cleverly offers a lot of digital marketing services. They primarily offer LinkedIn lead generation services, and that’s how they mainly define themselves. So, you’ll need a LinkedIn premium account before the get-go.

As well they provide cold email lead generation, SEO and Content Marketing, LinkedIn content creation, LinkedIn advertising, white-label lead generation, and more. 

Their services are completely done for you. So, you’ll only have to sign up and watch them do the work and bring you the results.

But at Nerdy Joe, we are only cold email outreach experts. We love the idea of only focusing on one lead generation channel and mastering it to perfection instead of being a Jack of the trades. 

Working with us is pretty straightforward as we don’t require you to commit to a certain number of months, and you know exactly what you get when you choose to work with us.

At our agency, we pride ourselves on providing top-notch marketing strategies that are designed to attract and engage your potential customers through a variety of channels, including email marketing and cold emailing. 

Our experienced team of marketers works closely with you to identify your unique needs and goals and then customizes our approach to ensure that we deliver the results you need to succeed.

What really sets us apart from other lead generation agencies and Cleverly is our unwavering commitment to quality. 

We believe that generating leads is only part of the equation – the true test of success lies in converting those leads into loyal, long-term customers. That’s why we focus on generating high-quality leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers.

We understand that every business is different, which is why we always provide customized lead-generation solutions that are tailored to your specific needs. Whether you’re a startup looking to gain traction or an established business looking to expand your reach, we have the expertise and resources to help you achieve your goals.

Personalized, specific prospect targeting — they target huge lists; we’re specific in who we target

Once you sign up for Cleverly’s service, the next step in their approach is to build a list of ideal decision makers (based on the plan you choose) and send them LinkedIn messages or cold emails.

We do quite the same, actually. The difference is the number of people or the lists we target. 

Let’s take Cleverly’s Gold plan, for example. With it, they reach out to 500 prospects with as many LinkedIn messages or cold emails as they can. 

That means that they’ll reach out to up to 500 people within the agreed-upon timeframe. But in our books, that’s just too many people to reach out to.  

From our experience, here is what it could mean if you are targeting huge lists: 

• Lead blasting

If you are sending messages to this many people, it means that you are not taking the time to properly research your prospects to tailor your email to each individual.

You might use generalized, market-level personalizations that don’t really differentiate between the individual characteristics of all the people you include in your list. 

• Poor lead quality

Since there is no super personalization, the quality of the leads you get will be subpar, and you can’t convert, at least not easily or in a short timeframe. 

• Your brand reputation is on the hook

Targeting people with generic emails can negatively impact your company’s reputation. This can be particularly damaging if you are in a competitive industry or rely heavily on word-of-mouth referrals. 

Also, we are sure that’s not how you want your business to be represented.

We want to make it clear that we are not making any claims about the quality of service provided by Cleverly. 

Our focus is on emphasizing the significant amount of work and time required to create effective outreach campaigns. It is our belief that targeting a vast number of prospects is not necessarily an effective approach.

At our company, we are not interested in sending cold emails to 500 prospects. Instead, we prefer to send personalized messages to a select few prospects after thorough research and analysis. 

Our ideal scenario is to send 20 carefully crafted cold emails to well-researched prospects, resulting in 15 replies, 10 positive responses, and ultimately 6 sales-qualified leads or appointments.

We achieve this by investing a significant amount of time in learning and researching your ideal customer profile (ICP) before sending any emails.

Our goal is to create emails that make each recipient feel personally connected to you and take your offer seriously, even if they don’t ultimately sign up.

To achieve this, we work closely with you to develop your ideal customer profile, research each prospect individually, and collect data points to create cold emails that stand out and make a lasting impression. 

As a result, we frequently receive positive feedback from prospects, with responses such as “Wow, such a nice email,” “Thank you for the nice words and compliment,” “Let’s catch up next Thursday,” and “Love your email. Can you follow up on the 25th?”

Manual prospect research and personalization 

According to their website, Cleverly uses AI to create personalization touchpoints in their emails before sending them to their clients’ prospects. 

Granted, AI tools have been all the rage lately, and they have proven to do amazing things. Of course, creating personalization touchpoints is one of the many things they can do. 

We believe the idea behind AI-powered personalization is that AI and machine learning help them collect data and analyze customer preferences to send out truly personalized emails and LinkedIn messages.

Technically, they’ll define the target audience and specify a few things about the audience, and then AI is capable of learning what content works best for each customer and delivering it automatically. 

