The Right Prospects
Build Your Win Rate

We’ve all heard the age-old expression the customer is king. To TransAct that’s not the bottom line, it’s the place we start on our analytics curve. Finding target segments is easy. Finding the right ones, and getting continuously better at finding them, is the expertise. Not a purchased list. Not a database dump.

Nineteen steps, four movements

Building the ProfileSteps 01–05
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Finding the ProspectsSteps 06–10
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Reaching ThemSteps 11–15
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Proving and RefiningSteps 16–19

Each movement narrows the field. Nothing moves forward on a guess.

Building the Profile
01
Score every current customer by profitability, not revenue.
Volume tells you who buys most. Margin tells you who's actually worth chasing.
02
Run an RFM analysis across the full customer file.
Recency, frequency, and monetary value together surface the top tier faster than any single metric.
03
Interview the salespeople who close and retain them.
The best reps already sense the profile; the data just confirms and sharpens it.
04
Append demographic, lifestyle, or firmographic data to the best-customer file.
This shows what your most profitable customers actually have in common, often something you'd never have guessed.
05
Build a statistical lookalike model from that profile.
Once built, it can score any name (on any list) against your best customer, before you spend a dollar reaching them.
Finding the Prospects
06
License compiled lists from major data compilers.
Then run them through the lookalike model. Most companies buy lists and skip this step entirely.
07
Pull syndicated research panels for category usage data.
These capture attitudes and behaviors your own CRM was never built to track.
08
Pull firmographic and intent data on active researchers, for B2B.
Companies already showing in-market signals are worth more than a cold list, every time.
09
Build lookalike audiences on the paid platforms, seeded from the real file.
The platforms build the lookalike off your actual best customers rather than off an interest category someone guessed at.
10
Identify non-competing brands who already reach the same profile.
List-share and co-marketing arrangements can be the fastest, cheapest way into a qualified audience.
Reaching Them
11
Test direct mail against the enhanced list before scaling.
Still one of the highest-response channels for a precisely targeted list. Most marketers wrote it off too early.
12
Layer programmatic and paid social against the lookalike segments.
Digital extends reach efficiently once the audience itself is right.
13
Target search intent around the profile's known behaviors.
The questions your best customers ask are a targeting strategy in themselves.
14
Stand up an account-based motion for the highest-scoring named targets.
For B2B, some prospects are worth a named, individually built approach rather than a campaign.
15
Build a landing experience and offer that speaks to this specific profile.
The language and the offer are written for this buyer specifically, down to the words the profile says she responds to.
Proving and Refining
16
Run every channel as a test cell against a control before rolling out.
Small, structured tests catch a bad assumption before it costs real budget.
17
Score and rank every lead that comes in.
So sales spends time on the ones who profile like gold, not just the ones who filled out a form.
18
Track which source delivers profitable customers, not just cheap leads.
Then reallocate budget toward the sources proving it, and away from the ones just proving volume.
19
Feed every new profitable customer back into the model.
The profile sharpens with every campaign. It's never a one-time exercise.
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