TL;DR
Define your ICP criteria, pull matching companies from Apollo or LinkedIn Sales Navigator, enrich for decision-maker contact info, layer trigger events for prioritization, and validate emails before importing into your sequencing tool. The whole process takes 2–4 hours for a clean 500-contact list.
Building a good prospect list is one of the highest-leverage activities in outbound. A bad list makes great copy useless; a great list makes decent copy work.
Step 1: Write your ICP criteria as a filter spec. Before opening any tool, document: industry/vertical, company size (employee range), geography, funding stage, tech stack, job titles in the buying committee. The more specific, the better.
Example spec: "Series A–B SaaS companies, 30–200 employees, US/Canada, using Salesforce and HubSpot, with a VP or Director-level person in Sales Operations or Revenue Operations."
Step 2: Build the company list. Apollo.io is the best starting point — filter by industry, employee count, funding, and technology used. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is better if you're filtering on specific job titles or seniority levels at the same time. Export 500–2,000 companies at a time.
Step 3: Find the right contacts. For each company, identify your target persona. In Apollo or Sales Navigator, filter by title keyword within those companies. Get 1–2 contacts per account to start.
Step 4: Layer trigger events for priority ranking. Using Clay, add enrichment columns for: recent funding (Crunchbase), new job postings in relevant roles (you can scrape LinkedIn jobs), news mentions in last 90 days, recent LinkedIn posts from the target contact. Rank accounts by number of trigger signals.
Step 5: Enrich contact information. Run waterfall enrichment for emails — Apollo email → Clearbit email → Hunter.io email → first valid result. Phone numbers are secondary but valuable if you're calling.
Step 6: Validate and clean. ZeroBounce or NeverBounce to verify emails. Remove invalid, catch-all, or role-based emails (info@, hello@, support@). Target list should be 80–90% valid on a good ICP.
Step 7: Import into your sequencing tool. Segment by persona or trigger event type so you can run slightly different messaging to each group.
From Cactus: Cactus builds ICP-matched prospect lists for clients as part of every outbound engagement — we've refined this process across 30+ campaigns and can build a clean 1,000-contact list in under a business day.
Cactus Marketing embeds with B2B tech startups to turn strategy into pipeline. We've worked with 60+ companies, supported 12 exits, and contributed to $7B+ in client valuations.
Book a free 30-minute call — we'll give you a concrete plan for your situation.
Book a free strategy call →How do I write a cold email that gets replies?
Write one sentence that's specifically about them, one sentence on their problem, one on your solution, and one CTA. The email should be under 80 words, reference something real about their company, and ask a yes-or-no question at the end.
How do I find leads for cold email?
Start with Apollo.io or LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build a list from your ICP criteria. Enrich it through Clay or a waterfall of data providers for verified emails. Target trigger events — recent funding, new hires, job postings — to catch companies in active buying moments.
What is a good cold email reply rate?
A good cold email reply rate is 3–8% for a broad ICP campaign and 8–15% for a highly personalized, trigger-event-based campaign. Anything above 15% with meaningful volume is excellent. Below 2% means something fundamental is wrong — ICP, targeting, or the email itself.
How many cold emails should I send per day?
New domains should warm up for 2–4 weeks before sending real campaigns, starting at 10–20 emails/day and capping out at 30–50/day per domain for sustained campaigns. With multiple warmed domains running in rotation, total volume can reach 500–2,000+/day without domain damage.