SalesLoft Conversation Intelligence

Sales engagement vendor SalesLoft rebranded its Meeting Intelligence functionality as Conversation Intelligence.  SalesLoft describes four sets of features which help reps schedule meetings and then listen to, understand, and engage with customers and prospects.  SalesLoft supports a broad set of conversation tools including appointment setting; automated recording, transcription, and indexing of calls; time-stamped notes, and call analytics.  This functionality is available for prospect, customer, and internal calls.  Managers, mentors, and trainers can join calls or whisper into a sales rep’s ear.

“Through the evolution of SalesLoft’s platform and user experience, one feature has changed so much that its prior name no longer did it justice,” wrote SalesLoft Head of Community Aly Merritt.  “Meeting Intelligence is now Conversation Intelligence, because sales isn’t just meetings – it’s every conversation and interaction.”

Call recordings can be stored in a training library or shared for coaching or questions.  For example, if a sales rep does not know the answer to a question, it can be forwarded directly to customer support or engineering for a response.

Conversation Intelligence supports both SalesLoft’s native dialer and leading web meeting applications: Zoom, GoToMeeting, join.me, UberConference, Cisco WebEx, and Cisco WebEx Enterprise.

Sales calls come in many forms: prospecting, discovery, demos, stakeholder alignment, and so on.  All of these interactions make up the foundation for the long-term customer relationship.  High-value customer relationships are made possible when prospects feel that the relationship they are entering into is mutually beneficial.

How can you build such a relationship?  By working to ensure your prospects feel heard and confident that you understand their needs.  Work to engage them throughout their journey.  After all, sales doesn’t stop when the deal closes, nor does engagement cease when a seller hangs up the phone.

▪ SalesLoft Product News

SalesLoft said that it is “designed to flex around the needs of the user based not only on their role but also on their preferred workflow.  This empowers SalesLoft customers to offer consistent value at every stage.”

“Sales meetings are the moments in the sales cycle where you have the opportunity to provide the most value for your customers.  As such, they are some of the single biggest opportunities for your team to influence revenue.  It’s where your deals are won and lost,” wrote the firm.  “Despite this, sellers often don’t get the opportunity to improve on this critical component of the sales process.  Combine this with the challenges that face sales leaders around how much time it takes to digest sales meetings, gain visibility into what’s really happening, and be proactive in the deal cycle.”

HubSpot App Marketplace

HubSpot's App Partner Program supports over 300 apps.
HubSpot’s App Partner Program supports over 300 apps.

At its INBOUND conference earlier this month, HubSpot released a new app Marketplace.  “One of the things we’ve really tried to do with the next iteration of the marketplace is just to help SMBs (small to medium businesses) get deeper information on these integrations,” said HubSpot VP of platform ecosystem Scott Brinker.  “So you’re not just like, ‘Oh, here’s another company, go off and figure it out.’ It’s like, ‘OK, here’s exactly how this interfaces into HubSpot.  Here’s a video of how it works.”

HubSpot partners are obligated to post pricing information, data flow structure, and demo videos.  The new market supports improved filtering and searching.  Over 300 apps are available with 93% of HubSpot’s 64,000 customers having installed at least one app.  The average customer has installed five apps.

Amongst the top apps are Gmail, Outlook Calendar, Zapier (connectors), Facebook Ads, Google Calendar, Twitter, MailChimp, WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, Vidyard, Google Ads, and SurveyMonkey. “We’re really excited about trying to make this whole platform ecosystem world accessible to the SMB markets,” said Brinker.

“It’s not enough to have the wondrous capabilities all these different apps offer, especially if each is locked in their own silo.  To run your business effectively and to give customers a coherent and compelling experience across all the different touchpoints they have with you, all these different apps need to work together. This is why HubSpot is committed to building an open platform that can serve as a “hub” for the myriad apps across your business that all contribute to improving the customer experience.  We want to make it easy for you to orchestrate these apps, to better serve your customers, and to help you grow better.”

HubSpot VP of platform ecosystem Scott Brinker

The new marketplace can be found at HubSpot.com/ecosystem.

RambleChat – SalesLoft Partnership

Real-time chats with account owners may be initiated from emails or any other outbound or marketing content which supports URLs.
Real-time Ramble chats with account owners may be initiated from SalesLoft emails or any other outbound or marketing content which supports URLs.

