How to build an ICP for fintech outbound campaigns

Cormac Repman
1 day ago
5 min read

Most fintech outbound campaigns fail not because the product is bad, but because the list is wrong. We've run thousands of cold calls through Glencoco, and the teams that hit their numbers fastest share one thing: a ruthlessly specific Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Without one, you're calling a spreadsheet. With one, you're calling your customer.

Why ICP Matters More in Fintech Than Anywhere Else

Fintech buying is different. Your buyer isn't just a title on a spreadsheet; they're solving a specific pain at a specific company size, in a specific vertical. A VP of Operations at a $50M fintech firm thinks differently than one at a $2B bank. A compliance officer at a credit union operates under different pressures than one at a neo-bank.

When we build calling campaigns, the teams that get 30%+ connect rates are calling into profiles they understand deeply. Those calling generic lists? 8-12% connects. That's not a small difference. That's the difference between a profitable campaign and one that dies on the vine.

The Three Dimensions of Fintech ICP

Your ICP needs to answer three questions simultaneously:

Who are they? (Buyer persona)

Where are they? (Company profile)

What's their problem? (The pain they're experiencing)

Most teams focus on just one. That's why their campaigns flatten. You need all three to work together.

Building Your Buyer Persona

Start with your best customer. Not your biggest customer, but your actual best. The one that signed fastest, expanded most, stayed longest.

What is their title? But more importantly, what is their day? A VP of Operations doesn't care about the same thing as a Director of Operations. A CFO doesn't have the same constraints as a Controller. Write down their real day-to-day:

What systems do they touch daily?

What metrics are they measured on?

Who do they have to convince before they can buy?

What happens if they don't solve this problem?

For fintech, some common high-intent personas are SVPs of Risk, Directors of Compliance, Heads of Operations, and CFOs at firms with recent funding rounds. But your list will be different. Your list should reflect what you actually sell.

One rule: if a title can apply to 50 different companies with 50 different priorities, it's too broad. "VP of Sales" means nothing. "VP of Sales at a B2B SaaS company with a $10M ARR SMB motion" means everything.

Define Your Ideal Company

This is where geography and GEO optimization matter. Fintech outbound isn't national anymore; it's hyperlocal or hyperspecific.

Define your company by:

Revenue size: Not just revenue bands. Are they pre-Series A, post-Series B, mid-market? Each has different buying authority.

Funding recency: A fintech that just raised Series A is in growth mode. They're hiring. They're buying. A profitable private company is cost-conscious.

Vertical focus: Are they lending, payments, wealth, crypto, insurtech, embedded finance? Each vertical has different pain points.

Geography: This matters for compliance, sales tax, regulatory focus. A UK fintech solving GDPR issues thinks differently than a US one.

Customer type: Are they B2C, B2B, B2B2C? Are they direct to consumers or through partners?

Create a simple matrix. I'll give an example:

Target Company Profile: Series B fintech (£3-8M ARR), UK/EU based, payments or lending vertical, B2B or B2B2C motion, raised in last 18 months.

That's not generic. That's specific enough that you know what job they're hiring for, what their burn rate probably is, and what their growth pressures look like.

Identify the Pain Point

Here's where most campaigns break down. They reverse-engineer their product pitch into a "pain." That's not a pain. That's a feature disguised as a problem.

A real pain point sounds like this: "We've added £2M in ARR, but our operations team is still using 4 different platforms. They're missing compliance checks. We're at regulatory risk."

Not this: "You should use our integration platform."

The first one is something a human cares about enough to take a meeting. The second one is a feature.

Interview your sales team. What do customers say in discovery calls before they commit? That's your pain. Not what you think the pain is. What they actually say.

The List-Building Phase

Now you build your actual prospecting list.

Start with companies that match your company profile. Use a combination of:

Public data: Crunchbase for funding, LinkedIn for hiring signals, Companies House (UK) for financials

Behavioral signals: Companies that recently hired operations, compliance, or finance roles are often in the middle of a problem

Intent data: LinkedIn engagement, hiring announcements, new funding close dates

Then filter down ruthlessly. If a company doesn't tick every single box on your profile, it shouldn't be on the list.

We've tested this: lists that are 40% smaller but perfectly targeted perform 3-4x better than larger, looser lists. Your call time is expensive. Spend it on the right companies.

Test Your ICP Before You Dial

Before you launch a full calling campaign, test your ICP with 50 calls.

Does your persona answer the phone? Do they have the problem you think they have? When you mention your pain point, do they nod or do they say "interesting, but we don't have that issue"?

If even 10 of your 50 calls land on someone who doesn't match, your ICP is too loose. Go back and tighten it.

This sounds slow. It's not. One week of testing saves three weeks of calling the wrong list.

Common ICP Mistakes in Fintech

Mistake 1: Assuming company size equals decision-making power. A £500M bank moves slower than a £5M fintech. Don't conflate size with speed.

Mistake 2: Chasing titles instead of problems. "All CFOs will care" is false. Only CFOs at companies with your specific problem will care.

Mistake 3: Ignoring funding stage. A bootstrapped firm and a VC-backed one are in completely different headstates. They need different messages.

Mistake 4: Forgetting that ICPs change. Your ICP for customer acquisition looks different from your ICP for upsell. If you're building a retention product, your buyer is inside the existing customer. If you're building an acquisition tool, your buyer is outside them.

Your ICP is the operating system for your entire outbound motion. The dialer, the script, the email sequence, the list size, the campaign length. Everything flows from it.

At Nurturance, we build ICPs for fintech and insurtech teams using our Glencoco calling network. We don't call generic lists. We build calling campaigns against profiles we understand. That's why our teams hit 25-35% connect rates and close real meetings.

If your outbound is flatlined, your ICP probably isn't the issue. It's the absence of one.

Ready to build a fintech calling campaign with real targeting? Let's talk. Book a call with us at nurturance.uk/schedule.