Rhetorik Neuron360

^{Rhetorik began as a European technographics vendor but now focuses on broader company and contact intelligence.}

B2B Data vendor Rhetorik announced Neuron360, its “AI-enhanced data platform designed to extend and enrich clients’ data-driven solutions, marketing strategies, and talent initiatives.” AI capabilities include language translation, data normalization, and contact-level lead targeting.

Neuron360 “unifies and integrates” its B2B intelligence, which spans 200 million company profiles, 800 million professional people profiles, and 60 million verified and compliant contact records (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, UK DMA). Rhetorik also supports international technographics at both the enterprise and worksite levels.

The Professional profiles contain over eighty data fields, including career history, skills, job titles (translated, normalized, and standardized), experiences, and education. Verified contacts doubles the field count to 160 fields and includes validated email, job title, job function, switchboard and direct phone numbers, employer, and business location.

“The process of taking a profile and converting it to a verified and compliance contact involves a number of steps, including applying our proprietary, AI-driven ‘still in position’ and ‘still in business’ tests, validation tests for job title, company, email, and other details, and the sending of ‘fair processing’ notices,” explained CRO Kevin Savage to GZ Consulting.

While approximately one in four verified contact is a technology title, “the vast majority of the contacts, no matter which functional department they sit in, are technology decision-makers, influencers or users – all of whom have a role in the tech buying process these days,” continued Savage.

Contact information is translated, normalized, and standardized for 46 languages across 164 countries.

Savage emphasized that the “60M contacts are not really the main part of the announcement. The news is that we now have these datasets all in one place, and we have 800M profiles that can be converted into verified and compliant contacts on request.”

Company profiles include over 150 data fields. Along with standard firmographics, Neuron360 includes social handles, location-level sizing data, and location-level technographics. Neuron360 company coverage is global, with 70 million EMEA, 50 million North American, 45 million APAC, and 30 million LATAM profiles.

“With Neuron360, we have combined the power of advanced AI tools with extensive data coverage, empowering our clients to harness the full potential of their data initiatives and fuel their marketing, sales, and talent initiatives with confidence,” said Rhetorik CEO Meredith Amdur. “Neuron360 brings all the global B2B data needs together in one place with precision, quality, freshness, and breadth. Our exacting data buyers can choose from a comprehensive suite of data APIs, firehose feeds, online portals, and batch delivery.”

Neuron360 includes a query builder with counts and summarized firmographics presented in both tabular and visual formats. The query builder also displays the search query in multiple languages, including Python, Node.js, Ruby, Php http v1, and C. Developers can then copy / paste the query into Postman or other API platforms.

Additional tools include usage tracking and a status page for checking platform uptime. Documentation includes a data dictionary, schema, field population counts, internal and external values, and summary data (e.g., counts by country, revenue range, etc.)

Neuron360 is available via an API, the Snowflake Marketplace, or bulk delivery.

Rhetorik UK Expansion Pack

Rhetorik announced a UK expansion pack to its NetFinder+ technology sales intelligence service. The expansion pack adds 90,000 companies and 200,000 contacts and emails to Rhetorik’s UK coverage. NetFinder+ data includes firmographics, contacts, and technographics.

The Rhetorik Technology Classification (RTC), a proprietary taxonomy, spans 7,000 vendors across ten million installs. Rhetorik’s technographics cover

Installed IT assets such as telecoms equipment, networking devices, and server and desktop hardware
Software products from traditional enterprise applications and operating systems to new cloud platforms and vertical industry applications
Services and consumables suppliers

“We have invested heavily in our international coverage, now offering sales and marketing intelligence across 30+ countries, but the UK remains the largest and fastest-growing IT market in Europe for a range of enterprise software and cloud services. This fully GDPR-compliant SMB expansion enables marketers to reach deeper into that market than ever before.”
Rhetorik CEO Meredith Amdur

The expanded coverage profiles UK companies with five to 100 employees. Rhetorik expects to “significantly” grow their coverage this year. They have a “stand-by database” of companies and contacts “awaiting final cleaning and compliance. “Existing clients will gain free access for three months to all the new accounts and contacts that meet their existing data criteria,” wrote CRO Kevin Savage.

