A Segmentation Worksheet for Lemlist vs Instantly in Commercial Solar

Before opening either tool, write out three columns: developers who need financing and permitting partners, EPC partners who need subcontracted installation capacity, and commercial property owners who need a reason to consider solar in the first place.

Each column gets its own opening line, its own value proposition, and its own list, because a property owner evaluating solar for the first time and an EPC firm evaluating a subcontractor are answering completely different questions.

This worksheet doesn't need to be complicated to be useful; a simple spreadsheet with each buyer type's known contacts, their stage of consideration, and a note on what actually matters to them is enough to keep the segmentation honest as you build out sequences.

A simple spreadsheet version of the worksheet works like this:

1. Create one column for each buyer type: developers, EPC partners and commercial property owners.
2. Write a separate opening line and value proposition for each column, since each buyer is answering a different question.
3. Build a separate list for each column instead of one shared list, so weak replies can be traced to a specific segment.
4. Note each buyer type's typical sales cycle length and what that buyer needs to hear first, from speed and reliability to basic education.

Developers care about execution reliability and speed, since a delayed project costs them financing terms and timeline commitments to their own investors.

This column's list tends to be short and identifiable, a known set of active developers in your service area, which points toward Lemlist's researched, per-contact approach: referencing a developer's actual project pipeline is a stronger opener than a generic capabilities pitch.

Because this list is short, it's worth updating it whenever a new project is publicly announced in your service area, rather than treating the developer column as a fixed list built once and reused indefinitely.

EPC partners are evaluating subcontractor capacity and reliability, and this list can run wider than the developer column since you're trying to become a known option across a broader set of firms rather than landing one specific relationship.

That broader reach is where Instantly's rotation across many warmed inboxes fits, letting you maintain steady outreach across a wider EPC network without concentrating risk on one sending account.

For this column, mentioning your actual installed capacity or crew availability tends to matter more than general capability claims, since EPC partners are essentially evaluating whether you can reliably deliver on a subcontracted scope.

Commercial property owners are usually the least warmed audience of the three, often not actively considering solar until someone raises it, which means this column needs the most persuasive, education-forward messaging of the group.

Volume matters here too, since most property owners on any given list aren't ready to act, but the message itself needs to do real work explaining why now, which argues for combining Instantly's reach with genuinely researched copy rather than a generic template.

A short educational piece, a linked explainer or a case description in your own words rather than a stock brochure, tends to earn more trust from this audience than a straight sales pitch would at this early stage of their consideration.

A sequence built to cover all three buyer types at once tends to under-serve each one: too generic for the developer who wanted specifics, too aggressive for the property owner who wasn't ready, and not tailored enough for the EPC partner comparing subcontractors.

If reply rates across your solar outreach are weak overall, check whether the underlying list is actually segmented before concluding the tool or the copy is the problem.

A quick diagnostic is pulling reply rates by column rather than as one blended number; if one segment is dramatically weaker than the others, that's usually a targeting or messaging problem specific to that segment, not a tool problem affecting all three equally.

A solar contractor's segment mix often shifts as the business grows: an early-stage shop might lean heavily on property owner education to build its first pipeline, while a more established one shifts weight toward developer and EPC relationships that produce larger, repeat projects.

Revisit the worksheet at least once or twice a year rather than treating it as a one-time setup exercise, since the right split between the three columns for a growing business rarely stays constant.

Tracking which column actually produced closed business over the past year, not just replies, is the clearest signal for where to shift outreach effort going forward.