Lead list

Also called: Prospect list, Lead database.

A useful lead list is a market written down: every business that fits your offer, inside the area you serve, with enough data to decide who to contact first and how. For local businesses that usually means name, category, address, phone, website, rating, review count and a verified email.

Lists fail in predictable ways. They come from one search, so they miss most of the market. They include businesses outside the area or in the wrong trade. They carry duplicates. The emails are guessed or unverified. And they're old, so closed businesses and dead mailboxes pile up.

Build lists in steps: define the market (trade, place, qualification rule), cover the whole area, dedupe, filter on area and category, find emails on each business's own website, verify them, then segment. Keep the source and check date for every address.

Buying a list is faster but usually worse for cold email: you can't see where the addresses came from or when they were checked, and bought lists can contain spam traps.

Example

An agency's list of HVAC contractors in Maricopa County has 640 qualifying businesses after cleaning, 410 with a verified email and 120 with an accept-all email. It knows the market size and which segment to send first.

In Leadraft

A search becomes a lead list in the leads table, with filters, saved views and about 45 columns, exportable to CSV or XLSX or pushed to Instantly, Smartlead, lemlist or HubSpot.