As well, as the campaign goes on and since Cleverly targets huge lists of up to 500 prospects, doing personalization at scale with the sheer amount of data they’ll have to handle can quickly become a challenge. 

For example, they might have to go through the prospects’ social media (LinkedIn) posts, customer support interactions, etc. 

So, here again, AI-powered personalization comes in handy. AI-powered personalization can help them gather, process, and analyze huge amounts of behavioral data and generate personalized messages in real time.

So, we do understand that AI-powered personalization can be effective. But here is why we like to do the research manually and write our personalized cold emails manually. 

Human touch

One of the biggest reasons we stand in our position of doing manual research and personalization is the human touch. 

Think about it; a skilled researcher or salesperson can empathize with a potential client, understand their needs and motivations, and provide a personalized experience that AI cannot replicate.

Also the human touch also prevails when it comes to how we learn about your target audience and collect the data we use to create personalized messages. For example, our workflow includes:

• Listening to podcasts your potential customers have been on.
• Reading blog posts, they wrote. 
• Reading their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.
• Reading discussions on forums, they’re in.
• And more. 

The data we collect is aggregated to provide unique angles that allow us to craft personalized cold emails that the prospects identify with.

We are more creative

One of the biggest reasons we don’t adhere to the idea of using AI-powered personalization is that AI tools are mainly repetitive. 

For example, if they find a framework for personalizing the messages, you can actually feel the same framework across all the messages they generate. 

At the same time, we believe thinking outside the box is crucial in prospect research and personalization. 

Finding unique and personalized solutions for each client can make a big difference, and AI can be limited by the data it is trained on and may not be able to generate truly novel solutions — WE CAN. 

Contextual understanding and adaptability 

We can adapt to changes in the market or in your specific situation more easily than AI. Simply put, our skilled researchers can pivot their approach or strategy based on new information or feedback, whereas AI may struggle to do so.

Service value — you pay for the number of people they reach out to, not for the results they bring you

Cleverly charges you for the number of people they reach out to per month. You’ve already seen how they’re open to running unlimited campaigns or sending thousands of messages. The only thing that’s limited is the number of people they reach out to. 

They’re not specific as to what results they’ll get for you. Basically, what you pay for is the number of people they reach out to, not for any specific results, which might not be ideal for your business. 

From our experience, if you are looking for a lead generation agency, the most likely scenario is that you are not growing at the rate you want and are looking to fill your sales pipeline with qualified leads so you can increase your revenue.

That’s why at Nerdy Joe, we position our service to bring you results. We make it clear from the pricing page what you get as results, and that’s exactly what you pay for, not the number of people we reach out to or the number of emails we send. 

Although you’ll be informed of everything we do, the work we do or the number of people we reach out to is not your concern; at least that is not what you pay for. We promise you specific results and unfold our workflow to get the results for you. 

On the other hand, Cleverly’s cold email pricing is a pay-per-lead model. This means that you’ll have to pay them for the number of leads they generate for you, which is pretty interesting. 

But the main issue with this pricing model is that it can easily come out as a steep expense for small and growing businesses.

For example, suppose the pricing is $200 per lead. That’s basically $1000 for 5 leads. Plus, it may happen that the leads don’t convert. 

Pricing — they’re cheaper; we offer the best bang for your buck

Admittedly, Cleverly’s services come at a much lower price than ours at Nerdy Joe, which somehow makes sense. Their pricing is affordable, with no hidden fees or long-term contracts. But there are no refunds no matter what goes wrong. 

First, their main service is platform-specific, LinkedIn outreach. Plus, with LinkedIn automation tools and AI-driven personalization, it requires a lot less work and can be scaled easily. 

But these same advantages can also constitute hindrances to the campaign results you get. For example, it’s likely that they’ll perform the outreach from your account; if your account is not old enough, you could get restricted for heavy activity. 

Also, there is very little chance that you will need all those services they include in their service.

Our marketing service’s pricing is crystal clear. We have three plans:

• Silver: It costs $499/month and only gives you two warm LEADs.
• Gold: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $999/month and gives you 6 hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.
• Platinum: This plan is for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 15 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

Our email marketing pricing includes the following:

• The tech stack we use to build your prospect list and send and monitor your campaign.
• A complete list of prospects that fit your buyer persona and ICP.
• The campaign setup fees.

7 lead generation company alternatives to Cleverly

1 – Lead Cookie

Lead Cookie is on of the top Cleverly competitors out there. Just like Cleverly, they also primarily targets B2B prospects on LinkedIn. In fact, all their services circle around LinkedIn. Lead Cookie relies on LinkedIn search to build lists of prospects. 

