Gilbert RegTech builds compliance software for the EU market. Its flagship product, the EmpCo Scanner, helps companies get their green marketing claims in order before a new European directive comes into force on 27 September 2026. Since May 2026, Invalshoek has been responsible for demand generation for this product: from LinkedIn and Google advertising to SEO, email marketing, and industry associations. This is the story behind building that growth engine.
Invalshoek is building a complete demand generation engine for Gilbert RegTech around the EmpCo Scanner, a SaaS tool that scans websites, documents, and labels for prohibited sustainability claims. The approach combines LinkedIn (organic and paid), content marketing and SEO, direct email outreach, industry associations, and targeted outreach to large retailers. The goal: build a sufficient pipeline of qualified opportunities before the deadline of 27 September 2026, when the EmpCo Directive will apply without a transition period to every company selling to EU consumers.
Client: Gilbert Regulatory Technologies B.V.
Location: The Hague & Rotterdam
Industry: RegTech SaaS, EU compliance for sustainability claims
Gilbert RegTech develops the EmpCo Scanner, a self-service platform that crawls websites, product labels, and documents for environmental claims and tests those claims against the seven prohibited categories defined in Directive (EU) 2024/825, better known as the EmpCo Directive. Where a traditional compliance investigation produces a report, Gilbert delivers a workflow: every claim receives a red, orange, or green assessment with the exact legal reference, a supporting evidence file, and a concrete remediation path.
The EmpCo Directive is still relatively unknown territory for most companies, while the consequences are significant: no transition period, no minimum company size threshold, and fines starting at 4% of annual EU turnover. For Gilbert RegTech, this created several specific marketing challenges:
For a product that needs to reach four different business audiences simultaneously, LinkedIn is the most logical channel. Invalshoek built persona-specific target lists in Sales Navigator (job title, industry, company size, geography) and implemented automated workflows to run connection and messaging sequences without overwhelming the account. Every response immediately pauses automation, allowing a human to take over. In addition, a combination of Text Ads and Feed Image Ads targets the same segmented audience to not only reach the most relevant contacts but also create awareness of the EmpCo deadline across entire accounts.
The target audience is legally sophisticated, and superficial fear-based content is quickly recognized and dismissed. The content strategy therefore focuses approximately 70% on educational content (what exactly does the directive prohibit, and why?) and 30% on product-focused content. The existing knowledge base was technically rebuilt: the website was running as a single-page application and was not being properly crawled, after which pre-rendering ensured that search engines and AI answer engines could access the full content. The results followed quickly: within weeks, the platform was already being referenced by ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude, and it performed strongly on Bing.
Alongside organic and paid LinkedIn activities, existing lead lists are being expanded across additional sectors, followed by direct B2B email outreach. In parallel, Gilbert RegTech is actively engaging with Dutch, German, and European industry associations for guest content opportunities and newsletter placements, with Germany leading in enforcement pressure and therefore urgency among the target audience.
For companies with the highest exposure, such as supermarkets and garden centers with their own private-label sustainability claims, a targeted account-based outreach approach is underway. This approach combines personal introductions with the broader list of prohibited claim symbols and practices already used by retailers, providing a concrete starting point for conversations.
Every lead, from an accepted LinkedIn connection to a beta signup through the website, automatically enters the EmpCo platform, tagged by persona and source. This makes it possible to see which channels actually generate pipeline for each audience segment and allows weekly reporting to Gilbert RegTech to be based on hard data rather than assumptions.
"Invalshoek quickly understood not only our deadline, but also the complexity of four completely different audiences, each with their own reason for wanting to engage with us. This is already translating into a pipeline that simply did not exist two months ago."
Robert van Spingelen
Co-founder, Gilbert RegTech
The project has been running since May 2026 and the EmpCo deadline of 27 September is still ahead, but the first results are already visible:
Invalshoek will continue scaling activities toward the EmpCo deadline in the coming months, with the goal of providing Gilbert RegTech with a full and high-quality pipeline leading into 27 September 2026.
The EmpCo case demonstrates what happens when demand generation and a hard regulatory deadline come together: there is no time to build a brand through trial and error. By aligning LinkedIn, content marketing, SEO, outreach, and industry associations from day one and bringing everything together in one system, Gilbert RegTech has built a visible and measurable pipeline within two months in a market that was still unfamiliar with the company. With more than two months remaining until 27 September 2026, this creates exactly the momentum needed to position the EmpCo Scanner with the right audiences in time.