Sales reps have the most success with leads that resemble closely those they have already closed in the past. Previously, finding companies similar to earlier sales wins was a highly manual process as there are many factors to consider to come to a qualitative decision. Combining Ocean.io and Cargo allows growth teams to systematically generate lists of new lookalike leads.
This template explains how to set up a workflow that triggers from a new closed-won account detected in the CRM, searches for lookalikes based on domain and specific keywords in Ocean.io, and enriches and integrates these accounts into your CRM.
The Ocean.io integration is available to use Cargo’s in-platform credits. See the documentation for instructions on setting up connectors and using Cargo credits.
To begin, create a new workflow on a CRM-based data model, on the companies or accounts object, where a column can be used to identify if the company has successfully been closed-won or not.
Inside the workflow, website domains are passed to the Ocean.io enrich action to retrieve firmographic data to refine the lookalike search in the following action. The most decisive attribute in this case is the keywords field (which describes how accounts describe themselves on their webpage). This has a big impact on the pertinence of any lookalike suggestions by Ocean.io.
Feel free to use other data from the CRM to supplement the Ocean.io search action, such as geography and company size.
The Ocean.io algorithm performs best when provided with as much relevant data as possible to determine how closely a company resembles your existing clients. Use the enriched firmographic data from the previous step to search for similar companies that match your ICP.
Step 3: Find Stakeholders at Lookalike Companies #
Use the website domains provided by Ocean.io with your preferred enrichment node to find stakeholders with relevant job titles (e.g., PeopleDataLabs, Waterfall.io, available with Cargo credits).
Each enrichment provider also allows you to specify additional filters (e.g., location, seniority) to refine the search, ensuring that only the right contact persona is returned.
Pro tip: Advanced Cargo users combine Sales Navigator integration alongside classic enrichment providers to maximize the chances of successfully finding relevant stakeholders. You can concatenate the outputs of any successful stakeholder enrichment into a combined array of contacts that can subsequently be pushed to a sales sequence or the CRM.
Update your CRM with the contacts found in the previous step for the lookalike accounts. Ensure each contact is populated with the necessary fields (e.g., first name, last name, email, job title, etc.).
It’s also recommended to quickly check against existing contacts in the CRM and create a new one if absent to avoid duplicate outreach.
Use a .map() method inside a Cargo expression to map any additional data to every contact retrieved by an enrichment provider, such as the original client who inspired the lookalike retrieval. This is often useful to populate in the CRM to keep track of new contacts added.
With the stakeholders’ emails from the previous step, Cargo allows you to take individual actions for each contact. Users often reach out using their preferred email marketing tool integrated with Cargo (e.g., Instantly, Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo, Smartlead).
Optionally, trigger a Slack alert for high-priority records to an Account Executive to expedite a touchpoint.
Expected Outcomes
By implementing this workflow, you can:
Automatically discover companies similar to your best customers
