A campaign usually ends with a number. Some percentage of owners replied, a few of them seemed interested, and the next list goes out looking a lot like the last one.
That’s a missed opportunity. Every campaign is a chance to test something about your search: a market, a type of company, a message, a list source. The difference between a search that sharpens over time and one that just keeps sending is whether each campaign is built to answer a question.
Our October Market Matrix shows why this matters. Across 124,178 prospects emailed for DealBuff clients, the average interest rate was 1.6%. Inside that average, the same industry can respond four or five times better in one state than another. Those gaps are where your next campaign should start.
Decide What You’re Testing Before You Send
Before a campaign goes out, write down the question it’s meant to answer and the result that would change your plan.
“Is Utah manufacturing worth more of our time than Texas manufacturing?” is a question. “Let’s send to manufacturers in the Mountain West and see what happens” is a hope.
A good test changes one thing at a time. If you change the market, the message and the list source in the same campaign, a better result can’t tell you which change earned it. Hold the message steady while you compare markets. Hold the market steady while you compare messages.
Then set the decision rule ahead of time. For example: if interest in the new segment comes in above the industry average on at least a few hundred sends, it earns a larger share of next month’s outreach. Deciding this before the results arrive keeps a good week from turning into a new strategy.
Judge Results Against the Right Baseline
The portfolio average is a blunt comparison. Industries respond differently, so the useful benchmark is usually the industry’s own average.
| Industry | Prospects emailed | Interest across all states |
|---|---|---|
| Health tech and devices | 7,757 | 2.5% |
| Software and IT | 16,047 | 2.2% |
| Manufacturing | 16,384 | 1.3% |
| Construction | 8,429 | 0.8% |
| HVAC | 5,279 | 0.8% |
Interest is the share of prospects emailed whose replies were flagged as interested. October 2026 Market Matrix.
A 1.5% result means something different in HVAC, where the cross-state figure is 0.8%, than it does in health tech, where it’s 2.5%. The first may be one of your strongest segments. The second is below what that industry typically returns.
The same applies by state. Utah came in at 3.1% across 2,101 prospects. Virginia came in at 1.0% across 4,255. Both are large enough to take seriously, and they point to very different expectations for an industry-agnostic search in each state.
See the full Market Matrix
See how owners are responding by state and industry, with the number of sends behind every cell.
Download the Market MatrixTell Volume Problems From Approach Problems
Texas manufacturing is a useful case. It returned 0.6% interest across 1,555 prospects, against 1.3% for manufacturing overall. At the industry rate, that many sends would have produced roughly 20 interested replies. Texas produced about 9.
With a sample that large, the gap is unlikely to be a fluke. That changes what the next campaign should do. Sending more of the same will mostly produce more of the same. The better move is to change something about the approach and test it:
- The list. Are these companies a real fit for the buy box, or did broad filters pull in businesses the buyer wouldn’t pursue?
- The message. Does it explain why this buyer is interested in this kind of business, in terms an owner in that market would recognize?
- The contacts. Are emails reaching owners, or office managers and general inboxes?
- The competition. A heavily solicited market may need a more specific reason to reply.
Compare Utah manufacturing: 3.7% across 455 prospects, about 17 interested replies. That is a strong signal on a moderate sample. The right next step there is different: send more to similar companies and see whether the rate holds.
Match the Next Move to What You Learned
Most campaign results fall into a handful of patterns, and each points to a different next step.
| What you see | What it suggests | Next campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Strong interest on a small sample | Promising, not proven | Send a second batch with the same setup before shifting budget |
| Strong interest on a large sample | A real pocket of response | Expand: research more companies in that segment |
| Weak interest on a large sample | The approach isn’t landing | Change the message or the list, not the volume |
| Weak or no interest on a small sample | Not enough to judge | Keep it in rotation; don’t rule the market out yet |
| Good interest, few real conversations | Fit or qualification problem | Tighten the criteria and screen replies harder |
The Market Matrix only shows a rate once a segment reaches 100 sends, and that’s a sensible floor for your own tests too. Below it, a single reply moves the number by a full percentage point or more.
Track What Happens After the Reply
Interest is where the work starts. The matrix measures replies flagged as interested. Your search needs to know which of those turned into something.
For each segment you test, track how far conversations get: a first call, a second conversation, a look at the financials, a letter of intent. A segment with a modest reply rate that produces real conversations is worth more than a segment with a high rate full of owners who were only curious.
Over a few campaigns, this gives you something no database can: a record of where your buy box actually meets owners who are ready to talk.
Build a Search That Learns
A focused search isn’t one that sends less. It’s one where each campaign is designed to answer a question, read against the right benchmark, and followed by a deliberate change.
That’s the work behind a sourcing operation, and it’s what DealBuff does for buyers: connecting the list, the message, the replies and the follow-up so each round of outreach points more clearly toward the businesses you want to own.
See how owners are responding by state and industry in our latest Market Matrix. Download the Market Matrix
Want help designing your next campaign?
About the data: DealBuff Market Matrix, October 2026. It covers 124,178 prospects emailed for DealBuff clients from December 2024 to October 2026, with an overall interest rate of 1.6%. Reply counts in this post are estimates calculated from each segment’s rate and send volume. Interest is tagged by a classifier that reads generous, so compare segments to each other rather than treating any one number as a forecast. Results describe this outreach, not market-wide seller availability or acquisition success.
