How to build a B2B lead list: free sources first, then paid data

A cold email campaign is only as good as the list it goes to. Send a great email to the wrong people and nothing happens. Send a plain email to exactly the right people, at the right moment, and replies come in. Most of the work of outbound, and most of the results, is in the list.

Building one doesn't have to start with an expensive database. The best leads often come from free sources that show a company has the problem you solve right now. Paid data fills the gaps and saves time once you know what works. This guide covers both, in the order you'll use them.

Define who belongs on the list

Before you collect a single name, write down who you're looking for. A useful definition has three parts.

The company. Industry, size by employees or revenue, location, stage and anything else that predicts a good fit, such as the software they use or whether they sell online.

The person. The role that feels the problem and can act on it. Often it's not the most senior person. At a 50-person company, the head of operations may be a better first contact than the CEO.

The trigger. An event that makes the problem urgent now: a funding round, a new office, a key hire, a job posting, a product launch, expansion into a new state, a new regulation. Triggers are what turn a cold email into a timely one.

If you have customers already, look at the best of them. What did they have in common before they bought? That's your profile.

Free sources for companies

The best free sources don't just list companies. They show you which ones have a reason to talk to you.

• Job postings. A company hiring for a role tells you what it's investing in, and the posting often names the tools and problems involved. Hiring a first bookkeeper, for example, signals a company outgrowing spreadsheets.
• Event lists. Exhibitor, sponsor and speaker lists from trade shows and conferences in your industry are public and well targeted.
• Software review sites and directories. Category pages show who sells in a space. Reviews show who uses a product, and what they complain about.
• Industry associations. Member directories list companies in a trade, often with size and location.
• Public registries. SAM.gov lists businesses registered to sell to the federal government, and SEC EDGAR lets you search public company filings. Your state's business search shows newly formed companies.
• Local search. For businesses that serve a local area, a map search for a category and city produces a list in minutes.
• Your network. Customers, investors and former colleagues can introduce you, which beats any cold email.

Record each company with its website and the reason it's on the list.

Find the right person at each company

Once you have companies, find the person to contact. Start with the company's own website: team pages, leadership pages and blog author bios often name the people you want. LinkedIn shows who holds which role, how long they've been in it, and what they post about, which helps with the first line of your email.

Aim for one primary contact per company, and perhaps a second in case the first doesn't reply. Emailing many people at the same company at once looks like spam, and they talk to each other.

Find and verify email addresses

With a name and a company domain, you need the address. Free options get you started:

• Hunter's free plan includes 50 credits a month. Its domain search shows the addresses and email pattern a company uses, such as [email protected], and its finder checks a specific person's address.
• Apollo's free plan includes a limited number of credits for emails from its database.
• Many companies publish addresses on their websites, in press releases or in public filings.

Then verify every address before you send. Invalid emails bounce, and bounces damage your sender reputation. Verification checks whether the address exists and accepts mail. Remove anything invalid or risky. Our guide to setting up a domain for cold email explains why this matters so much.

When paid data is worth it

Free sources take time. Once you know your profile works, because a few dozen emails to it have produced replies, paid data can save hours a week.

• A searchable database, such as Apollo, lets you filter for companies and roles directly, instead of collecting them by hand. Apollo has paid plans from $49 per user a month.
• An email finder and verifier, such as Hunter, is cheaper when you already have the companies. Its Starter plan costs $49 a month, or $34 billed annually, for 2,000 credits, at one credit to find an email and half a credit to verify one.

Our comparison of Apollo, Lusha and Hunter covers the differences. Whatever you use, avoid buying a ready-made list of unknown origin. Those lists are often stale, poorly matched and full of bounces.

What to record for each lead

Keep your list in a spreadsheet or your CRM, with one row per person and these columns:

The "reason" column is the one most lists lack, and the one that makes the biggest difference. If you can't write a specific reason for a lead, it probably doesn't belong on the list.

Write the first line while you build

The research you do to find a lead is the same research that makes your email relevant, so capture it at the time. When you find a company through a job posting, note the role and one detail from it. When you find a speaker at a conference, note the talk title. Then write the personalized first line in the list, before the campaign, while it's fresh.

A first line based on a real trigger reads very differently from a generic one:

• Generic: "I came across your company and was impressed by your growth."
• Specific: "Saw you're hiring two account managers in Denver, which usually means the client list has outgrown the current team."

The second one shows you did the work, and gives the reader a reason to keep reading. It also takes about a minute per lead, which is one more reason to keep early lists small.

Mistakes that waste a list

• No trigger. Companies that match on size and industry but have no reason to act now rarely reply.
• The wrong role. The most senior title isn't always the right one. Pick the person who owns the problem.
• Too many people per company. One or two contacts per company, not ten.
• Skipping verification. A few bounces are tolerable. Dozens damage your domain.
• Mixing sources without dates. Without knowing where and when a record came from, you can't tell which are stale.
• Building before testing. A thousand-row list built on an untested profile is mostly wasted effort.

How big should the list be?

Start with 100 to 200 people. That's enough to see whether the profile and message work, and small enough to research each lead properly. If replies come, build the next batch the same way. If they don't, change one thing, such as the trigger, the role or the message, and try another small batch.

Founders often build lists of thousands before sending anything. A big list doesn't fix a weak profile or message. It just spreads it further.

Keep it clean

Lists decay. People change jobs, companies are acquired and addresses stop working. Re-verify any address that's more than a few months old before you use it again. Remove bounces immediately. And keep a suppression list of everyone who opted out, applied across every campaign and mailbox, since CAN-SPAM requires opt-outs to be honored within 10 business days.

Lists for different kinds of business

• Selling software to startups: funding announcements, job postings and launch sites, with founders or functional heads as contacts.
• Selling services to local businesses: map searches and local directories, with owners as contacts.
• Selling to government contractors: SAM.gov registrations and contract award data, with business development or contracts managers as contacts.
• Selling to manufacturers or distributors: trade show exhibitors and association members, with operations or purchasing heads as contacts.
• Exporting: importers of your product category, found through trade data, as our guide to finding export buyers with trade data explains.

What to do next

Once you have a verified list with a reason for each lead, you're ready to write. Our guide to cold email for B2B startups covers the first email and follow-ups, and our guide to choosing a CRM covers where to keep track of the conversations that follow.