How to Find B2B Leads With Instantly's SuperSearch Tool

SuperSearch is Instantly's contact database, reachable inside the app at the lead-finder path. Their documentation describes it as the replacement for what was previously called Lead Finder, which is why you will still see both names used, sometimes on the same page.

The pitch is straightforward: find people who match your ideal customer profile, verify their work emails, and push them into a campaign without leaving the tool. This guide covers how to search, how to check what you got before you spend on it, and what to be careful about.

One note on database size before anything else. The number of contacts quoted differs between Instantly's marketing pages and their help centre documentation, and both figures run to the hundreds of millions. Treat any specific count as approximate, check their current documentation for today's figure, and judge the data by what you actually pull rather than by the headline.

Should you use AI search or the filters?

Both, in that order. Instantly's documentation describes typing a natural description of your ideal lead into the search bar and clicking AI Search, with an example along the lines of founders of software companies in a named city within a given headcount range. The system turns that sentence into filters for you.

The practical workflow is to start with AI Search to get roughly the right shape quickly, then open the left sidebar and correct what it guessed wrong. The sentence gets you to eighty percent in one action. The filters are how you get the last twenty percent, and the last twenty percent is where a list stops being generic.

Instantly's SuperSearch documentation lists a wide filter set in that sidebar. Knowing what is available changes how you define a segment, because most people only ever use the first three.

Two of those deserve more attention than they usually get. Lookalike domain takes a company you already sell to well and finds others resembling it, which is a far better starting point than guessing an industry code. And one lead per company stops you pulling six people from the same firm, which matters because Instantly's own company send limit will skip most of them anyway.

How do you avoid paying for the same lead twice?

Tick skip already owned. Instantly's documentation describes it as a checkbox that checks every lead previously acquired by the workspace and excludes them from your results. On a workspace that has been running for a few months, this is the difference between a fresh list and a list you have already emailed.

Then save the search. Their documentation describes saving, editing and deleting search configurations so the same filter set can be reapplied later. A saved search is how a list becomes a repeatable weekly pull rather than something you rebuild from memory every time and get slightly wrong.

Building a list that is worth sending to

1. Write your ideal customer as one sentence — Role, company type, size, location. If you cannot write it in a sentence, no filter set will rescue it. This sentence is also literally what AI Search takes as input.
2. Run AI Search, then correct it with the sidebar — Let the AI set the rough shape, then fix the filters it guessed wrong. Add signals filters such as job listings, technologies or funding type only if you can name why they matter for this offer.
3. Tick skip already owned before you pull anything — This excludes leads the workspace has acquired before, so you neither pay twice nor email someone a second time by accident.
4. Pull a small batch first and inspect it — Take a first slice rather than the whole segment. Read the titles and companies. Spot-check a handful of records against the person's public profile. This is your own check, not a documented product step, and it costs far less than a bad send.
5. Save the search once it looks right — Their documentation supports saving, editing and deleting searches. Name it after the segment so future you knows what it was for.
6. Move the results into a list or a campaign — Their documentation describes moving enriched leads to lead lists or campaigns via the Move function, notes that only leads with a work email move into a campaign, and offers a copy leads option that keeps the originals in the source list.

That inspection step is the one people skip, and it is the one that pays. Every contact database in this category is assembled at scale from imperfect sources, and a title that was accurate eighteen months ago is not a lie, it is just stale. Twenty minutes reading a sample tells you more about a segment than any vendor claim ever will.

How do credits work in SuperSearch?

SuperSearch consumes credits per action rather than per search. Instantly's documentation lists distinct costs for retrieving a work email, for profile enrichment, for AI enrichment actions and for verification, with the email itself the most expensive of the four and verification a fraction of a credit.

The exact figures move, so check their current documentation rather than budgeting from any article including this one. The structural point is stable and worth planning around: a broad search that you enrich in full costs meaningfully more than a narrow search that you enrich after checking. Filter first, enrich second.

Their documentation describes contacts arriving verified and ready to use, without a separate verification pass before you send. That is a genuine convenience. It is not a reason to skip your own bounce monitoring, because bounce rate is one of the strongest negative signals mailbox providers track and it is your domain that carries the consequence.

Buying a list does not mean you may email it

This is the part every lead database guide leaves out. A contact appearing in a searchable database is a statement about availability, not about permission. The rules that decide whether you may email a given person depend on where that person is, and they sit with you as the sender.

Instantly's own writing on the subject sets out the shape of it. In the United States, CAN-SPAM requires accurate header information, an honest subject line, a valid physical postal address, a working opt-out and honouring removal requests within ten business days, and it applies to business email as well as consumer email. In the EU, the GDPR requires a lawful basis before you send, with transparency about how you obtained the address and a right to erasure.

Other jurisdictions differ again, with Canada and the United Kingdom operating their own regimes. If you have used location filters to build a list spanning several countries, you have also built a list spanning several rulebooks. Know which ones apply before you launch, and get advice if the answer is not obvious to you.

Limits and gotchas worth knowing

• Only leads with a work email move into a campaign. Documented behaviour. A segment that looked large in the search can shrink noticeably at the point you push it into a sequence.
• Moving into a campaign has plan and quota conditions. Their documentation notes requirements including a higher plan tier and sufficient uploaded contact allowance. Check what your plan permits before you build a list you cannot use.
• Enrichment is where the credits go. Searching is cheap, enriching in bulk is not. Narrow the filters before you enrich, not after.
• One lead per company is usually the right default. Instantly's own company send limit defaults to 2 leads per domain per day and skips the rest, so pulling six contacts at one firm mostly buys you data you cannot send to.
• Verified does not mean current. Verification confirms an address accepts mail. It does not confirm the person still holds the job title attached to it. Spot-check before you write copy that depends on the role.
• Independent reviewers have noted gaps. Third-party reviews of the lead finder have described the reporting as basic and some filters as limited, which is fair to weigh alongside the vendor documentation when you evaluate it for your own use.

Notice how much judgement this workflow needs from you. Which filters matter, whether the sample is any good, how much to enrich, which rules apply to which country, when a segment is too broad. The tool finds the contacts. Everything that turns contacts into a sensible list is still your afternoon.

That judgement layer is what we handed over at Sistava. Rather than assembling a segment and then deciding what to do with it, you hire an AI Employee, describe the customer you want in plain English, and it does the research, tells you what it found and asks you when a call is genuinely yours to make. It sets itself up, and there is no filter panel to learn.

Sources

• Instantly Help Center, SuperSearch
• Instantly Help Center, Company send limits
• Instantly Help Center, Quick start guide, all in one
• Instantly, B2B lead finder product page
• Instantly blog, Legal requirements for follow-up emails
• Instantly blog, Why cold emails land in spam and how to fix it
• Fahim AI, independent hands-on walkthrough of Instantly