Rhetorik covers Western European along with

Former Soviet Union: The Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia
Balkans: Slovenia, Croatia, and Greece
Eastern Europe: Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania

Additional EMEA countries include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and South Africa, with ten more countries in development.

In January, Rhetorik released its DataCliniq DaaS enrichment service for maintaining data hygiene. DataCliniq diagnoses, cleanses, and enriches account, contact, and lead records. It supports both batch file uploads and channel partner integrations with data marketplaces. The service also directly integrates with Salesforce, MS Dynamics, HubSpot, and Marketo.

Rhetorik’s year-to-date revenue is up 50%.

Rhetorik Opens US Sales Hub

European technology sales intelligence vendor Rhetorik opened a US sales hub in California. The office will be led by John South, who was named the VP North America.

“Our goal is to meet the needs of US companies seeking European data expertise,” said Rhetorik CEO Meredith Amdur. “It’s a very exciting prospect to be combining John’s experience and knowledge of the global data market with Rhetorik’s IT databases and data management services in order to achieve this.”

California is a logical location for US market entry (the firm already has a Canadian development office). Not only is a high percentage of US enterprise software and cloud companies headquartered in California, but the CCPA data privacy regulations are akin to EU GDPR requirements, making marketing departments more sensitive to data privacy and regulatory compliance.

Rhetorik recently expanded its technographics intelligence NetFinder+ service across the EMEA region with support of 17 European countries and Israel. The service provides “accuracy, completeness, and compliance across Europe,” said Amdur. Rhetorik emphasizes that contact data is collected subject to the location-level data privacy rules of each jurisdiction and subject to the “Robinson lists” of various jurisdictions (e.g. The CTPS phone opt-out list in the U.K., DNC in Ireland).

NetFinder+ includes a market analytics module that helps product management and competitive intelligence groups evaluate their market position by category and country. It can also be used to assess complementary partner market share (by installation).

Rhetorik separately offers a DataClinik hygiene and enrichment service.

South has a long history of new business development in the technographics space, having served as the VP of Sales at Datanyze (now owned by Zoominfo) and the head of Client Success and Sales at Aberdeen. He most recently was the Director of Business Development for Imperium.

South will be “responsible for driving sales, new business development, and planning strategies for the sales teams.”

Rhetorik NetFinder+

Rhetorik launched NetFinder+, its expanded, multi-national platform for technology sales and marketing intelligence. The new portal provides company, contact, and technographic details for 18 EMEA countries spanning Benelux, Nordics, Iberia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland. The U.K. and Ireland were already supported, with Greece in development.

CEO Meredith Amdur emphasized the value of having a local, specialist vendor that understands the nuances of European regulations and markets. “One of the challenges for these vendors is that the country called ‘Europe’ doesn’t exist. They need a partner like Rhetorik that understands the complexities of Europe, market by market, and language by language, to help them navigate and exploit a region with enormous growth potential. And they need a service like NetFinder+ that provides current, accurate, and compliant data related to individual IT buyers and influencers across the region to target better prospects, expand into new markets, fill the marketing funnel, and capture the attention of their next best customers.”

In short, said Amdur, Rhetorik offers “accuracy, completeness, and compliance across Europe.”

NetFinder+ sports a new taxonomy with a five-fold expansion in the number of technology categories spanning cloud, enterprise and vertical industry applications, system software, and middleware applications. The new Rhetorik Technology Classification (RTC) system “refreshes and structures the categorization of business technology assets, services, and products.”

Rhetorik captures up to 164 data fields per site spanning contacts, firmographics, and technographics. Contact data, which is “compliant with all relevant data privacy and security regulations,” includes name, title, email, and phone number. When screening, titles are mapped to a broad set of functions and sub-functions, allowing for prospecting by keyword, business role, or technology role.