Conversational marketing vendor RambleChat is the latest partner available through the SalesLoft app directory.  Along with real-time website chat, joint customers can embed chat into SalesLoft email cadences. RambleChat then routes sales conversations to account owners “providing a more personalized interaction via chat.”  Joint customers can also employ dynamic fields in SalesLoft to customize greetings with personal and company names.

“The SalesLoft/RambleChat integration gives a whole new capability for marketing and sales teams.  RambleChat is the only chat platform that can instantly open chat from any online source.  Ramble then routes sales conversations to the right account owner — enhancing both demand generation and ABM campaigns.  And now, for the first time, chat can be an integral part of sales plays and interactions in the SalesLoft platform.”

Sean Kester, VP of Platform Strategy at SalesLoft.

Single Click Chat (SCC), RambleChat’s patent-pending technology, extends chat capabilities from the website to outbound communications.  So long as a URL can be embedded, chat conversations can be initiated via a click.  Along with corporate websites, SCC enables chat initiation from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, digital ads, landing pages, blogs, QR codes, and product collateral.  SCC allows sales reps to “meet buyers at the moment of interest.”

Ramble automatically logs chat conversation histories and details at the SalesLoft Account level.  When a user navigates to an account, chat history is displayed under the “Notes” section.  If a SalesLoft user desires more in-depth information about the chat conversation, a URL is automatically provided for the user to click.

RambleChat has been in partnership discussions with SalesLoft since at least March when Ramble CEO Justin McDonald attended SalesLoft’s Rainmaker conference.  Instead of simply building a website chat solution, the firms chose to “build better pipelines by extending chat beyond corporate websites and into SalesLoft Cadences and social channels via RambleChat’s Single Click Chat.”

“As we met with joint customers in mid 2018, a constant theme surfaced; the market was struggling to find practical and tangible means of Account-Based Selling and Marketing.  There’s no shortage of ABM technology, but many lacked quick deployment and immediate results for sales organizations. This became the MO for the RambleChat + SalesLoft partnership, and we landed with a more powerful integration that fills the ABM gap for both sales and marketing.”

Ramble CEO Justin McDonald

“I’m immensely excited about our joint efforts.  This integration delivers new opportunities for sales engagement and improves functionality for sales reps to execute account-based selling.  Account-based marketing (ABM) requires an equal effort from Sales, and RambleChat delivers immediate functionality to bridge the gap for SalesLoft customers,” said RambleChat CEO Justin McDonald.

Vainu Rebrands

Finnish sales intelligence vendor Vainu rebranded earlier this week. The goal was to provide a unified view of the company.  Vainu is focused on company intelligence but includes registered contact/director details and mined data. The firm also offers CRM and MAP data enrichment and hygiene services.

Unlike most sales intelligence databases, Vainu is available in English, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, Danish and French.  Country datasets include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and The Netherlands with detailed financial data available for Norway, Sweden, and Finland.  Beta datasets are available for France, the UK, and the US with additional countries being developed.

Core UK data is gathered from Companies House.  US data is aggregated from state filings.

I’ve been planning on covering Vainu for the past six months but was waiting for an event.  Rebranding is as good a reason any.

Vainu was launched in 2014 and crowdsourced its initial dog nose logo (Vainu is a Finnish word for the scent picked up by an animal).  The website design and other branding aspects were inconsistent.

“Everything else was pretty much put together ad hoc after that: color schemes and supporting visuals for our first website layout, stock photos for our first slide decks, different messages to cater to the situations at hand.  The end result has been just as fragmented or ad hoc as our strategy: we’ve looked and felt different and sounded different in any situation.”

Mikko Luhtava, Vainu Head of Communications

Now that the firm has 2,000 customers and 180 employees, they felt it was time to formalize their brand with a new logo, tagline, and website with real images and black, white, and yellow text.

Vainu argues that B2B Sales is still stuck in the era of spam emails and cold calling lists.  “While buyers are looking for a real conversation, one where they’re engaged and understood, salespeople are looking at activity targets and sales quota, merely treating buyers as numbers,” blogged Luhtava.

Thus, the firm offers “real-time B2B sales.”  It is akin to SalesLoft’s call for authenticity in sales.  “While buyers are looking for a real conversation, one where they’re engaged and understood, salespeople are looking at activity targets and sales quota, merely treating buyers as numbers,” stated Luhtava.  “At Vainu, we believe there’s a right way of doing B2B sales—a way that is personalized, a way that uses data, a way that focuses on the buyer.  And we’ve made it our mission to make salespeople better at their jobs, by bringing real-time company data to every customer interaction.  We call this real-time sales.

