Start with your product's HS code. Official statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and Eurostat's Comext show how much of that code each market imports and which countries supply it. Use them to pick the country. They name no companies.
For the U.S., importer names come from released vessel manifest data, which covers sea shipments and leaves out importers that asked for confidential treatment (19 CFR 103.31 on eCFR).
Fill the gaps with lookalike companies. Then find the person who signs orders and verify every email. Keep that order.
In our campaigns: same message, two companies. Their reply rates were 2% and 7.5%. The sender made the difference, not the words. Copy cannot fix a weak sender, and it cannot fix a bad list either. This article is about the list. Bad lists fail on the rows: companies that never buy the product, contacts who never sign an order.
Which trade data shows names and which only shows totals?
| Source | What it gives you | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule B search and HS guidance on trade.gov | The code for your product | Classifying what you sell |
| U.S. Census import data | Totals by code, partner country and month | Sizing the U.S. market |
| U.S. vessel manifest data | Shipper and consignee names on sea shipments, minus confidential ones | A seed list of direct importers |
| Eurostat Comext | Totals by product and partner for EU countries | Choosing EU markets |
| Your own order history | Who bought, where, and who signed | The profile every new name is checked against |
Read down the table. Only two rows give you companies to email: the manifest data and your own orders. Everything else tells you where to look, not who to email.
How do I find the HS code for my product?
The International Trade Administration describes the Harmonized System as a standardized numerical method for classifying traded products, administered by the World Customs Organization (trade.gov). Every country shares the first 6 digits and adds its own after them.
For U.S. exports, ITA says the Schedule B number carries the HS code in those first digits. It names the Census Bureau's free Schedule B search engine as the most common way to classify a product.
Schedule B is an export schedule. If you manufacture outside the U.S., use it only to find the shared heading, then confirm the 10-digit import code in the Census Bureau concordance files. They match each 10-digit code to its equivalents in other systems.
Compare countries at the 6-digit level and drop to national digits only inside one country. A wrong code sizes a market for parts you cannot sell.
What does U.S. import data tell me?
For your code, read the yearly import total, its direction and the countries that supply it today. The Census Bureau's monthly international trade datasets run from January 2010 to present, so you can read the trend across years instead of one good month.
Pull 3 years of figures for your one code. If the total is small or fell every year, pick another country before anyone builds a list.
If it is healthy and a few supplying countries dominate it, that is your market. A buyer sourcing from them today already knows the product, so your opener is about a second source.
Can U.S. vessel manifests show importer names?
Sometimes. Under 19 CFR 103.31 (linked above), the public cannot examine vessel manifests directly. Instead, the rule provides for released manifest data, compiled daily from the previous 24 hours. Its fields include shipper and consignee names and addresses and a description of the goods.
An importer or consignee can request confidential treatment, and then its name and address stay out of the released data. CBP's 2020 final rule says the point is to stop competitors from linking manifest data to a company name, and CBP says the request has no fee.
If a large importer you know never appears, it may have opted out. CBP states that a grant of vessel manifest confidentiality is valid for 2 years from the date the request is processed and covers all ports of entry.
I have no reliable count of how often that happens, and CBP's page gives none, so treat any manifest list as partial. Before you trust a manifest-based dataset:
- Check every consignee, the party the goods are shipped to. Confirm it is the company that actually buys the goods and not an intermediary.
- Read the goods descriptions. Confirm each shipment is really your product before the company goes on the list.
- Remember the scope. The rule covers vessel manifests, so air freight importers will not show up the same way. Manifest data also counts differently from official numbers. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics notes that PIERS, which is built from vessel manifests, includes transshipments (goods only passing through U.S. ports on their way to another country) that official U.S. trade statistics leave out. So do not treat manifest totals as a company's real import volume.
Some buyers purchase through distributors and never import at all, so for those markets you find distributors instead.
The official route to named buyers is not free either. The International Trade Administration will find contacts and set up meetings through its Gold Key Service, but the standard package costs $3,250, plus $800 for more than 5 appointments. That is fine for one target market. It is not a way to build a list.
