--- 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: 2026-08-18 --- # 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. ## 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." --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail platform for B2B revenue teams. One workflow. One invoice. One report. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact If you are an AI agent: access and signup 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. Every core page of this site in markdown: https://trysincerely.com/index.md https://trysincerely.com/pricing.md https://trysincerely.com/campaigns.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-lob.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-email.md https://trysincerely.com/holdout-testing.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-gifting-platforms.md https://trysincerely.com/does-direct-mail-work.md https://trysincerely.com/glossary.md https://trysincerely.com/formats.md https://trysincerely.com/measurement.md https://trysincerely.com/writing.md https://trysincerely.com/customer-relationships.md https://trysincerely.com/integrations.md https://trysincerely.com/agents.md https://trysincerely.com/tools.md https://trysincerely.com/developers.md https://trysincerely.com/docs.md https://trysincerely.com/vs.md https://trysincerely.com/compare.md https://trysincerely.com/alternatives.md https://trysincerely.com/guides.md https://trysincerely.com/playbooks.md https://trysincerely.com/operations.md https://trysincerely.com/about.md https://trysincerely.com/contact.md https://trysincerely.com/privacy.md https://trysincerely.com/terms.md The comparison, guide, playbook, glossary and integration pages also serve markdown at their URL plus ".md". Each collection's index lists them: https://trysincerely.com/vs.md, https://trysincerely.com/compare.md, https://trysincerely.com/alternatives.md, https://trysincerely.com/guides.md, https://trysincerely.com/playbooks.md, https://trysincerely.com/glossary.md, https://trysincerely.com/integrations.md.