They offer almost the same service as Cleverly. But it’s also fair to mention that they also offer email copywriting and cold email outreach as part of their service — which is where they mainly overlap with us, Nerdy Joe. 

However, there are some key differences that set Lead Cookie apart:

• Personalized approach: While Cleverly focuses on leveraging technology and a team of sales professionals, Lead Cookie takes a more personalized approach to lead generation. Lead Cookie assigns a dedicated LinkedIn specialist to each client who works closely with them to craft personalized messages and build relationships with potential leads. This personalized touch allows for more targeted and effective outreach campaigns.
• Multi-channel approach: Cleverly primarily focuses on LinkedIn and cold email lead generation, while Lead Cookie takes a multi-channel approach.
  On top of LinkedIn, Lead Cookie also leverages other platforms such as email, phone, and social media to connect with potential leads. 
• Pricing plans: Cleverly offers fixed plans with specific features, while Lead Cookie hourly rates, meaning that they charge you by the hour.
  But unlike Cleverly, they don’t display any pricing on their site. But according to data retrieved from Cience’s blog, the average hourly rate for Lead Cookie’s services is between $25 and $49. 

This may seem low but it could mean that they spend hours working for and even though you’re not satisfied with the service or the results, you’ll still have to pay them. The prices can also go high pretty quick. 

2 – Cience

Cleverly and Cience are both lead generation companies. They mainly overlap in their managed services for lead generation. However, there are some differences between the two:

• Target market: While Cleverly caters to a wide range of businesses, Cience is specifically focused on startups and companies without sales teams.
  Cience aims to provide lead generation solutions for businesses that may not have the resources or expertise to build and manage their own sales teams, making it a suitable option for smaller or newer companies.
• Proprietary platform: Cience offers a proprietary platform — a sales intelligence platform, if you will — that allows users to interact with buyers and monitor leads. This platform provides demographic, firmographic, and technographic data to help businesses target their ideal customers effectively. 

Cleverly, on the other hand, primarily relies on leveraging technology and a team of sales professionals to build their own lists and reach out to prospects on LinkedIn.

• Multi-channel campaigns: Both Cleverly and Cience offer multi-channel outbound campaign launches to reach potential leads. They use channels such as email, phone, and social media.
• Pricing plans: Cience offers highly customizable pricing based on the scope of the project, and businesses need to schedule a meeting to get a quote.
  Cleverly, on the other hand, offers fixed plans with specific features. 

3 – The Martal Group

The Martal Group is a lead generation company that’s dedicated to helping businesses connect with their potential customers and generating more sales and revenue. Here are the main ways it stands out from Cleverly:

• Focus on B2B tech companies: While Cleverly caters to a wide range of industries, The Martal Group specializes in generating leads specifically for B2B technology companies in the IT, SaaS, and telecom industries. 
• Proprietary platforms and database: The Martal Group boasts four curated databases with 100 million contacts, which may offer a significant advantage in terms of the volume and quality of leads they can provide to their clients.
  Cleverly, on the other hand, does not mention a specific contact volume or curated databases.
• Weekly customized lists of pre-qualified leads: The Martal Group offers weekly customized lists of pre-qualified leads to their clients, along with marketing campaigns.
  Cleverly’s approach is more focused on leveraging LinkedIn to reach out to a specific number of leads per month.
• Customer onboarding flow: The Martal Group provides a customer onboarding flow for new customers. This helps ensure a smooth transition and setup process for their clients. Cleverly has an internal dashboard where they onboard new customers and discuss strategies and basically everything else.
• Pricing plans: The Martal Group has a flat fee per month after the 3-month Pilot Campaign, and businesses need to speak to the sales team to get a quote. Cleverly offers flat rate plans with specific features. 

4 – RocketReach

RocketReach is a lead generation tool that provides businesses with access to a global database of emails and direct dials.

While both companies register as lead generation service providers, RocketReach better fits into the shoes of a sales intelligence and email analytics service platform. They offer you a platform to find leads and reach out to them straight away. 

Here are some differences between both services to clear this up:

• Service: RocketReach offers a platform that allows users to search for and find contact information for potential leads, prospects, and customers.
  It boasts a global database of emails and direct dials that help enhance lead scoring for IT businesses and startups and guarantees a steady stream of hot leads.
  RocketReach also provides email analytics to fine-tune conversations and track performance, which can help optimize email outreach efforts. Cleverly, like you already know, is a lead gen service company. Basically, their value offering is talent, while RocketReach is more concerned with customer databases.
• Pricing: RocketReach offers three individual plans starting from $468 for 1,500 lookups a year, with team and enterprise plans available after consultation. Cleverly operates with a flat rate. We believe that the difference in their services nullifies the pricing comparison. 

