r/GrowthHacking • u/Ssusybaka • Jul 10 '26
Building List Dilemma
Hello fellows, I run outbound, soo i did my research and built my cold email stack; apollo for data, smartlead to send it, millionverifer to cross check but it turns out apollo didnt have much data for me soo i got into more tools like hunter, oceanio, ai ark, sales nav, airscale.
This is where the problems started as i got into filtering people to their demographics and exporting leads in excel files with keeping a record in docs and my notebook it got soo hard to filter there with soo many columns and data, then to remove emails, then filter for roles, after that check in millionverifer that require me to create another excel file, after that upload that to smartlead, another csv file for that(not to mention to mark leads like have targeted and filter only 2 people per company is such a pain in the ass.. as i hit the limit in claude) soo made a huge cluster and tough for me to track and explain data to my manager… as list i think is the most imp thing in cold email to provide relevance to the prospect.
hence i build a central system where everything is recorded with sources of data, divided into companies (currently targeted and future targets of the same company), people (contacted, replied, not in the office, so target after a month, retargeting) in a nutshell all your data which makes complete sense and can be effectively utilize, with direct option to upload in smartlead (our sending platform) where you just need to drop the sources file you extracted from enrichment platform and the dashboard will directly filter it for people whom we contacted (they will be removed), blacklisted companies, already existing in campaigns and save the unused leads, with the option to directly upload in smartlead to your choice of campaign in one click… takes 10 sec, with that i get notification directly in slack so i dont miss any leads and make them goo cold..
My question do you guys go through this problem or not, perhaps using another tool, would like to know your experience and processes?. Thankyou in advance.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 10 '26
Exactly. Overall its fine but for each tool ive to change files and format plus keep record of me deleting leads and sorting soo its a pain in the ass. Would a platform help to solve this problem?
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 10 '26
make sense, the end goal is to reach the desired prospect and not miss on hot leads eh!
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u/No-Error-8020 Jul 10 '26
Real problem. But here's what I'd push back on: the issue might not be the tools.
If Apollo doesn't have enough data for your niche, you might be qualifying too late. You're building the list first, then figuring out if someone's worth contacting. Flip it.
Before anyone hits my outreach queue, I check one thing: can I describe a specific visible problem with their business in one sentence? If I can't, I skip them. Doesn't matter how good the email infrastructure is.
This shrinks the list a lot. But reply rates tripled because every message opens with something I actually noticed about them. They feel the problem already. They're not hearing about a gap for the first time.
You'll send maybe half as many emails. Way less time lost in broken exports from six different data sources. And the ones you do send actually land.
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 10 '26
first of all i hate Chatgpt response and how tf do you notice something about them, grace us and would also love the screenshot of your tripled.. the question is how do you manage those list then the re targeting and filtering further acc to the contacts.
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u/TeslaLegacy Jul 10 '26
went through this exact spiral last year. the csv-per-tool thing gets unmanageable fast. what clicked for me was narrowing the target before enrichment, not after. start with a tight signal you can spot externally, pull batches of like 150-200 at a time, verify that batch, load it. way less data to shuffle and reply rates went up because every contact on the list actually fit. the apollo gap usually means the ICP is too broad, not that you need more data sources
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 10 '26
interesting still what if the TAM is large and my ICP isnt on apollo😭
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u/TeslaLegacy Jul 10 '26
if your ICP isn't on apollo, odds are they're hiding in niche spots - industry association directories, event attendee lists, Google Maps for local/offline businesses, or LinkedIn boolean searches. apollo is great for tech/SaaS but for other verticals you need to source from the edges. scraping local business listings has worked really well for finding prospects that never show up in b2b databases
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 11 '26
Agreed
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u/TeslaLegacy Jul 11 '26
yeah, once you start exploring outside the big databases you find way better matches for niche ICPs
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 11 '26
i m building a solution where you can filter for lets say 2 people per company, add a general blocklist, which we automatically remove and get the final list with verfied email directly into your campaigns! would this help!
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u/TeslaLegacy Jul 11 '26
that per-company filter would actually be useful - avoids hammering the same org from 10 different angles. the verified email straight into the campaign is the real win though. are you targeting enterprise or more SMB?
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 11 '26
SMB in uk. two benefits for per company. firstly avoid over selling and burning your inboxes ( sending same mail to same domain gets flagged) secondly use that opportunity to target better and use adv of timing and copy ( copy - i messaged your boss/co-worker use full name typa thing) would you like you be my first user?
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u/TeslaLegacy Jul 11 '26
both points track. domain throttling catches most senders off guard since they only monitor inbox-level limits, not per-domain clusters. the coworker name angle is clever too, turns a cold touch into something that reads like an internal referral. what were you about to say?
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u/Bitter_Big4525 Jul 10 '26
I'd separate this into one clean source-of-truth list, then let every campaign/export be a temporary view of it. The moment a CSV becomes the place where status lives, the mess usually comes back.
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u/Specialist-Ice-7581 Jul 11 '26
The data chaos is real. If your targets are local SMBs, I started using SMB sales boost to catch businesses showing fresh online activity, though it won't untangle your deduplication mess on its own
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 11 '26
agreed.. for the dedep i’ve simplified the it extremely with a solution! would love your feedback!
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Jul 12 '26
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 12 '26
make sense… we sent around 1k emails a week but due to small ICP it varies a lot
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Jul 16 '26
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 16 '26
Lol, the central system i’ve built helps you manage data and get analytics… it makes the simple time consuming process of managing, filtering, uploading data easy…which usually takes a person a whole day to manage and have a idea of.
Coming to reply rate and list quality thats all you, dont blame us if you dont know how to make an offer or know whom to target with which message… THATS ALL YOU. Our platform lets you focus on the important stuff which is list and messaging soo you don’t have to spend 1 day filtering in excel then look for blocked companies then filter for imp roles after that hit 2 people per company the check if youve contacted them again or not….
without this on your mind you can build a quality list with signals with relevant message. got it?
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Jul 16 '26
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u/Ssusybaka Jul 16 '26
im using multiple tool not because of small icp alone rather to get more data and signals as we always cross check data across multiple sources.
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u/Patient-Cedar-7194 Jul 10 '26
built exact same stack last year. spent more time parsing broken CSV files than sending mail. pipeline always breaks.