Lead sourcing & enrichment

Overview

A campaign is only as good as its list. Sourcing turns an ICP (see ideal-customer-profile) into real people with verified, deliverable contact data - and keeps that list clean so you don't torch your sending domain on bounces. Bad data is the #1 silent killer of outbound: it inflates bounce rates, poisons reputation, and wastes personalization effort on people who'll never see it.

Where leads come from

• ICP-driven search - filter a data provider by your firmographic/technographic criteria + titles/seniority (the search spec from your ICP).
• Signal/trigger lists - companies hiring for X, using tool Y, recently funded.
• Your own orbit - site visitors, CRM contacts, event lists, community members.
• Referrals & warm paths - mutual connections, existing customers' networks.

Waterfall enrichment (the core concept)

No single data vendor has everyone, and quality/cost vary. Waterfall = try sources in sequence, cheapest/most-likely first, stop when you get a verified hit. You pay less and get higher coverage than any one source alone.

A sensible order:

1. Free / cheap first (pattern-guess + verify, your own CRM).
2. Primary paid provider (e.g. a broad B2B database).
3. A shared / pooled contact database if your tool offers one (data others already verified).
4. Premium / specialist sources only for the gaps that remain.

Chronos runs this multi-source waterfall for you, so you get strong coverage without stacking and paying for several separate data subscriptions.

Find and verify emails

• Prefer provider-verified emails; otherwise find-then-verify (SMTP/validation).
• Catch-all domains accept anything - mark them "risky," don't treat as verified; send to them cautiously or route to a lower-risk inbox.
• Never send to unverified addresses in bulk - that's how bounce rates spike (keep bounces < ~2-3%, see email-deliverability and outbound-metrics-and-benchmarks).

Intent & signals

Layer intent on top of fit to prioritize: category research, pricing-page visits, G2/review activity, job-change, funding. Fit says who; intent says now.

List hygiene

• Deduplicate across campaigns and by company (don't hit five people at one account with the same thing the same day).
• Suppress: existing customers, open opportunities, competitors, unsubscribes, and anyone a teammate is already working.
• Refresh: data decays ~2-3%/month (people change jobs). Re-verify stale lists.

Consent & compliance (practical, not legal advice)

• CAN-SPAM (US): accurate headers/subject, a real physical address, and a working opt-out honored promptly.
• GDPR/EU & similar: have a lawful basis (often legitimate interest for B2B), honor objections, and don't process data you're told to stop processing.
• Everywhere: don't scrape sources that prohibit it, don't buy sketchy lists, and always make opt-out easy. Respecting this also protects deliverability.

Do / Don't

• Do verify before you send and keep bounces under ~2-3%.
• Do suppress customers/opps/competitors and dedupe by account.
• Don't blast a freshly-bought, unverified list on day one.
• Don't treat catch-all addresses as confirmed.

Common mistakes

• One data source → low coverage and over-spend (use the waterfall).
• No suppression list → emailing current customers and open deals.
• Never re-verifying → a list that's 20% stale and bouncing.
• Chasing volume over fit → lots of contacts, few replies.

Go live with Chronos (optional)

• geo_search_contacts - run your ICP as live filters to find real people.
• geo_enrich_contact - waterfall-enrich across multiple data sources and verify.
• geo_list_hubspot_contacts - pull from a connected CRM into the mix.
• geo_create_mini_campaign_from_contacts - turn a sourced set straight into a campaign.

Connect in ~30s → CONNECT-CHRONOS.md. Free, no card.

See also: ideal-customer-profile, account-research, email-deliverability.