The backlog that turned out to be a different audience

    Who this was forA B2B company with inbound site traffic and a separate outbound team.

    Two populations that were never the same list

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    The drawing

    About two years ofvisitor exportsRead only merge, rulelogged per rowJust under 10,000peopleOutbound prospectdatabaseOverlap check1.7 percent overlap

    The problem

    About two years of website visitor identification data sat in a folder of exports. Most of it had never been contacted. The working assumption was simple: that's a neglected backlog, and outbound should work through it.

    Nobody had checked how many distinct people were in there, or how much of it outbound had already touched.

    What we built

    A read only merge with scripts that can be rerun. Each row was classified as a person or a company using the vendor's own rule, with fallbacks. The rule that fired was recorded on every row, and every source file got a checksum.

    We excluded 4 of the source files instead of forcing them to fit. The document says which ones.

    What it produced

    • More than 170,000 rows collapsed to just under 10,000 unique people and about 25,000 companies.
    • 80 percent of the person records carry a work email.
    • Almost none of it had been contacted.
    • Against the outbound database, the overlap was about 160 records. That's 1.7 percent.

    So it wasn't a backlog. Outbound had been prospecting one population. The website had been attracting another. They barely touched.

    That changes what you do with it. Nobody dropped anything. This was an audience outbound had never targeted, and it needs its own messaging.

    What runs now

    The merge scripts stay in the client's folder and can be rerun on new exports.

    Your scenario

    If you're sitting on an untouched pile of records and calling it a backlog, check the overlap before you assign it. Send us the export folder and we'll tell you what's actually in it.

    Related tools: Leadfeeder, Clay, Company Identity Resolver, CRM Dedupe Plan

    Some of the links on this page are affiliate links.

    Client names are always kept confidential at MMG, so they have been removed from this case study.

    Published June 23, 2026

    Last updated August 13, 2026