u/Mularkeyy

Been seeing this more in SEA, especially with Tiktok and Shopee. A lot of brands still treat these platforms as purely sales channels, but they're also becoming discovery and lead gen channels.

People don't move neatly from ad, landing page, form anymore. They watch a video, check comments, ask questions, browse the shop, maybe follow the brand, then buy or message later. For some categories, the lead isn't a form fill. It's a comment, a DM, a saved product, a repeat viewer, or someone who keeps engaging with live selling.

That makes tracking messier, but also more interesting. My take: social commerce is blurring the line between content, leads, and, sales.

Curious if others are seeing this too. Are you treating Tiktok Shop/Shopee as just ecommerce, or as part of your lead gen funnel?

For B2B Saas campaigns in SG/PH/ID, pulling a list quick. Cleaning it is the real work.A 1000-lead export usually takes un under an hour, but checking job titles, removing generic emails, validating contacts, and cuttingbad-fit companies, cleanup can take 1-2 days.

A 1000-lead export usually takes us under an hour. But after checking job titles, removing generic emails, validating contacts, and cutting bad-fit companies, cleanup can take 1-2 days. Most of the time we end up with 500-600 usalble leads. So around 40% gets removed before sales even touches it.

So what's normal for you? Are you sending raw exports straight to outreach or cleaning heavily first?

We tested AI-personalized outreachfor a B2B SaaS campaign targeting HR and ops leaders in SG, PH, and ID. It helped with speed, no question. We could research accounts faster and draft first-touch email in minutes instead of hours.

But the first version didn't perform as well as expected. Open rates ere fine around 45-50%, but replies were weak. A lot of the emails sounded personalized, but still felt fake. Things like, "congrats on your recent growth." or "I noticed your company is transforming the industry"

Technically relevant, but very obviously AI. What worked better was using AI for research, then rewriting the final message like a normal person. Here's a simple exaple:

"Saw you're hiring more ops people in SG, are you also trying to reduce manual admin work?"

That kind of message got better replies because it sounded specific without trying too hard. After we made the tone more huma, reply rates improved from 3% to 6-7%. My take: AI is useful for research and structure, but not for judgment. Especially in SEA, people can tell when a message is too polished or too generic.

So do you have the samne experience? Are AI-personalied emails still working for you, or are buyers starting to tune them out?

Pa-rant lang, nasa invitation na nga na limited yung seats, magtatanong pa kung pwede magsama ng plus one na wala naman kinalaman sa buhay namin. Na hindi din namin kilala???

How hard can it be to attend a wedding nang di kasama jowa mo or asawa mo? Kasama mo naman mga ka-work mo or friends???

Sorry ang aga ng rant. Monday na monday pa

We ran into this pretty hard while building prospect lists across SG, PH, and MY.

At first, the data looked fine. Thousands of companies, job titles, emails, filters, all the usual stuff.

But once we actually used it, the cracks showed up.

In one list of around 2,000 prospects, roughly 25–30% of contacts were either outdated, too generic, or not the right role anymore. Bounce rate was manageable, but reply quality was bad because the targeting was off.

The frustrating part is that bad data makes every channel look worse.

Outbound looks like it’s failing. Ads look low quality. Sales follow-up feels messy. But sometimes the real issue is upstream: the list was never clean enough to begin with.

This was especially obvious with SMEs and more local industries. Global tools were helpful, but they missed a lot of local context like actual company size, active decision-makers, or industry fit.

After tightening the data and cutting the list down, volume dropped by almost 40%, but reply quality improved. We booked fewer random calls and had more conversations with people who actually fit the ICP.

My take: in SEA, more data isn’t the advantage. Usable, local, validated data is.

So how are you are handling this. What data sources or workflows are actually working for SEA prospecting right now?

One pattern that's become pretty clear lately: relying on a single channel for lead gen is getting less effective.

Cold email alone struggles without context. Ads along bring traffic but inconsistent quality. Content alone builds trust, but too slowly if you need pipeline now.

What's working better is when these channels are intentionally connected. But should still be in a corrdinated way.

- content builds initial trust and familiarity
- ads retarget and reinforce the message

- email converts that familiarity into conversations

- LinkedIn adds a human layer

We've seen cases where email reply rates improved without changing the copy, just because prospects had seen a post or ad before. So the shift is really about reducing coldness across touchpoints. Especially in SEA, where trust and familiarity play a bigger role in B2B decisions, this becomes even more important.

So it's really how you channels work together. So what are best channels working for you right now?

We paused ads for 3 months and focused mostly on content. Honestly expected lead volume to dip, but it didn't really happen.

For context, this was for B2B product in SEA. Instead of pushing more paid campaigns, we doubled down on practical online content:

• founder paint points
• sales workflow posts
• market-specific lead gen tips
• simple case-study style breakdowns

Nothing overly polished. Just useful, specific posts that answered the questions buyers were already asking.

What changed was lead quality. Fewer "just browsing" leads, more people coming in with context. Some had already read 2-3 posts before reaching out, so calls were less about explaining the problem and more about fit.

I don't think ads are dead. They still help with speef and retargeting. But I do think ads are dead. They still help with speed and retargeting. But I do think a lot of B2B teams use ads to compensate for weak trust. In SEA especially, where buyers rely a lot on credibility and referrals, content can do a lot of the warming up before sales ever speaks to them.

Curious if anyone else has paused ads and seen the same. Are ads becoming optional or did we just get lucky?

I’ll say it plainly: if your funnel still works best on desktop, you’re likely leaking demand in Southeast Asia.

A lot of B2B teams still treat mobile as a secondary option. But in practice, that’s a mistake. Across SEA, a huge share of first-touch traffic happens on mobile. Someone sees your ad, clicks from LinkedIn, opens your landing page on their phone between meetings, and decides in a few seconds whether to continue. If the page loads slowly, the CTA is buried, or the form feels painful, they’re gone.

We’ve seen this play out more than once. Traffic looked healthy, CPC was fine, but conversion lagged. Once we broke it down, mobile was where the drop-off was happening.

Common issues were pretty basic:

• landing pages that looked clean on desktop but clunky on mobile
• forms that asked for too much too early
• slow load speed
• weak button placement
• too much copy before the actual action

Once those were fixed, conversion improved. Primarily because the path finally matched how people were actually browsing.

And that’s the part I think some teams miss. In SEA, mobile shapes B2B discovery. Even if the final demo gets booked on desktop, the first impression often happens on a phone.

So yes, I’d argue mobile-first is no longer optional if you care about pipeline in this region.

Curious where others land on this. Still underrated, or already table stakes?