B2B Leads

Overview#

B2B Leads is Gene's own list of real estate agencies and developers. Use it when you want to find and contact other real estate companies.

It sits at the top of Flows > Outbound > Cold email, above your email campaigns. It has no page or menu item of its own any more: an old B2B leads link or bookmark opens Cold email, with any filters in the link still applied. Opening Cold email from a newsletter's Send with a campaign goes straight to the campaign wizard, without B2B leads above it.

You shape an audience by market, company type, how the companies can be contacted and, if you like, the job title of the person to write to, then pick who to reach. The page has two views over the same filters:

• Companies (the default): the companies themselves, one row each, so you can choose exactly who Gene messages.
• Overview: the counts behind the same filters, to see how big the market is and what it is made of.

A company's email and phone stay hidden until Gene messages it:

• Browsing the list is free and unlimited.
• You see each company's name, type, city and country, whether it can be reached by email or WhatsApp, and which job titles its website names. The email and phone themselves are masked, and so are the people's names.
• They become yours at the moment Gene sends that company a message for you.
• From then on it is an ordinary lead in Gene App: it appears in Contacts, it lands in your Inbox when it replies, and Gene's assistant handles the conversation like any other.

Companies#

Each row shows the company's name, type, city and country, with its email and phone masked. When the company's own website names someone with one of the job titles you can target, the row says which, for example "Owner, Agent on file". It shows the titles only, never who they are. Only companies Gene can reach right now are listed: each has a verified email, a verified mobile for WhatsApp, or both.

• Search company name narrows the list by name, on top of the filters in the rail.
• Tick companies one by one, or tick the box in the header to select the page. Once the whole page is ticked you can Select all that match, across every page.
• The bar above the list shows how many you selected, how many of them can be reached by email and by WhatsApp, and what a message costs: emails are free, a WhatsApp message is 1 credit. Start outreach starts a run on exactly that selection.
• A company Gene has already messaged for you shows as unlocked, with its email and phone from your own contact. Click its name to open it in Contacts.
• A company marked Not available right now has unsubscribed, or another Gene workspace messaged it recently. It cannot be selected.

One run takes up to 5,000 companies.

Overview#

Pick filters from the rail on the left and the Overview describes the matching set:

• How many companies match, and across how many markets.
• How many have a verified email, a verified phone, or both.
• The split between agencies, developers and other firms.
• The market segments those companies work in, and the languages their websites are in.

Filters#

• Markets
• Company type
• Contactability
• Phone line type (a mobile can be messaged on WhatsApp, a landline cannot)
• Job title
• Segments
• Website language

Markets, company type and segments each have an Is / Not switch, so you can include some and rule out others in the same audience.

Job title#

Job title picks who Gene writes to at each company: Owner or principal, Director, Manager or Agent. You can pick more than one. With a title picked, the Companies list narrows to the companies whose own website names someone with that title, and an outreach run writes to that person instead of the office inbox (see Who the email is addressed to). Assistants, receptionists and other staff are never offered.

Gene learns the titles by reading each company's team and about pages when it enriches the B2B data, so the number of companies with people on file grows as more sites are read.

The Overview's counts do not use this filter: they size the market without it. The Companies list and the outreach queue do apply it.

Two things the Overview will tell you instead of numbers#

• "We do not cover that market yet." The list is enriched market by market, and only enriched companies are safe to contact. The page names the markets that are ready.
• "That is too narrow to describe." Below about 25 matching companies the numbers stop being a market and start being a single firm, so the page asks you to drop a filter.

If you search a market we do not cover, you can tell us you want it. That is what decides which market gets built next.

Starting outreach#

When a selection has companies Gene can actually reach, Start outreach walks you through three steps. Start it from the bar above the Companies list to message the companies you selected, or from the Overview to let Gene pick within your filters.

1. Who to reach#

• Name the run.
• Pick a channel: email, or WhatsApp for companies with a verified mobile.
• From the Overview, set how many companies. From the Companies list the number is your selection, so the dialog only asks how many per day.
• With a job title picked, a run started from the Overview only queues the companies whose website names someone with that title, so the dialog's market figure is more than will be messaged.

The dialog tells you how many of your selection can be reached each way, which is usually fewer than the total. On WhatsApp, only the companies with a verified mobile are messaged; on email, only those with a verified email.

The daily figure is spread across your working day rather than sent in one burst. That is gentler on a WhatsApp number and reads less like a blast on email.

2. What to say#

• A first message, and up to four follow-ups with a wait between each.
• Use {{company}} for the company name.
• By email you can also use {{first_name}} and {{job_title}} for the person the email is addressed to: the firm's decision maker, or the person with the job title you picked (see below). When Gene has no name for the firm, {{first_name}} reads "there" and {{job_title}} is left out, so "Hi {{first_name}}" still reads well.
• Keep them under 60 words.
• By email, Add spintax under each message adds wording choices like {Hi|Hello}, so each company gets slightly different words. Your merge tags and links stay as written, Preview shows what three leads would get and Undo puts back what you had. See Write the sequence.
• By email, each message opens with a greeting and closes with a sign-off from your assistant's name and company, added only when your message has none. You do not need to write either.