Coverage spans 277,000 contacts, 275,000 emails, 98,000 sites, and 77,000 companies. Technographic data covers nearly 2.3 million installations.

Rhetorik emphasizes that contact data is collected subject to the location-level data privacy rules of each jurisdiction and subject to the “Robinson lists” of various jurisdictions (e.g. The CTPS phone opt-out list in the U.K., DNC in Ireland).

“As the total addressable market gets bigger – as illustrated spectacularly by Zoominfo’s IPO declarations – we’re seeing a growing demand for specialized solutions that the biggest U.S.-based players can’t distract themselves to address. A typical pain point for our customers is they need a multi-territory solution that isn’t easily addressed by “one-size-fits-all” products. A customer might want a parallel opt-in and opt-out campaign in Europe, plus data discovery in South America, plus cleansing and enriching for an outdated house list encrusted with proprietary taxonomy, and a single point of contact for all of it.”
Rhetorik CEO Meredith Amdur

The service includes a Compliance Centre that contains details on GDPR compliance processes supported by Rhetorik along with customer compliance process recommendations.

Technographic coverage details installed IT assets such as telecoms equipment, networking devices, and server and desktop hardware; software products from traditional enterprise applications; operating systems; cloud platforms; vertical industry applications; services; and consumables suppliers.

Firmographic data is licensed from Dun & Bradstreet and local registries.

As a V1 service, there are a few limitations. The service is English only and does not yet support any CRMs or MAPs. Enterprise software connectors are in the works.

The layout follows a traditional sales intelligence user experience; however, the service is mobile adaptive.

As Rhetorik has historically served the marketing department, the price is determined primarily by the volume of licensed data with “a modest increase” based upon the number of seats. Firms may license the full Rhetorik+ database or a subset segmented by technology, country, industry, etc. Full database access begins at £80,000 and includes five seats. There are no downloading limits.

Rhetorik: What Does GDPR Mean for B2B Marketing? (Part II)

Yesterday, I presented a discussion of Legitimate Interest as the basis of GDPR communications. For B2B companies in the UK, the 2003 PECR (The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003) law is often applicable when assessing GDPR and Data Privacy:

: GDPR and Data Privacy under UK PECR and Non-PECR scenarios (Source: Rhetorik)

The PECR discusses soft opt-ins for individuals, sole traders and some partnerships, but not B2B. The ICO states that “the term ‘soft opt-in’ is sometimes used to describe the rule about existing customers. The idea is that if an individual bought something from you recently, gave you their details, and did not opt out of marketing messages, they are probably happy to receive marketing from you about similar products or services even if they haven’t specifically consented. However, you must have given them a clear chance to opt out – both when you first collected their details, and in every message you send. The soft opt-in rule means you may be able to email or text your own customers, but it does not apply to prospective customers or new contacts.”

Legitimate Interest also applies to data licensing relationships and marketing partnerships. If personal data interest is maintained for a specific purpose (e.g. Technology Sales), data licensing and sharing needs to be kept within the original scope.

Legitimate Interest and Consent also apply within a company. Data maintained for one product line may not be usable for others, particularly if the firm spans multiple sectors.

The UK Direct Marketing Association published guidance on the subject of Legitimate Interest helping make sense of Article 6.1.f:

“Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.”

And Recital 47:

“The legitimate interests of a controller, including those of a controller to which the Personal Data may be disclosed, or of a third party, may provide a legal basis for processing, provided that the interests or the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject are not overriding, taking into consideration the reasonable expectations of data subjects based on their relationship with the controller.”

Once the basis of holding personal data is met, companies have additional conditions to meet around transparency (notification and the right to object), data minimization (Is there a legitimate interest in collecting all of the fields? How long is data retained?), and reasonable expectation (limited impact to personal and private life; ensuring data accuracy).

For individuals who opt out, firms must retain suppression lists to prevent the re-collection of personal information. The suppression list should be the minimal information required to ensure the individual is not added back into the marketing database at a later date. With B2B, the list may simply be name and email.

