Conversational marketing vendor Drift released Drift Intel, a real-time enrichment service which maps anonymous leads to accounts using IP addresses.  The firm calls their Clearbit-powered account intelligence “x-ray vision for qualified leads.”  Clearbit firmographics drive the messaging flow, sales conversations, and lead routing; thus, prospect interactions are personalized to the account and directed to the proper sales rep or team.

Account matching is global, with a 40% to 60% IP-to-account match rate.  If the bot acquires an email address, then contact intelligence is also provided from Clearbit.

“In the old days, forms were the only way to get the info you need to qualify visitors,” states the firm. “With Drift Intel, you’ll get a full company profile in Drift the moment they land on your site.  That means you’ll know the visitor on your pricing page isn’t just a random person—it’s someone at a software company in NYC with 500 employees and $25-50m in annual revenue.”

Furthermore, because the intelligence is provided in real-time, leads can be properly routed to sales reps by account, region, size, etc.  If the account owner is not available, the AI chatbot automatically sets up an appointment for the rep.  The chatbot also personalizes the message based upon the account intelligence.

“The last decade in B2B sales and marketing was all about the business following up later.  But today, B2B sales and marketing have to be about now. The internet has changed everything and put customers in control of the buying process, not the business. As a result, people won’t put up with waiting days and weeks to get a response — they want answers now.”

• Drift CEO David Cancel

Drift Customer Marketing Team Lead Chris Handy blogged about the cost and foolishness of investing in inbound marketing and then making prospects wait for marketing tools or sales reps.  “We asked them for information before we’d let them send us a simple question about our product. We lost what might have been our best accounts—sometimes by making them wait days or weeks for someone to follow up—even when they were ready to buy right then.  This wasn’t the way we liked to buy. We had to change the way we sold to match the way we bought.”

Drift’s goal is to “remove friction,” shorten the sales cycle, and connect businesses with their customers at peak interest.

In a quick test of the bot on the Drift website, it accurately identified my company name and location, but lacked industry and sizing data.  As I am a one-person company, the lack of richer firmographics is common.  I was quickly chatting with a sales rep and she offered three days for a product demo within the chatbot (see image on top).

Drift Intel is available as part of their Company ($1,500 / month) and Enterprise (starting at $5,000 / month) plans.  Unlimited company matches are supported.

Drift made the LinkedIn Startup 25 last week.

Tomorrow I will be discussing announcements made at last week’s HYPERGROWTH user conference.