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What you are reading. A library of 80+ buying signals that turn into revenue: the moments when an account is actually ready to buy, the real data source if you want to build the signal yourself, how Swan watches it natively, when to act, and the play that converts it into a meeting. Built from what actually closes across Swan customers, not a brainstorm.
Who it is for. Founders, revenue leaders, GTM engineers, SDRs, BDRs, RevOps and marketing people who want outbound triggered by something real instead of a list and a calendar.
How to use it. Start with the money signals below, then skim the families and pick 3 to 5 that match how your buyers actually behave. Every signal shows the tool you would wire up on your own and how Swan does it out of the box. Hit Try it to set it up in Swan.
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signal-library-walkthrough-original-60mb.mp4
Ariel walks through the library: why signal-based outbound works, which money signals to start with, and how a signal turns into a Swan trigger (5 min).
A list tells you who could buy. A signal tells you who is buying now. Cold lists convert at a fraction of a percent because three things are usually missing at once:
One signal is good. Stacked signals close. An account visits your pricing page. A week later their CEO likes your founder's post. Two weeks after that they hire a new VP Sales. Any one of those is a reason to reach out. All three together is a deal, and the message writes itself.
Stacking only works if something remembers. That is why every Swan signal writes to the account's memory instead of firing a one-off alert: the second and third signal see the first, scoring compounds, and the outreach references the whole story rather than the last event. A signal without memory is a notification. A signal with memory is pipeline.
Not every signal works the same way. It helps to know which kind you are setting up, because they need different inputs and produce different volumes.
| Kind | What it is | Examples in this library | What you need |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reactive | You wait for people to interact with you. The prospect makes the first move and you respond fast. This is the inbound side of outbound: the warmest signals, but you do not control the volume. | LinkedIn profile views, post likes and comments, website visits, connection requests, DMs, demo requests, newsletter replies. | Something listening on your own surfaces: your site, your LinkedIn, your inbox, your forms. |
| Proactive | You decide who matters and watch them. Take a list of accounts (target accounts, closed-lost, current customers) and track what changes at each one, then act when something does. | A closed-lost account hires a new sales leader. A target account raises a round, posts the role you sell to, changes its pricing page, or starts surging on your category on Bombora. | A defined list and a monitor per change type. Volume is predictable because you chose the list. |
| Person-level | You follow specific people instead of companies. A contact matters because of who they are, and you want to know when their situation changes wherever they go. | Champion move detection: a past buyer lands at a new company. A known contact gets promoted into a decision-making role. Your CRM contact’s email bounces because they left. | A contact list with LinkedIn URLs and a way to re-check each person on a schedule. The smallest volume and the highest conversion in the library. |
Most teams start reactive because it is free and immediate, add proactive tracking once they have a real target list, and add person-level monitoring once they have customers and closed-lost contacts worth following. A mature setup runs all three into the same account memory.
A signal source on its own is a feed. To turn feeds into revenue you need a system underneath them, and it has to do four jobs. This is true whether you build it on Clay, spreadsheets and Zapier, or use Swan.