The GDPR also sets out expectations which are relationship specific:

Suspects – legitimate interest, reasonable expectation, transparency
Prospects – reasonable expectation; consent
Clients – contract, legitimate interest, reasonable expectation, data minimization, transparency

Part III of Rhetorik’s presentation discusses GDPR myths and applicable laws across Europe.

Rhetorik: What Does GDPR Mean for B2B Marketing?

I’ve been looking for a good description of what GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) means to B2B marketers and finally came across a session given by UK technology profiler Rhetorik. There have been a number of issues that have muddied the waters, making it difficult to provide much more than general rules. Amongst the issues are a focus on the implications to consumer marketers, the lack of a general law that spans the EU, and an emphasis on rumors and fears about what will happen to firms that fail to comply with the regulation.

Rhetorik Data Protection Officer Samantha Magee noted that GDPR covers how and why companies hold and protect data. It is focused on internal processes rather than external communications, and is channel agnostic.

In around 18 months, the EU will pass uniform ePrivacy legislation which covers external communications in member countries. Until then, rules will remain fragmentary. For example, Opt-in or Opt-out protocols differ by country with the UK amongst the more liberal countries:

For the moment, GDPR has given teeth to local regulations. In the UK, the PECR (The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003), overseen by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), remains the applicable regulation for consumer, single trader, and small partnership communications. It was drafted after the European Directive 2002/58/EC, otherwise known as the or ‘e-privacy Directive’, was implemented in 2002.

There are six bases for communicating with clients and prospects, all of which have equal weight: Consent, Contract, Legal Obligation, Vital Interest, Public Task, and Legitimate Interest. Of these, Consent (e.g. opt-in) and Legitimate Interest are the most common for B2B marketers. Support and service departments would most likely be covered under contractual relationships.

“Legitimate Interest aims to provide a solid and lawful basis upon which commercial communication can occur, allowing marketers to promote their products and services to a targeted and well defined audience,” said Magee. “At its heart, is the desire to ensure that commercial practices and communications are relevant to the individual, offering the assurance that high standards of care are applied and that their essential privacy” rights are considered of the utmost importance.”

Part II continues with a discussion of the UK PECR law and additional details on Legitimate Interest.

Rhetorik Extends its UK/Irish NetFinder Service

Job Function Searching in Rhetorik NetFinder

UK Technology Sales Intelligence vendor Rhetorik released an enhanced version of its UK and Irish NetFinder service. The revised edition covers over 40,000 corporate and public-sector sites. The service doubled its technology buyers to 215,000 and increased its technology coverage five-fold including enhanced install data on cloud, enterprise and vertical industry applications, system software and middleware applications.

The Rhetorik database tags over 10,000 products from 6,000 vendors and maintains over 150 technology categories. Data coverage spans 164 biographic, firmographic, and technographic variables including email, phone, revenue, employees, line of business, and site-level technographics. All contacts are GDPR compliant and 92% contain emails.

“Rhetorik has adapted its policies and procedures to upgrade DPA regulatory standards to meet GDPR requirements,” said the firm. “While monitoring closely progress on the e-Privacy legislation, Rhetorik follows best-practice processes as set by PECR – Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulation. We have implemented clear and easy to follow procedures for individuals to be informed and manage their own Business Card Data. We keep access to all B2B information secure and protected.”

Data is gathered through a combination of automated means and editorial research.

Over the past year, Rhetorik has partnered with the European Market Intelligence Group (EMIG) and CNCData to provide European and AsiaPac coverage. The EMIG coverage spans 14 countries, 180,000 companies, and one million contacts. The CNCData partnership delivers over two million contacts and 1.2 million companies across 23 AsiaPac countries.

Rhetorik, which has provided technology intelligence for over two decades, underwent a management buy-out last summer. At the time, CEO Meredith Amdur, set a goal of expanding their “data gathering and analytics capabilities to create new products for technology sales and marketing professionals worldwide.”

GZ Consulting

Advice for Vendors & Purchasers of Sales Intelligence, Sales Engagement, and B2B DaaS Products

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Rhetorik Neuron360

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