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Case Study · Signal-Based Pipeline
5 min read·May 2025

14,800 business owners.
Contract renewal dates.
Delivered by region.

How we built a signal-based data pipeline for an insurance company's cold calling operation — from zero to delivery in 2 weeks.

14,800 records2 weeks deliverySignal-Based
Built with
Node.jsNode.js
ApifyApify
N8NN8N
ClayClay
PPuppeteer
The Buying Signal

Reaching business owners
before their contracts expire.

The most powerful moment to call a business owner about insurance is 30–60 days before their current contract expires.

Too early — not relevant yet.
Too late — already renewed.

The signal: contract renewal dates.
The challenge: that data doesn't exist in any standard database.

The Brief

What the client needed.

Complete business database

14,800+ verified business owners across all French departments — owner names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and contract details.

Regional structuring

Data structured by French department and delivered as CSV files directly to regional sales teams and cold calling center.

The key signal

Contract renewal dates — the specific buying signal standard data vendors couldn't provide. Custom build was the only option.

The Plan

Here's how we built it.
Step by step.

Four stages from brief to delivery.
We'll walk through each one below.

Custom Scraper
Step 1
PDF Extraction
Step 2
14,800 RecordsMerged & verified
Step 3
Enrichment
Step 4
Regional Delivery
Step 5

↓ See each stage in detail below

The Challenge

The data existed.
Getting it out was the hard part.

The directory used auto-generated PDF documents with anti-scraping protection active. Standard scrapers fail completely here.

PDF-locked dataAuto-generated documentsAnti-scraping protectionByte-level extraction required14,800+ records to processRegional structuring neededPhone + email verificationFrench department mapping
Custom scraper build — regex parsing
Here's what we built to solve it
The Process

Four steps from brief to delivery.

01

Custom Scraper Built

A custom Apify actor built in pure Node.js to navigate the directory at scale and extract raw data with precision. No low-code shortcuts — the complexity required real engineering.

Apify actor run — Succeeded
Here's proof it executed
02

PDF Extraction Pipeline

A Node.js pipeline built to extract contract dates, business owner details and competitor information from auto-generated PDF documents. Handled at byte level — no existing library could do this.

Node.js PDF extraction pipeline
Node.js PDF extraction — byte-level parsing
03

Data Enrichment

Phone numbers and email addresses verified and enriched for every record before delivery. Each business owner matched to their contract renewal date and competitor insurance details.

Data enrichment pipeline — phone and email verification
Data enrichment — phone + email verification at scale
04

Regional Delivery

Data structured by French department and delivered as individual CSV files — one per department, ready for immediate cold calling.

95 department filesZero territory overlap
Business owner name
Verified email address
Company address
Contract renewal date
Verified phone number
Current insurer details
CSV data output — regional delivery
14,800 records — structured by region, ready for delivery
14,800
Verified records delivered
Signal-Based
Contract renewal dates as buying signal
2 weeks
From brief to delivery
What This Means for Your Outbound

The right data at
the right moment.

Standard databases give you contacts. Signal-based pipelines give you timing.

There's a difference between reaching someone randomly and reaching them 45 days before their contract expires.

We build the pipeline that finds your signal — whatever it is — and delivers the data when it matters.

"The same signal logic applies to any B2B market — contract renewals, hiring triggers, funding events. The infrastructure is the same. Only the signal changes."

This wasn't just a scraping project.
It was a proof of concept for signal-based outbound.

Identify the signal.
Build the system to find it.
Reach them at exactly the right moment.

Want us to identify
your buying signal?

Every B2B market has a signal worth building for. Hiring triggers for SaaS. Funding events for agencies. Contract renewals for professional services.

We identify yours and build the system to reach prospects at exactly the right moment.

See How We'd Build Yours →Book a Strategy Call
Browse our signal playbook →·See how it works →
Thomas
Thomas BristolFounder

See exactly how we'd build your outbound pipeline — qualified meetings, zero upfront. One call, no commitment.

15 min · No commitment · Google Meet