Vainu supports company list building.  Selects include firmographics, technographics, buying signals (sales triggers), and account intelligence from the company’s CRM.  Trigger alerts cover company announcements, personnel changes, technology updates, and new additions to a prospect list.

The Vainu database covers nearly 60 million active companies and includes company profiles, technology stacks, corporate financials, and recent company news.

CRM admins can setup data syncing and enrichment with Salesforce, MS Dynamics, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Upsales, and SuperOffice.  Zapier is available for other platforms.  The firm also supports an API.

Vainu enriches leads before they are loaded into MAPs assisting with lead scoring and routing.

Vainu also offers bulk data for data modeling including business registry data, website information, and open and web-crawled intelligence.  Applications include churn prediction, account scoring, and financial services risk calculations.

Pricing begins at €6,600 (£6,000 or $7,250) per year for five reps plus a one-time onboarding fee of €600 for a single country database.  Each additional country dataset is priced at €3,000.  At 25 seats, the service is priced at €30,600 (£28,000 or $33,650) with a one-time onboarding fee of €2,100.  Each additional country dataset is priced at €3,000.  Nordic financial data adds €2,400.

I’m Kvetching about Grammar Again

“Schoolmarm” Royal Daulton figurine (Source: WannabeEditor on Wikipedia)

I’m starting to feel like the schoolmarm* calling out grammar and spelling errors. I am not normally a stickler about such things, but sales reps and marketers need to do a better job on the basics. I called out marketers a few weeks ago (“How Not to Write a Press Release“) and this week it is sales reps. Here is my letter to Sales Reps:

As you adopt sales engagement tools, you will be sending more emails, but writing fewer words for each email.  Your email templates should be perfectly grammatical, so the 20% that you write to personalize your messages should also be perfectly grammatical.  I’m not seeing this.  Saturday, I received emails from two different tactile marketing companies (the bizarre category name of companies that send direct mail gifts) with run-ons and missing punctuation. 

You do yourself and your company no favors by failing basic grammar checks (I use Grammarly) before hitting send.  Good grammar supports clarity, displays professionalism, and signals that the small things matter.

Here is an example from earlier today:

“Call a play to connect with me for a quick overview and I’ll send you an example NFL team swag item (your team) or a $25 Dinner eGift if you are more of an NHL fan, like myself.”  

The Call to Action from a tactile marketing vendor

If you received this sentence in an email, would you be more or less inclined towards their call to action (CTA) due to the poor grammar and twisted syntax?

Yes, the $25 gift is a strong CTA, but the poor grammar undermines trust. If you can’t do the small things right (e.g. proofing your email), then why would I assume you would get the big things right (e.g. managing the logistics of thousands of individually packaged and personalized eGifts)?

We all make mistakes when writing, and some of us are better than others at the mechanics of the written word. I’m simply suggesting that you do a quick readthrough of what you write before you send it. Using a grammar checking tool is a good backstop.

Another trick: put on our headphones and use Microsoft Word’s read aloud function. Close your eyes and listen for clarity, word choice, and messaging. Yes, this is a timely step; you may want to reserve it for key decisionmakers at ABM accounts, but sometimes you want to slow down to ensure you get things right.

Word choice is also important. When you are unsure whether you are properly using a word, select a different word or type Define <word> into Google or Bing. For emails, simple words should be employed and jargon avoided.

Bing’s first response to Define Kvetching

And to sales engagement vendors, how about some tools to flag style and grammar issues? As you develop AI tools for email, flag both best practices (e.g. Subject line too long, CTA not in the top third of the body, bullet points lower click through rates) and grammar issues.

Let’s write well, not good.


* Readers of the future: In 2019 the term schoolmarm was a bit antiquated and slightly pejorative, but not on the politically incorrect list of phrases. If in 2022 the term enters the list of micro-aggressions, mea culpa.

Court Rules LinkedIn Scraping Legal

In a ninth Circuit Court ruling last week, the Court sided with hiQ Labs which had been barred from accessing LinkedIn for the purposes of scraping public profiles.  hiQ Labs, a data analytics company which identifies employees who may be looking to depart, won a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn.  This is the second court which has evaluated the case and sided against the Microsoft subsidiary.

LinkedIn argued that scraping after a cease-and-desist letter was “without authorization” under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), but hiQ Labs argued that the content was public and that scraping public data was not akin to hacking.

