Lists

Build the list from signals, not filters

By Travis Heurtelou · 7 min read · September 14, 2026

The short version

'SaaS, 50 to 200 employees' gives you a mushy list, and a mushy list forces generic copy.
A signal is a fact about the company from the last few weeks: a hire, a rating, a review of your competitor, a visit to your site.
Local buyers aren't in the B2B databases. Google Maps is the database.
Crowded lanes are weak lanes. The lane your competitors haven't picked over is the one that replies.

Why the filter list underperforms

A firmographic list answers 'who could buy'. It doesn't answer 'who's likely to buy this month', and the email has to answer that or it reads as a broadcast. Every company on a 'SaaS, 50 to 200' pull got the same email from ten other senders this quarter, because they all ran the same filter on the same database.

A signal list answers the second question. Companies hiring for the role your service replaces. Businesses whose Google rating sits under 4.6 with enough reviews for it to matter. People reading reviews of your competitor. Companies that visited your pricing page. The list is smaller, and the copy can open on the fact.

The signals that carry an email

Signal	What it tells you	Where it comes from
Job posting	A problem exists and there's budget for it. Hiring an SDR means they're scaling outbound. Hiring a controller means finance is stretched.	Job boards, LinkedIn Jobs, TheirStack
Google rating	Under 4.6 on more than a handful of reviews: they're losing calls to the shop next door and probably know it.	Google Maps
Competitor research	Someone reading G2 reviews of the incumbent is in-market right now.	Review sites, comparison pages
Content engagement	Liked or commented on a post in your space this week. Warmer than anyone on a static list.	LinkedIn, X, Reddit
Website visit	A company on your pricing page. High intent and high noise, so filter hard for fit before you write.	Visitor-ID pixel

Freshness matters more than the signal type. A 90-day-old posting has filled or cooled. Refresh the pull weekly and only write to the new rows.

Local buyers: Maps is the database

If the buyer is a cleaning company owner, an HVAC contractor or a dental practice, they're not in Apollo and they're barely on LinkedIn. Google Maps has every one of them, with the phone, the website and the rating.

Rows on Maps are locations, not companies, so a franchise shows up forty times and has to be collapsed before you count contacts. And a meaningful share of the listed websites are dead. Verify the domain resolves before an email goes out, or the bounce rate takes your sending domain down with it.

The owner reads their own email, and almost nobody good is writing to them. Even a send to the generic address with no first name converts there, because the inbox is empty.

B2B: a LinkedIn tool finds LinkedIn buyers

Most B2B data vendors are built on LinkedIn. That's fine when the buyer has a profile and keeps it current. When the buyer is a plant manager, a property manager or the owner of a 30-person shop, the vendor either doesn't have them or has a five-year-old title. Before picking a tool, ask whether the buyer is on LinkedIn at all. If not, the list comes from somewhere else: state licensing boards, permit records, Maps, association directories.

Crowded lanes are weak lanes

In ListKit's published set of their 200 best scripts, the two most common niches were marketing agencies (25 scripts) and capital or funding (25 scripts). Both landed in the bottom three by median positive-reply rate, 0.130% and 0.114% per prospect. The niches with the fewest scripts, education and food and beverage, ran three to four times higher.

Lots of scripts for a niche means lots of senders in that inbox. When a vendor's swipe file is full of your lane, that's the tell it's been picked over.

Size the campaign from the list

Contacts come before inboxes. Count the reachable buyers in the market with the signal you chose, subtract the ones with no email, subtract the dead domains, and that's the campaign. If it's 800 contacts, it's an 800-contact campaign no matter how many inboxes you own, and at a fraction of a percent it may not be big enough to produce a lead. Find that out before the domains are bought.

Pick the signal. Build the list from where the buyer actually is. Collapse locations, verify domains, count contacts. Then write the email on the fact the signal gave you.