The success of your outreach depends on choosing the right leads. In this guide, we’ll help you identify your ideal leads and introduce you to tools for collecting prospects lists.
Step 2: Create folders and lists
Step 4: Create custom variables
Step 5: Verify email addresses
Let’s kick things off by logging into your account. You’ll be doing most of the work in your Snov.io account.
You can complete this with a Trial plan and find up to 50 test leads. Pro plans give you access to bulk prospecting and bulk verification.
Choose the best plan for you based on how many leads you need. For example, with the Pro 5K plan for $99, you can collect up to 5,000 verified prospects using the tools mentioned in this guide.
Step 1: Define your target audience
To make the right offers, you need to understand your potential customers. You need to know who is most likely to be interested. For this, you’ll create your Ideal customer profile (ICP). The ICP is a set of details that describes the prospects or businesses that can get the most value from what you offer.
Ideal customer profile (ICP)
Your target audience consists of people facing problems that your service can solve. Determine the value proposition of your service, its relevance in the current market, and its potential benefits for your target audience.
Research market trends and your customers → know their problems and goals → create detailed customer profiles → collect prospects based on ICP → offer them your solution → close the deal.
Ask yourself these main questions:
- Question #1: Who can benefit from using your service? What is their job title?
- Question #2: What are their pain points or needs? What problem do they have that you can solve?
If you already have existing customers, talk to your marketing team, read user reviews, and look at your product’s data analytics.
Find out which companies and people use your service, how many employees they have, where they live (country), what industry they are in, and who brings you the most revenue.
Below is a detailed Q/A template for creating a customer profile.
After answering the questions, you’ll create an ICP like this: United States/Computer Software/51-200/Data Analyst.
Later in this guide, you will use your unique details as search parameters in lead generation tools.
| Question | Characteristic (Explanation) |
| What countries and cities have purchasing potential? | [Location] Look at where your revenue comes from—focus on those countries first. Then think about new markets and which countries might buy from you. |
| What industry or market is the most relevant to your offer?
What value/solution can your service bring into that industry? |
[Industry] Are they software companies that are looking to deal with the problem your service solves? |
| What kind of companies need your service or offer? | [Company size/headcount] [Revenue] Know what size of companies, in terms of employees and revenue, can benefit from your service. Decide if your service is for small businesses or big market players. |
| Who in that company (positions) is in charge of dealing with the problem your service solves? | [Position] [Seniority] Find out who in the company handles the problem your service fixes. Decide who to reach out to, like the CEO, Marketing Managers, Business Analysts, or Sales Reps. Think about how your service can help them meet their goals. Also, figure out who makes the buying decisions. For smaller companies, you might need to talk to both the CEO and the end user.In general, focus your outreach on managers and department directors. They’re more likely to reply than the C-level execs. |
Extra methods to determine your ICP
Case studies
If you already have customers, looking at case studies can be helpful. Study examples of satisfied customers who gained the most benefit from your service.
Research which of your existing clients have generated the highest revenue and retention. Look for patterns in their industry and job positions.
Secondary ICPs
A secondary ICP is someone who isn’t the end user of your offer but can help facilitate the deal. These individuals may include decision-makers (like CEOs or department leads) and “gatekeepers,” such as assistants or advisors, who can connect you with decision-makers.
Lead segments
An ICP gives you a general idea of who your best customers are. To understand them even better, break them down into smaller groups called segments.
For example, use these characteristics to create lead segments.
Company segments:
- Company size (e.g., small businesses, middle size, enterprises)
- Specialty or niche
- Revenue and growth stage
Lead segments:
- Software or tools in use
- Skills
- Position/Seniority
Demographic segments:
- Age
- Gender
- Income level
Geographic segments:
- Location (city, state, country)
Then, research common needs and challenges in each lead group. This will help you make your offer more relevant to what they want. With this information, you’ll create emails personalized to each segment.
Remember that your ICPs and segments can change over time. Review and update them from time to time.
Step 2: Create lists and folders
Now, let’s move on to the next step—creating lists and folders for your prospects.
On the Leads page in your account, you’ll store and manage your prospect lists. Create separate lists for each customer profile or segment from the previous step.
Work with one customer profile or segment per list. Mixing leads from different segments into the same list is not recommended, as it can make personalization and targeting less effective.
How to do it:
Go to the Leads page in your Snov.io account.
In the top left corner of the screen, you will find options to create lists and folders.
What is the optimal list size?
When adding prospects, start with lists of around 100-200 leads for each ICP or segment. These lists are easier to manage. They also allow you to personalize your outreach better. With this number of leads, you can test campaigns and adjust based on responses before scaling up.
