Translate the ICP into searchable account filters

Begin with account selection, not contact emails. Convert the ICP into criteria a database or research workflow can actually apply: industry, employee range, geography, business model, funding or hiring state, technology, customer type, and explicit exclusions. Write down which criteria are mandatory and which are signals rather than hard filters.

Run a small account sample and inspect it manually. If the list contains companies you would never want sales to pursue, fix the filter before adding contacts.

Map roles based on the buying problem

For each account, decide who owns the problem, who uses the solution, who can block it, and who can refer you internally. Do not default to “CEO” simply because executive titles are easy to find. A 25-person company and a 2,500-person company may require different role logic for the same offer.

Create role tiers. Tier 1 is the likely owner; Tier 2 is a plausible influencer or alternate; Tier 3 is a fallback. This helps you control how many people you contact at one company and prevents indiscriminate multi-threading.

Source and enrich only what the campaign needs

Choose data sources based on coverage in your ICP, not database marketing claims. Export a sample of target accounts and roles, then measure how many usable records you actually get. Enrich missing fields only when they influence qualification, personalization, routing, or channel selection.

Useful fields often include normalized company name, domain, employee band, role, seniority, location, work email, LinkedIn URL, and the campaign-specific trigger. Phone numbers may matter for a multichannel team but add little to an email-only workflow.

Deduplicate before and after enrichment

Duplicates enter through multiple providers, old exports, alternate domains, and repeated contacts. Deduplicate by normalized email where available, but also look for the same person under multiple records and the same company under variant names. Decide which record wins before you upload to the sequencer.

Maintain suppression separately from deduplication. A person can be unique and still be someone you should not contact: existing customer, active opportunity, employee, partner, prior opt-out, or recently contacted lead.

Verify email addresses and handle uncertain results

Verification reduces avoidable bounces by checking whether an address appears deliverable. It does not qualify the lead. Treat catch-all, unknown, or risky results according to a written policy instead of letting a sequencer send them by default.

When a platform provides waterfall enrichment or built-in verification, compare its yield and cost on your own ICP. A cheap database with poor role coverage can become expensive after enrichment and verification.

Run final QA before campaign upload

  1. Sample accounts for ICP fit.
  2. Sample contacts for correct role and seniority.
  3. Check enrichment fields for truth and formatting.
  4. Remove duplicates and suppression matches.
  5. Verify email addresses.
  6. Review risky/catch-all handling.
  7. Check required personalization fields and fallbacks.
  8. Upload a small batch first and inspect the sequencer preview.

The list is complete when it is campaign-ready, not when the database export finishes. Treat every stage as a quality gate.

Sources & verification

Product details can change. We used first-party sources for unstable claims on this page.