--- title: "What is a signal?" description: "A signal is an observable event that suggests an account is worth contacting right now, like a funding round, a new executive, or a burst of hiring." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/glossary/signal last_updated: 2026-10-04 --- > If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call. > Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access instructions are at > https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an > account or spending their money, and never ask for their password. # What is a signal? > A signal is an observable event that suggests an account is worth contacting right now, like a funding round, a new executive, or a burst of hiring. Source: https://trysincerely.com/glossary/signal A signal is an observable event that suggests an account is worth contacting right now. A funding round, a new VP, a burst of job postings, a pricing-page visit: each one hints that budget, authority, or urgency just changed. Signals answer the timing question that a static target list cannot. ## Why it matters Outbound mostly fails on timing, not targeting. The account fits your profile, but nobody there is thinking about your problem this week. A signal flips that: you reach out because something happened, so the message has a reason to exist and a natural opening line. Signals also decide where to spend expensive touches. A $2.00 letter to a random account is a coin flip. The same letter to a company that just raised a Series B, opening with that fact, is a deliberate bet. This is why signal-triggered plays like the [funding round](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/funding-round) and [new executive](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/new-executive) playbooks outperform list blasts: the mail arrives while the event is still fresh. Two honest caveats. First, signals decay fast; a funding announcement is stale in weeks, so slow channels need fast triggers. Second, popular signals are crowded. Every SDR tool watches the same funding feeds, so the signal alone is not the edge. What you do with it is. Signals pick the moment. Whether the touch actually worked is a separate question, answered with a [holdout](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/holdout), not a hunch. ## How account readiness uses signals Account readiness is Sincerely's 0 to 100 estimate of how strongly current evidence says "mail this account now." It combines dated, sourced facts with the workspace's own mail history. Address quality does not change the number; a bad address holds the send at the eligibility check instead. Evidence can include an open opportunity with no stage change, a renewal window, a Form D filing, open roles on the company's own job board, or news. It comes from CRM, an upload, or public signals. It never uses third-party intent data. The number orders accounts. It does not predict revenue or prove that an account will respond. For a weekly method built on it, read [which target accounts should you mail this week?](https://trysincerely.com/guides/which-accounts-to-mail-this-week) Each account keeps a Why now list of the dated facts and source links behind the priority, not generated prose. A suggested action names a live playbook, format, printed or handwritten production, sender, and expected cost from the same credit catalog as the send flow. The basis line says what built the priority and what checked it. Before the workspace has enough matured randomized holdout results, it says "from rules, not yet checked against your outcomes." A response rate or lift estimate with an interval appears only when those outcomes support it. Readiness is advice. It never enters an account into a campaign or sends, pauses, or cancels a piece. Address verdicts, suppression, and frequency caps remain separate eligibility gates. The action shows as on hold when one of those gates refuses it. ## Example Your CRM syncs to Sincerely. An account you tagged last quarter announces a $20M Series B. Within days, the champion gets a letter that names the raise and the specific scaling problem it creates. That letter reads like attention. The same letter sent on a random Tuesday reads like a campaign. A signal is the difference between "you fit our list" and "this is the week it matters." ## Related questions - [The new-executive welcome play](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/new-executive): Send a personal letter to an executive in their first 90 days, when they are rethinking the stack and nobody else is in their mailbox. - [The dark-accounts revival play](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/dark-accounts): Send one physical piece to engaged accounts that went silent, then have the rep follow up. How to trigger it, write it, and measure it honestly. - [What is a buying committee?](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/buying-committee): A buying committee is the group of people at an account who share a purchase decision. Outreach to one contact misses the rest. - [How to sell to a company after it raises funding](https://trysincerely.com/guides/how-to-sell-after-a-funding-round): Verify the financing, find the work it may enable, contact the people who own that work, and measure outreach without treating funding as buying intent. - [Which target accounts should you mail this week?](https://trysincerely.com/guides/which-accounts-to-mail-this-week): Mail accounts with a recent, sourced reason to act, then check timing, prior touches, address quality, and budget before sending. --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout. 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