5 – Belkins.io

Cleverly and Belkins.io offer lead generation services for B2B companies and are perfect alternatives to one another. They mainly differentiate in their scope of services, the channels they use and their target markets. 

• Scope of work: Cleverly focuses on AI-powered LinkedIn lead generation with personalized messaging and A/B testing, while Belkins.io offers a wider range of services including lead research with prospecting tools, email nurturing campaigns, B2B appointment setting, and copywriting services. 
• Target market: Belkins.io specifically targets SMBs and startups struggling with consistent client connection, while Cleverly is open to working with any B2B companies across any industries.
• Pricing plans: Cleverly’s pricing is available upfront with customization options, while Belkins.io provides customized quotes after consultation.
  Unlike Belkins, Cleverly offers a flat-rate pricing model based on the number of leads they reach out to. So, basically you get a flat fee for everything they do. Alos, the prices are relatively low, making it affordable for small businesses and startups. 

6 – Smith.ai

Smith.ai is a lead generation company that provides AI-powered virtual receptionist and live chat services for businesses. Its services mainly include call answering, appointment scheduling, lead intake, and website chat support. 

Right from the service, they are clearly differentiated from Cleverly. But let’s look at them specifically.

• Lead generation services and approaches: For lead gen, Cleverly only focuses on outbound channels like LinkedIn and cold email. Smith.ai, on the contrary, offers many services including 24/7 handling of phone calls, live chats, Facebook messages, and SMS, lead screening and intake form completion, and appointment setting.
  This makes Smith.ai a more comprehensive solution for handling different types of lead generation and customer communication channels.
• Pricing plans: Smith.ai offers different plans for virtual receptionist services, outreach campaigns, and live chat, with prices starting at $240/mo for 30 calls, $400/mo for 100 calls, and $140/mo for 20 live chats respectively. Smith.ai also offers the option to get a plan tailored to unique business needs, which may provide more flexibility in pricing.
• 24/7 availability: Smith.ai offers 24/7 handling of phone calls, live chats, Facebook messages, and SMS, providing round-the-clock support for SMBs. We can’t say the same about Cleverly.

7 – CallBox

Callbox is a global B2B lead generation and appointment setting company that provides multi-channel marketing services for businesses. It offers a range of services, including outbound telemarketing, email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, and account-based marketing. 

Here is how they compare to Cleverly.

• Service and lead gen approach: Callbox provides a comprehensive lead management and automation platform with an account-based multi-channel marketing approach. Callbox uses a global B2B database to build target lists and offers telemarketing scripts and email templates for direct outreach campaigns.
  Also, Callbox offers lead nurturing tools and smart calling to qualify leads, which provide additional features for managing and qualifying leads within their platform. Cleverly’s services do not include specific lead nurturing and smart calling tools.
• Pricing plans: Cleverly offers fixed plans with specific features and pricing tiers, while Callbox requires booking a meeting to get a custom price. This means that Callbox’s pricing is more flexible and tailored to individual business needs. Though, Cleverly does customize its pricing tiers as well.

Let Nerdy Joe do appointment setting and lead generation for your business

There you have it. Every company on this list can easily register as a Cleverly alternative or a Cleverly competitor. And while they’re all different in their way of providing services, they all share the same goal of helping you connect with customers and grow your sales pipeline. 

But if you want to get specific and work with a company that

• takes a more personalized approach, 
• doesn’t buy or scrap lists, 
• asks you meaningful questions to build a representative picture of the ideal customer profile,
• uses a unique targeting approach,
• creates super-personalized cold emails, 

— that’s us. 

We don’t need huge lists or blast people with thousands of emails to get you a few meetings booked or leads generated. As aforementioned, we believe heavily in research prospects and creating email copies that make an impact. 

We take the time to understand your business’s ideal customer and tailor our approach to each individual. And we are able to generate high-quality leads that are more likely to convert into sales. 

So, if you’re looking for a personalized and effective lead generation and appointment-setting service, Nerdy Joe is the best alternative to Cleverly. With our service, you can say goodbye to:

• sending connection requests
• a LinkedIn sales navigator account
• paying for multifunctional LinkedIn automation tool
• LinkedIn limits
• and more

Our approach to targeting is more accurate and our focus on quality over quantity ensures that you get the most out of your investment.