Ghost Lead Score & ICP Agent: Smarter Outbound, Automatically

For a long time, outbound worked like a lottery. You had a list of people who looked like your ideal customer, you sent messages in the order they came in, and you hoped the best ones happened to be near the top. Ghost has always been better than that — but today's release makes it dramatically better.

Two new features are live: Lead Score and the ICP Agent. Together, they form a complete loop. The agent controls who enters your funnel. Lead Score controls the order they leave it. Here's exactly how both work.

Lead Score: A Clear 0–100 Priority Rating for Every Contact

Lead Score is a 0–100 rating that tells Ghost who to message first. It's fully transparent — you can open any contact and see exactly why they scored what they did, with no hidden weighting or black-box logic.

The score splits into two buckets: ICP fit (70 points) and buying signals (30 points). Fit is about whether the person matches your ideal customer profile. Signals are about whether they're showing active indicators of readiness right now.

How ICP Fit Is Calculated (70 Points)

Fit breaks down across seven criteria, weighted by how much predictive power each carries:

Job title is weighted heaviest because it's the most direct signal of fit — it matters more than anything else whether this person actually does the job your product serves.

Ghost only scores contacts on the criteria that are relevant to your ICP. If you haven't set a location preference, location doesn't factor into anyone's score — contacts are rated purely on what you've told Ghost matters. This keeps your A-tier contacts genuinely your best fits, not just the ones with the most data filled in.

Title matching also understands variations. "Head of People & Culture" correctly matches an ICP role defined as "HR Director" — Ghost reads for the intent of a title, not just the exact wording.

Contacts are grouped into four tiers based on their final score:

• A tier — 70+ (messaged first)
• B tier — 50+
• C tier — 30+
• D tier — below 30

Buying Signals Stack on Top (30 Points)

On top of fit, Ghost adds signals that indicate a contact is warm right now:

The "recently changed roles" signal is particularly valuable — people in the first 90 days of a new position are actively evaluating tools and far more receptive to relevant outbound.

Does Lead Score Affect My Existing Campaign Settings?

It only changes the order contacts are messaged — not how many. Your daily limits, warm-up schedule, and pacing stay exactly as they are. Ghost simply picks the highest-scoring eligible contacts first.

A few built-in protections keep things balanced: contacts waiting over 14 days automatically move up the queue regardless of their score, so nothing gets permanently buried behind high-scorers. And if you'd rather not use score-based ordering for a specific campaign, you can switch it off and go back to chronological sending.

Contacts on your exclusion list are deprioritised rather than removed — they stay in your data but won't receive messages until higher-priority contacts have been reached.

ICP Agent: Automated Sourcing Built Around Your ICP

The ICP Agent turns your saved ICP into a sourcing routine that runs on a schedule. Instead of manually building lists, Ghost finds new contacts that match your criteria, enriches their email address, scores them, and — if you want — enrols them straight into a campaign.

According to our internal data, teams using the ICP Agent spend 73% less time on manual list-building, and every contact that comes in is already pre-qualified against the criteria that matter to them before a single message is sent.

Here's what happens each time it runs:

1. Ghost builds a search from your saved ICP definition
2. A company-level filter narrows it further — funding stage, hiring activity, headcount, tech stack, and intent topics
3. Between 50 and 1,000 matching people are sourced
4. Anyone already in your contacts or active campaigns is automatically skipped — no duplicates
5. Ghost finds a verified email for each new contact by checking multiple enrichment providers in sequence
6. Each contact is scored using Lead Score
7. New contacts can be automatically enrolled into a campaign, where their score immediately sets their send priority

Not sure if your filters will return the right volume? Preview Matches gives you a contact count before you commit to an import — free, with no credits used.

Cadence Options

The agent runs on whatever schedule suits your workflow:

• Manual — run it when you want
• Daily — new contacts sourced every 24 hours
• Weekly — batches the week's new matches in a single run

Ghost handles the scheduling automatically and shows you a summary after each run — contacts found, contacts new to your account, and how many were enrolled into a campaign.

Works With Any ICP, Even a Partial One

If part of your ICP — a specific tech stack or niche company category, for example — isn't available from a particular data source, Ghost broadens the search rather than stopping entirely. You'll get the closest possible matches rather than an empty result.

Why These Two Features Belong Together

The ICP Agent and Lead Score are two halves of the same system.

The agent is designed to cast a wide net. Its job is to find everyone who could plausibly be a good fit — not just the people who are obviously perfect. Over-filtering at the sourcing stage means you miss people who would have converted.

Lead Score handles the prioritisation. Once contacts are in, the score tells Ghost who to reach first — so the highest-fit, most-active contacts get messages while the rest wait in the queue rather than being ignored entirely.

The result: a funnel that fills automatically and drains intelligently. Define your ICP once, and Ghost continuously finds, scores, and sequences the right people without you having to manage a single list.

Getting Started

To set up Lead Score: go to your ICP settings and fill in the criteria that matter — title, seniority, industry, location, company size, tech stack, intent keywords. You don't need all seven; Ghost scores contacts based on whatever you've set. Scoring starts straight away.

To set up the ICP Agent: go to Sourcing > ICP Agent, review your saved ICP, run a Preview to see how many contacts match, then set your cadence and whether new contacts should be auto-enrolled. The first full run imports and scores your initial batch.

Both features are available on all paid plans. Full details on the Ghost pricing page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Lead Score change my existing send limits or warm-up?

No. Lead Score only changes the order contacts are messaged within each campaign. Daily caps, warm-up sequences, and pacing are all unchanged.

What happens to contacts who have been waiting a long time?

Any contact waiting over 14 days automatically moves up the queue, regardless of score. This prevents high-scoring contacts from permanently blocking others.

Can I turn Lead Score off for a specific campaign?

Yes — you can opt any campaign out of score-based ordering and fall back to chronological sending from account settings.

What does "waterfall email enrichment" mean?

Ghost checks multiple email providers in sequence and stops as soon as it finds a verified address. This maximises coverage without charging you for duplicate lookups across providers.

How often does the Lead Score update?

Scores update automatically as new information comes in — for example, the moment a contact accepts your connection request, their score reflects that signal.

What's the minimum ICP definition needed for Lead Score to work?

There's no minimum. Criteria you haven't set simply aren't factored in. A minimal ICP will produce less differentiated scores, but it won't produce inaccurate ones.

Ready to See It in Action?

Lead Score and the ICP Agent are live now. If you're already running campaigns in Ghost, your contacts will start receiving scores automatically — check your People tab to see the new priority tiers.

Start your 7-day free trial — no credit card required.