Who the email is addressed to#

Each company still gets one email. Who it goes to depends on whether you picked a job title.

No job title picked. The email goes to the company's main inbox. What changes is who it greets: when Gene's data names the firm's top decision maker (an owner, principal, director or CEO), the email opens "Hi Sarah," and {{first_name}} and {{job_title}} are that person. Assistants, sales agents, office, HR and property managers are never picked. When nobody qualifies, the email opens "Hello,". Only the name and job title are kept, on the company's contact.

A job title picked. The email is addressed to the person at that company with that title, the most senior first when you picked several. When the company's own website published that person's address on the company's domain and it verifies, the email goes straight to them. Otherwise it goes to the office inbox, still addressed to them. A personal address on another domain (a Gmail, say) is never used. The contact Gene creates is that person when the email went to their own address, with their name, job title and company; when it went to the office inbox, the contact is the company, with who it was addressed to on it.

The follow-ups go to the same address and greet the same person. Someone who unsubscribes silences their whole company, for every Gene workspace. WhatsApp messages always go to the company's number and greet generically.

3. What it costs#

Emails cost nothing. WhatsApp is paid per message sent, and every step of the sequence counts:

• Email: free. You only pay for the sending mailboxes (12 credits a month each), so a 10,000-company run with four emails each costs no credits.
• WhatsApp: 1 credit per message. 250 companies with one message each is 250 credits, and adding a follow-up doubles it.

A follow-up is charged when it goes out, not when the run starts, so a company that replies (which stops its sequence) costs nothing more.

This step shows the total against your balance. If your balance does not cover the run, it says:

• How far the run does get.
• Roughly how many days that is at your pace.
• Exactly how much to top up, which you can do without leaving the screen.

What you need before you start#

• WhatsApp: a connected WhatsApp number. Without one, Start outreach stops with "No WhatsApp number is connected" and a Connect WhatsApp button that opens Settings > Communication > WhatsApp.
• Email: an outreach mailbox, ready or still warming (see Sending infrastructure). B2B email only ever goes out from these mailboxes (see Sending from the warmed mailboxes), so a connected Gmail or a verified sending domain on its own is not enough to start an email run. Without a mailbox, Start outreach says the workspace has none yet, with a Set up email button that opens Settings > Communication > Email.

When the first messages go out#

Once you start the run, Gene App tells you when the first message goes out, shown in your own time: "Gene starts messaging them now", "today at 9:00 AM", "tomorrow at 9:00 AM", or a date.

Each day's companies are spread over eight hours from 9:00 in your workspace's timezone. A run started before 9:00 waits for 9:00; a run started later in the day begins right away.

By email, the messages only go out from a mailbox that has finished warming, so a cold run never puts its volume on a mailbox still building its reputation, or on your real domain:

• A mailbox has finished warming: the time above, as on WhatsApp.
• Your mailboxes are still in their 14 days: the date the first one gets there, for example "Gene starts emailing them on Oct 21, when your mailboxes finish warming up."
• The 14 days are done but the score has not reached 90 yet: no date, since the score decides it: "Gene starts emailing them when your mailboxes finish warming up."

Until a mailbox is ready, the companies you queued simply wait, and nothing is charged for them.

While a run is going#

Gene works through the list at your pace. Each company is messaged once, and at that moment it becomes a contact in Gene App with its full details: name, address, phone, website. On a run aimed at a job title, the contact also carries the person's name and job title.

• It appears in Contacts.
• The message Gene sent shows in your Inbox.
• When they reply, the conversation continues there, with the assistant handling it like any other lead.

If a WhatsApp run runs out of credits, it pauses rather than failing silently, and picks up where it left off once you top up.

By email from the warmed mailboxes, each one sends up to its own daily limit (see Sending from the warmed mailboxes). When every mailbox has reached it, the rest of that day's companies wait for tomorrow rather than failing.

Under Your outreach you can see how far each run has got: how many of the companies have been contacted, and what percentage of the list that covers. The companies not reached yet keep their email and phone hidden.

Two things Gene does quietly#

• It will not message a company that another Gene workspace contacted recently, so nobody receives four near-identical emails from four of our customers.
• It re-checks the unsubscribe list at the moment of sending, not just when the run started.

Saving an audience, and stopping a run#

Save keeps the shape you have built, not the companies in it, so an audience you save today picks up companies that become contactable later. The number beside a saved audience is what it matched when you saved it, so if it has grown you can see that.

Any running outreach can be paused and restarted from the Your outreach list.

Warning

Cancel is final: it discards everything that has not been sent yet.

Tips#

• Filter to a verified email if you plan to run email outreach, and to a mobile line if you plan to use WhatsApp. The counts update as you go, so you can see the cost of each requirement.
• Start broad and narrow one filter at a time. Each option in the rail shows how many of your current matches carry it, so you can see what a click would cost you before making it.
• Know the firms you want? Search them by name on the Companies list and tick them, rather than describing them with filters.
• There is no export. The list stays with Gene; what you take away are the companies Gene has actually contacted for you.