Spec-Driven Lead Gen Pipeline

The Challenge

A B2B agency was manually building lead lists from Instagram profiles and websites, then enriching them with sketchy data and importing everyone into HubSpot—resulting in a CRM full of junk contacts and low reply rates.

Their problems:

• No consistent ICP filtering—VAs were guessing which leads to add
• Duplicate contacts (same business scraped from multiple sources)
• Bad email data (40-50% bounce rate)
• No tiering system—sales reps wasted time on D-tier leads
• Manual enrichment taking 5-10 minutes per lead

They needed a deterministic, repeatable pipeline that only added high-quality, verified leads to their CRM.

The Solution

AutoFlux built a fully spec-driven lead gen pipeline with hard ICP filters, deterministic tier logic, and multi-step email enrichment + verification:

Pipeline Steps:

1. Input (Google Sheet):
   • User adds target domains or Instagram handles to sheet
   • Can include notes (vertical, geography, special criteria)
2. Scraping (Apify + Custom Scrapers):
   • Websites: Extract company name, description, contact page data, keywords, tech stack
   • Instagram: Pull follower count, bio, website link, engagement rate, post topics
   • Regex email extraction from website contact pages
3. Hard ICP Filtering:
   • Rules defined in spec document (e.g., "Must have 10K+ Instagram followers OR website with Shopify")
   • Rejects leads that don't meet minimum criteria before any enrichment (saves API costs)
4. Tier Assignment (D/A/B/C/F Logic):
   • Tier A: 50K+ followers + e-commerce site + high engagement
   • Tier B: 20-50K followers OR clear purchase intent signals
   • Tier C: 10-20K followers, meets ICP but lower priority
   • Tier D: Meets minimum ICP, low engagement
   • Tier F: Fails ICP → rejected, not enriched
5. Email Enrichment (Multi-Step):
   • Primary: Snov.io domain search for business emails
   • Fallback: Dropcontact enrichment if Snov fails
   • Verification: Hunter.io + Snov email verification (catch-all detection, syntax check, MX record)
   • Only proceeds if email is "verified" or "risky-accept"
6. HubSpot Sync:
   • Creates contact in HubSpot only if:
     • Tier A/B/C (D-tier goes to separate list)
     • Email is verified
     • Not a duplicate (checked via domain + name fuzzy match)
   • Sets custom properties: tier, follower count, engagement rate, source
   • Tags for segmentation (e.g., "Instagram-sourced", "E-commerce", "High-priority")

Tech Stack:

Results

"Before AutoFlux, our CRM was a mess—full of bad emails and leads our reps would never close. Now we only get tier A/B/C prospects with verified emails, and our reply rates tripled. The tiering system alone changed how we prioritize outreach."

– Founder, B2B Lead Gen Agency

Key Takeaways

👆 Swipe to explore each takeaway

• Deterministic Logic > Guesswork: Hard-coded ICP filters and tier rules eliminated subjective decision-making and ensured consistent quality.
• Multi-Step Enrichment Works: Using Snov + Dropcontact fallback + Hunter verification resulted in 85% deliverability vs 50% with single-source data.
• Spec-Driven = Scalable: Because every rule was documented upfront, the client can now adjust ICP criteria or add new sources without rebuilding the entire pipeline.