How to build a prospect list with RocketReach

A prospect list is a set of specific people at specific companies who match your ideal customer profile and are worth contacting. RocketReach supplies the raw material for one. It says it covers about 700 million professionals and 60 million companies, with more than 50 search filters across work history, industry, and location. To build a list by hand, you run a search in RocketReach for the titles and kinds of companies you want, scan the profiles that come back, and look up the people who look right to get their contact details. RocketReach counts a lookup only when it finds and verifies an email address or phone number, and it refunds the lookup otherwise.

Once you have the contacts, you get them out of RocketReach in one of two ways. You can export them as a file, which counts against your plan's export limit: on annual billing, that's 1,200 a year on Essentials, 3,600 on Pro, and 20,000 on Ultimate. On the Pro and Ultimate plans, you can also send contacts straight to Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, or Bullhorn through RocketReach's own integrations.

That route works, but it leaves the hard part to you. A search filter matches words, not fit. A title search for "VP of Marketing" misses the "Head of Growth" who does the same job, and it returns people at companies that are too small, already your customers, or competitors. Nothing in the search tells you whether a company has a reason to buy now, or why any one person is worth a salesperson's time. If you look up everyone who matches, you spend your lookups and exports on people you'll later throw away.

A good result is a list you could hand to sales today. Every person on it fits your profile and still holds the role. Each one works at a company you'd want as a customer and has a work email whose verification status you can see. Each also carries a short reason they were chosen.

Kite does that work for you. It decides which companies and people belong on the list, qualifies them before it spends a lookup, and delivers the list with the research attached.

Start by asking Kite for the list you want, in the Kite web app or in Slack:

"Use RocketReach to find 40 heads of operations at US logistics companies with 50 to 500 employees."

You can also hand it your target accounts and let it find the people:

"Here are 60 companies we want to reach. Find the person who runs marketing at each one in RocketReach."

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Because of that research, Kite already knows your ideal customer profile, your current customers, and your competitors when you ask. It proposes the titles, seniority, company size, industries, and locations to target, along with how many people to deliver and where the list should go. Confirm the plan or adjust it, and Kite starts.

You'll need to connect your RocketReach account with an API key. RocketReach isn't one of Kite's built-in sources, so Kite searches and looks people up through your account, and the lookups count against your RocketReach plan. If you want the finished list in your CRM, a Google Sheet, or an Airtable base, connect that account too. Otherwise, Kite delivers the list in the conversation as a table and a file.

Kite starts with the accounts, because the right person at the wrong company is still the wrong prospect. When you name the kind of company you want, Kite searches RocketReach's companies by name or keyword, such as "freight forwarding" or "third-party logistics." When you supply your own accounts, it looks up each company's domain from its name, because RocketReach keys its other company details to the domain.

For each company, Kite reads the employee size range and the industries RocketReach lists, and it keeps only the companies that match your profile. A keyword search for logistics companies can return national carriers, software vendors that sell to logistics firms, and one-person brokerages in the same set of results, and the size and industry checks separate them. Kite also drops your existing customers and your competitors at this stage, so no lookup is ever spent on them. When RocketReach's keyword search doesn't surface enough fitting companies, Kite can add companies from its built-in research sources, which search by industry, headcount, location, and funding, and then check those companies in RocketReach the same way.

Kite reads each company's technology, funding history, and growth in RocketReach to decide which accounts have a reason to buy now. A company that raised a round recently has new budget. A company that's been growing fast is hiring people who need new tools. A company's technology shows whether it runs a product you replace or connect to.

Kite moves the accounts with a timely reason to the top of the list and records that reason, such as "Raised a Series B in August" or "Uses the help desk tool you replace." It can also check recent company news from its own research sources, such as a new marketing leader or a product launch, which gives the outreach something specific to open with.

Kite searches RocketReach for people at the companies that passed, using the job titles and keywords that describe the role you need. It reads each title against your profile instead of trusting a keyword match. A title can contain the right words without being the right role, as with a "Marketing Operations Coordinator" turning up in a search for marketing leaders. A title can also describe the right role in different words, as with "Head of Growth" for a company that has no VP of Marketing.

When a company has two plausible contacts, Kite keeps the stronger match as the primary contact and holds the other as a backup. If you asked for the person who owns a decision, such as buying marketing software, Kite picks the most senior person whose job includes it rather than the most senior person at the company.

Kite qualifies each person before it looks them up, because the lookup is the step that uses your plan. First it confirms that the person still holds the role at that company, using their public profile or the company's own pages, and it drops anyone who has moved on. When the list will feed an outreach campaign, it also removes anyone who has opted out of hearing from you.

Every person who passes gets a fit score from one to five with a one-line reason, such as "Head of operations at a 220-person freight forwarder that just opened a second warehouse." When the list runs past about fifteen people, Kite splits it into primary and secondary groups so your team knows where to start. Kite looks people up in order of fit, so the strongest prospects get their contact details first.

If fewer people qualify than you asked for, Kite tells you how many it found and why the rest fell short. A short list of strong prospects is worth more than a long one padded with weak fits.

Kite looks up each qualified person in RocketReach to get their full profile and current company in a single lookup, along with their work email. Some lookups take a moment to finish on RocketReach's side, so Kite checks back on them and keeps qualifying the rest of the list while it waits.

Kite keeps each email's verification status exactly as RocketReach returns it, and an email with no verification status is labeled unverified. A missing email stays marked as not found rather than guessed, so a rep knows which addresses are safe to send to. Kite includes only professional details, which means it keeps the work email and leaves personal email addresses and phone numbers off the list, even when your RocketReach plan includes them.

When the list is ready, Kite posts a summary in the conversation where you asked. It reports how many people it delivered against how many you asked for, how many have a work email, and who it dropped and why. The full list comes with it as a table you can scan in the conversation and a file you can download.

If you connected a destination, Kite also saves the list there. It can create the people as contacts or leads in your CRM, linked to their companies, with a note explaining why each one fits. It can also write them as rows in a Google Sheet or an Airtable base. From there, Kite can research each primary prospect's company and write a personalized outreach email for each one, which it sends from your team's Kite address or a connected email product once you approve the campaign. If you want fresh prospects regularly, ask Kite to run the same job on a schedule, and it will leave out the people it already delivered.

When Kite finishes, you have a qualified list of people your team can contact right away, and a record in the conversation of how the list was built.