136: Signal-Based Outbound is Overrated

Welcome back to The Practical Prospecting Newsletter!

Today, I’m sharing why signal-based outbound sounds great in theory, but in practice, it usually slows teams down and hurts results.

And why simple segmentation + simple messaging is the more effective approach.

Agenda:

• The Problem With “Signal-Based Outbound”

• The Real Goal of Outbound (That Most Teams Miss)

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The Problem With “Signal-Based Outbound”

Everyone is talking about signal-based outbound right now.

New job posting.
New funding.
New hire.
New initiative.

On paper, it sounds awesome. That’s why there’s endless content about it, and tons of tools built around it.

But after running thousands of outbound campaigns across dozens of companies, I’ve learned an uncomfortable truth:

Signal-based outbound is often a waste of time, especially at the beginning.

Let me explain why.

Reason #1: Most “signals” aren’t actually meaningful to the buyer

Signals usually feel important to us, not to them.

You end up sending emails like:

“Saw you’re hiring an SDR… figured you’ll probably need better data… want a demo?”

And half the time, the prospect doesn’t even remember the job post exists.

Instead of increasing relevance, the signal makes the message awkward. Or worse, it backfires. You’re anchoring your value to something the buyer doesn’t actually care about.

Reason #2: Signal-based outbound is often a crutch

A lot of people lean on signals because they haven’t figured out how to make pure cold outbound work at scale.

Signals become a shortcut for relevance.

Instead of learning how to:

• Clearly define a segment

• Articulate a strong value prop

• Write a message that resonates without context

They rely on “I saw X” as the opener.

Reason #3: Signals don’t scale (this is the big one)

In most markets, only 10–20% of accounts are showing real signals at any given time.

To give you an example, we just pulled a TAM of ~180k contacts for a client who wanted to run a campaign on people who just changed jobs.

Out of the 180k, only 4k of them had just changed jobs. That’s only 2.22% of their market.

That’s nowhere near enough volume to support a meaningful outbound motion or predictable pipeline.

Even worse, when people start with signal-based outbound, things do sometimes work, but now you don’t know why.

Was it the signal?
Was it the message?
Was it timing?

If you haven’t isolated your core value prop first, you’re flying blind.

You should:

1. Prove your message works on a broad segment

2. Make it convert consistently

3. Then layer in signals to boost conversion

And finally…

Reason #4: The hidden cost nobody talks about

Signal-based outbound quietly turns into:

• 15–30 micro-campaigns

• 5–50 leads per bucket

• Slightly different copy in each

• Constant tweaking, monitoring, and second-guessing

At that point, outbound stops being a system and turns into a fragile science project.

The Real Goal of Outbound (That Most Teams Miss)

When I design outbound campaigns, my goal is simple:

I’m trying to find the fewest possible segments where the same message still converts at a high rate.

Here’s a real example…

I worked with a client selling a platform to influencers and online community owners.

When we started, we did what most teams do, we over-segmented everything:

• What tech they were using

• What niche they were in

• How big their audience was

• Whether they were hiring

• How recently they launched

• Which social platform they use the most

• And more

The result was dozens of segments, but only hundreds or low thousands of leads per campaign.

Which meant we didn’t have enough volume to confidently answer the only question that matters: What actually works?

So we reset.

Instead of trying to be hyper personalized, we focused on just two segments with two clear offers:

• People who sell a course

  • Offer: “Have you considered adding a community to upsell your course customers? Happy to show how a few other [niche] creators set theirs up.”

• People who run a community

  • Offer: “Can we audit your community and share 3 specific ways others in [niche] are adding new members?”

That immediately gave us tens of thousands of leads per segment.

The result was two always-on campaigns that consistently converted meetings every day:

Why this works

When you focus on fewer segments:

• List building gets easier

• Testing gets faster

• Results get clearer

And you can spend your time improving the things that actually drive replies like your value prop, your problem framing, and your offer

Do this long enough and you can get to the point where cold email starts to run on autopilot.

You’re no longer rewriting copy every week or reacting to every new “signal.”

Your baseline pipeline becomes predictable.

Thanks for reading,

Jed

P.S. I’m launching my first-ever community in Q1 2026. It’ll include exclusive templates, in-depth campaign breakdowns, access to the exact SOPs/training videos my team and I use, and much MUCH more. You learn more and join the waitlist here!