What is Intent Data?

Intent data is sales and marketing intelligence. Today’s intent data generally observes actions taken online with content, competitors, events, influencers and social media that indicate research and potential purchase.

Contact-Level™ Intent Data identifies the actual person who’s taking the action. That contrasts with anonymous account-level intent data.

Consider this: Only 3% of potential buyers for any product or service are in the market at any given time. That means marketing dollars and outbound sales efforts are wasted. Intent data helps you know who’s in-market so you engage the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

Intent data solves these marketing and sales challenges:

  • It increases qualified leads, shortens sell cycles and boosts close rates
  • It focuses marketing resources on active buyers
  • It helps reduce churn and boosts cross-selling

It also provides these benefits for marketing and sales teams:

Improved efficiency: Because they’re focused on actual buyers in active accounts, marketing and sales teams are more efficient. Intent data supports multiple marketing and sales use cases.

Shorter sales cycle: Pipeline quality is improved because your teams are focused on intent-qualified leads and not just someone who stopped by your trade show booth, for example.

Increased win rates: When salespeople focus on active buyers, they close more deals.

Intent data can dramatically increase leads and conversions, but you have to use it correctly. Combining B2B buyer intent data with firmographic and technographic information provides BDRs the context they need for efficient outbound sales.

Company surge data helps to prioritize target and ABM accounts and uncover new opportunities.

Types of Intent Data

There are three categories of intent data: first-party, second-party and third-party.

First-party intent data

First-party intent data is the information you already collect on known contacts and anonymous visitors. It can include prospect interactions with your website, emails and social channels. It can be used to segment communications, create workflows and score leads, and helps marketing and sales intuit how to approach a prospect.

Second-party intent data

Second-party intent data is collected by another company. Sources of second-party intent data usually include review sites or publishing networks. The user grants the company permission to share or sell their behavior — sometimes with their contact details.

Third-party intent data

Third-party intent data is collected from all over the internet, although some models only monitor a network of sites. This intent data is usually mined using three approaches: reverse IP lookup, bidstream data from ad networks and widgets, and media exchange/publishing members.

Common Uses for Intent Data

  • Building highly targeted prospect lists
  • Account-based marketing (ABM)
  • Personalized outbound sales at scale
  • Remarketing to competitors’ prospects
  • Event marketing
  • Churn reduction

Is Intent Data Right for Me?

Intent data could be the right fit for your company if:

  • It has complex sales that average more than $5,000
  • You use marketing automation software
  • Your marketing and sales teams collaborate well

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