Lead Generation

A list is only as good as the signals behind it. Most agencies hand you 500 contacts from Apollo and call it a list. We build lists from scratch per client, per campaign, based on live signals.

---

Defining your ICP

Before we pull a single contact, we define who we’re looking for. We work through this with you in onboarding.

A useful ICP has three layers:

Firmographic — Company size, industry, geography, revenue range, tech stack

Rolographic — Title, seniority, department, tenure

Behavioral — What are they doing right now that makes them a buyer?

The behavioral layer is where most agencies stop working and we start. Examples:

• A company that just raised a Series A and is hiring its first SDR
• A VP of Sales who just joined a new company 90 days ago
• A founder posting on LinkedIn about pipeline problems
• A company that added a specific tool to their stack last month

Without behavioral signals, you’re mailing to everyone who could be a buyer. With them, you’re mailing to people who are actively becoming one.

---

Data sources

Our OSINT pipeline

We built a proprietary pipeline that pulls signals from across the open web on a per-client basis. It’s not a static database — it’s real-time queries against public data sources:

• Job postings (signals: hiring velocity, tech stack, growth stage)
• LinkedIn activity (signals: engagement, job changes, content posting)
• Press and funding data (signals: round size, timing, investor type)
• Product review sites (signals: dissatisfaction with competitors)
• GitHub and developer communities (signals: tech stack, tooling choices)

This takes more setup time than pulling from Apollo, which is why we ask for 7–10 days before the first copy is delivered.

Icypeas

For email finding and enrichment, we use Icypeas. It’s GDPR-native, which matters if any of your targets are in the EU. It uses a waterfall approach — multiple data sources in sequence — so coverage is significantly better than single-source providers.

LinkedIn (read-only)

We use LinkedIn as a data source for enrichment and signal detection. We don’t send through LinkedIn — too much risk on your account, and the conversion rates don’t justify it for most B2B motions.

---

List quality

Before any contact enters a sequence, it passes through verification:

1. Email verification — Real-time SMTP check to confirm the mailbox exists
2. Domain check — Confirm the company domain is active and not a catch-all
3. Deduplication — Remove contacts already in your CRM or previous campaigns
4. ICP scoring — We score each contact against the signal criteria and filter out weak matches

We target a bounce rate below 2%. If a list is pulling high bounces, we pause and fix the source before continuing.

---

List size vs. quality

We send 5,000 emails per month. That doesn’t mean we need 5,000 contacts per month.

If your ICP is tight (e.g., “Head of Partnerships at Series B SaaS companies in North America with 50–200 employees”), there might be 300 people who perfectly match. We’d rather mail those 300 a high-quality, signal-based email than mail 5,000 generic contacts.

We discuss list depth in onboarding. If your ICP is narrow, we map out how many months of unique contacts exist and plan accordingly.

---

What you provide

• ICP definition (we build a template, you refine it)
• Existing customer list for lookalike targeting
• Competitors you want to target (for engagement signals)
• Any suppression lists (past customers, investors, partners)

We take it from there.