Build Your Contacts & Prospect List
Keep companies, people, and prospects in one living list so outreach does not die in inboxes and spreadsheets.
What good looks like
Sponsorship is a people job. You need:
- Companies you want as sponsors (or that already are).
- People at those companies (campus recruiters, HR, DEI, alumni champions) with emails you trust.
- A prospect list for interest before there is money: someone replied “send the package” but there is no signed commitment yet.
Great chairs keep notes after career fairs (“met at booth 12, cares about workshops”) and know who was primary last year versus who ghosted. They do not rediscover the same wrong contact every September.
Where it usually breaks
Real outreach archives show the same failure modes again and again:
- Wrong contact. The pitch lands with someone who cannot approve budget. Weeks vanish in forwards.
- Spreadsheet drift. Three people edit three sheets. Nobody knows the current email.
- No memory between years. Last year’s warm relationship becomes this year’s cold pitch because the contact list was personal, not shared.
- Prospects mixed with sponsors. Someone “interested” looks the same as someone who paid Gold, so follow-ups get awkward.
How Anchor helps
In Anchor, companies live as Sponsors (org-level, so they persist across years). People live as Contacts. During this year’s cycle (your Campaign), you link people to companies with affiliations, mark who’s primary, and keep notes.
When someone is interested but there is no company deal yet, create a Lead: a free-text company name until you’re ready to convert them into a real sponsor. That is your prospect pile, kept out of the paid pipeline.
The relationship graph shows who connects to which company this campaign (gold) versus quieter prior ties, useful when you’re staffing outreach or spotting thin coverage.
Try it
- Open Contacts. Switch between This campaign, All people, and Leads.
- Import a CSV if you already have a list, or add people one by one.
- Open Graph to see coverage across companies.
- When a lead turns into a real deal, convert them onto a sponsor and keep working the relationship.