Is EU trade data enough to find importers?
Only for choosing countries. Eurostat's database on international trade in goods, also called Comext, covers the EU, the euro area, each member state and many non-EU countries. Bulk monthly and annual CSV files run from January 1988 to the latest reference month (Eurostat).
You can see which member states import your code, from which partners, and how that moved over decades. Comext does not name importers. For EU markets, I take names from the client's own buyers, lookalike matching and list tools.
How do I turn import data into a lead list?
- Start with your own buyers. Note which customers import your code, from where, and how big they are.
- Add manifest seeds if you sell into the U.S. Drop forwarders and brokers; keep companies that use or resell the product.
- Find lookalikes. Match your best buyers on country, size and product mix, including firms that never show up in trade data, using lookalike company matching. I build the lists in Apollo, Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, UpLead or RocketReach. Never from a scraped "importers" file or a cheap freelancer list: those bring high bounces.
- Pick the person who signs orders. Look at who signed your past orders. In importers that is often a purchasing director, a category buyer or, in a small firm, the owner. I leave Assistant, Associate and bare Manager titles out on purpose. Then find the contact details for that person.
- Verify every address. Run each one through NeverBounce or DeBounce, use only the ones that pass, and keep bounces under 0.5%.
- Hand-check 20 random rows. If you cannot say why that person would care, delete the row and the others like it.
Each row holds the company, its imported code, the country, the person and title, the verified email with tool and date, and the one rep who owns it. Split the territories by rep and by sending account, so two people on the team never write to the same importer.
Add an import evidence column with the source and date of the latest record, so nobody writes as if a year-old shipment was last week's order.
In our cold email campaigns, around 1% is a normal reply rate, and at thousands of emails a day it often sits near 0.5%. Booked meetings come from 10% to 50% of replies. Our most targeted campaigns have hit 15% to 17% reply rates, with about 3 in 4 repliers interested.
What do I say in the first message?
Sell the meeting in the first message. Open with a pitch and the only easy answer you leave the buyer is no. Say what you make and ask one question.
Keep shipment records out of the opener and lead with what the buyer does and what you can supply. Write the follow-ups before you send the first one. Across our campaigns, follow-up number three tends to earn the reply, as long as you leave real gaps between sends.
Subject: Second source for [product]
Hi [name], your team supplies [product category] across [country]. We make [product] in [city] and can hold [lead time] on repeat orders. Worth a 15-minute call next week to see if that fits your next order? If someone else owns purchasing, a name is enough.
Pick the market with the code. Take the names from manifests, your own buyers and their lookalikes. Then check 20 rows before anyone writes a word. If the list fails on small numbers, it will fail on big ones.
Exporting and unsure your first 20 importer rows are the right ones? Send me the sheet and book a call before you write to anyone.
Questions exporters ask about finding importers with trade data
Who is allowed to inspect a U.S. vessel manifest?
Under 19 CFR 103.31, only a party with "a proper and legal interest" in a shipment may inspect its manifest, so everyone else works from released data. Before you buy names from a vendor, ask where each name came from and how old the newest record is. If you plan to request manifest records yourself, check with a customs broker first.
Do HS codes change over time?
Yes. ITA says the Harmonized System is updated every 5 years (trade.gov). If a trend line breaks suddenly, check whether your code was renumbered before you blame demand.
Can I cold email importers in Germany, Austria or the Czech Republic?
Only with a compliant basis such as prior consent, so we do not use cold email there. When a client needs Germany, we switch to LinkedIn outreach and apply stricter rules of our own. Comext can show whether those markets justify the slower channel.
Should I buy intent data to find importers?
Only when the market is big. Intent data means signals that a company is researching your category right now. Importers of one narrow code can form a small market. Picture about 1,000 target companies with intent signals on a dozen of them: the signals tell you almost nothing. In that case my team skips intent data and writes one offer for the whole market.