Step 3: Add prospects
Now it’s time for the practical part of this guide—you’ll collect prospects that match your ICP.
The most productive way to do prospecting is to use tools that let you set up searches with specific filters. Snov.io provides a set of email finder tools that can do just that. We’ll show you a few examples below.
Prospects in Snov.io come with details such as name, job title, location, industry, company name, and social URLs. You can use this information to personalize your emails.
Database Search: find leads according to ICP
Snov.io’s Database Search is the easiest way to find leads according to your ICP.
There are a few customizable filters for precise results—you can apply them in various combinations to get the desired results.
How to use it:
You enter key details like job position, location, industry, and skills—we provide prospects that match the profile. All prospects from the database have pre-verified emails.
Bulk Domain Search: get emails from domains
Using this tool, you can find prospects or email addresses on company domains in bulk.
How to use it:
On the Finder Tools page, select Bulk Domain Search.
Upload a CSV file with domains. You can search up to 20,000 domains per search. To get prospects that match your ICP, add keywords to the job position and location filters.
Remember: when we mention Prospects, we’re referring to enriched profiles with pre-verified emails. In tools like Domain Search and Bulk Domain Search, you have the option to find emails only. These emails still require verification.
Don’t have domains to upload? We have a solution:
Use Company Database Search to find a list of companies filtered by industry, company size, and location.
In the Bulk Domain Search, select the saved list of companies to find prospects from.
LinkedIn Finder extension: collect leads from LinkedIn and Sales Navigator
Our LinkedIn prospecting extension is the most efficient way to collect leads from LinkedIn.
You can try it even with a free LinkedIn account. Paid accounts (LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator) have higher limits for prospecting and extended search filters.
How to use it:
Install the LIPF extension from Chrome Store → Go to LinkedIn.
Enter the prospect’s job position you’re looking for in the search bar, and select the People filter.
Click the extension icon in the top-right corner. It can automatically search multiple pages of results—you set the search limit based on how many prospects you need. To save prospects in bulk, select the Multipage search option.
Read about more ways to collect leads on different LinkedIn pages.
The leads you save with our tools are ready for personalized outreach via two channels—email and LinkedIn (Snov.io can do both—more on that in the next guides).
Native integrations: Transfer leads from or to your CRM
Snov.io’s native integrations allow you to enable two-way data synchronization between your CRM and prospect lists in Snov.io.
You can transfer your lead databases from the CRM to Snov.io or set up an automatic transfer of newly created leads in both directions—from CRM to Snov.io and from Snov.io to CRM.
Import from file: Add your own prospects
You can also upload lead lists or emails you already have. The Import option supports .csv or .xls files with up to 100,000 rows of data.
We offer unlimited data storage at no extra cost – you can create as many lists and upload as many prospects as required.
Step 4. Create custom fields and upload data
If you have any relevant information about your leads, you can use it to personalize your Snov.io campaigns.
Add this information to a separate column in your CSV file. Each prospect in the file should have their own row with the custom data in that column.
Using the file import, you can add this data in bulk to all prospects in your Snov.io list. Go to your Prospects page and choose Import from file option.
During the import, create new custom fields in Snov.io for the data from your file. Click on Add custom field and select the Prospect type.
To upload data correctly, map the custom fields to the corresponding columns from your file. You can do this by dragging the fields to the appropriate headers in the import settings.
Field mapping ensures that data from that columns in your file will be uploaded to the appropriate fields in the prospect profiles.
You can create up to 30 custom fields. For each custom field, Snov.io will generate variables (placeholders). If the field name is “Personalization”, Snov.io will automatically create a variable {{personalization}}. This variable can be inserted into your emails and LinkedIn messages to automatically add data from that field to the content.
A few examples of custom fields you can create are:
- {{leads_pain_point}}
- {{leads_goal}}
- {{ice_breaker}}
- {{unique_intro}}
Step 5: Verify lists
When you add prospects using our tools, email verification is included. If you upload email lists from other sources and are unsure about their quality, you can use the built-in email verifier.
Snov.io uses a 7-step validation process — expect up to 98% email verification accuracy.
After verification, you’ll see the prospects sorted by email status in the top right corner. Later, when creating campaigns, you’ll decide which email statuses to add to your final recipient list.
What’s next:
Congratulations! You’re one step closer to launching a successful outreach campaign. Let’s move on to the next guide in this series: writing personalized emails that convey your offer’s value effectively.
How to write a killer email copy.
If you feel like this article doesn’t address something you can’t figure out, email us at help@snov.io. Your feedback is very important to us!