The Court ruled that “there is little evidence that LinkedIn users who choose to make their profiles public actually maintain an expectation of privacy with respect to the information that they post publicly, and it is doubtful that they do.”

The Court continued, “LinkedIn invokes an interest in preventing ‘free riders’ from using profiles posted on its platform.  But LinkedIn has no protected property interest in the data contributed by its users, as the users retain ownership over their profiles.”

The National Law Review summarized the case:

Most notably, the Ninth Circuit held that HiQ had shown a likelihood of success on the merits in its claim that when a computer network generally permits public access to its data, a user’s accessing that publicly available data will not constitute access “without authorization” under the CFAA.

In light of this ruling, data scrapers, content aggregators and advocates of a more open internet will certainly be emboldened, but we reiterate something we advised back in our 2017 Client Alert about the lower court HiQ decision: while the Ninth Circuit’s decision suggests that the CFAA is not an available remedy to protect against unwanted scraping of public website data that is “presumptively open to all,” entities engaged in scraping should remain careful. The road ahead, while perhaps less bumpy than before, still contains rough patches.  Indeed, the Ninth Circuit cautioned that its opinion was issued only at the preliminary injunction stage and that the court did not “resolve the companies’ legal dispute definitively, nor do we address all the claims and defenses they have pleaded in the district court.”…

On appeal, the parties offered dueling visions of what the law surrounding the CFAA and scraping should be:

LinkedIn: “[A]uthorization from LinkedIn—the server’s owner—is ‘needed’ to avoid CFAA liability, regardless of whether those servers also host data that LinkedIn generally makes available on its website.  hiQ lacked that required “authorization” once LinkedIn sent hiQ its cease-and-desist letter and implemented additional technological barriers restricting bot access.”

HiQ: “LinkedIn does not grant permission to access its public content because those pages are, by definition, open for all to see and use.  hiQ, like any other Internet user, simply requests LinkedIn’s public pages, and LinkedIn’s servers automatically provide them.  There is no “authorization” for LinkedIn to revoke.  Reading the statute in accordance with the language’s ordinary significance, “without authorization” refers to circumstances where authorization is a prerequisite to access.”

National Law Review

Intentional access without authorization under the CFAA generally covers hacking and employee access after permission has been rescinded.  As public profiles are not subject to passwords, the question of whether the CFAA applied was in question.

“It is likely that when a computer network generally permits public access to its data, a user’s accessing that publicly available data will not constitute access without authorization under the CFAA,” wrote the Court.  “The data hiQ seeks to access is not owned by LinkedIn and has not been demarcated by LinkedIn as private using such an authorization system.  HiQ has therefore raised serious questions about whether LinkedIn may invoke the CFAA to preempt hiQ’s possibly meritorious tortious interference claim.”

Thus, the ruling supports web scraping of public sites.  What it doesn’t address is whether harvesting member data for the purposes of generating datasets which counter the interests of social media sites and its members is against the public interest.  This question may be more of a public policy question than a legal one.  Members join LinkedIn for the purposes of professional networking, job searching, and self-marketing.  While public LinkedIn does not publish emails or direct dials, it includes work and educational histories, interests, affiliations, and other personal content.  Furthermore, it is easy to guess at emails making it fairly trivial to assemble email files for spammers.  It is very possible, that the HiQ Labs ruling conforms with US law but due to the Personally Identifiable Information content being gathered is counter to European GDPR.  The result could well be the loss of public LinkedIn profiles or a thinning of publicly posted profiles.

The Court focused on the CFAA and did not evaluate other arguments when granting relief.  “State law trespass to chattels claims may still be available.  And other causes of action, such as copyright infringement, misappropriation, unjust enrichment, conversion, breach of contract, or breach of privacy, may also lie,” stated the Court.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at UC Berkeley called the ruling a “major decision for the open internet.  It doesn’t establish that scraping websites is completely legal, but it goes a long way toward establishing that it’s not a federal crime.”

In the case of HiQ, they offer predictive attrition models which could result in individuals not being hired or employees not being promoted.  “Keeper is the first HCM tool to offer predictive attrition insights about an organization’s employees based on publicly available data,” says the firm.  While some high-value employees may enjoy additional leverage due to these models, others may be mistrusted.  

One could imagine other detrimental use cases such as credit companies tracking employment and lowering credit scores.  The result would be higher interest costs and a lowered ability to find a job.  The result would be decreased transparency and truthfulness on LinkedIn.

As such, the scraping of LinkedIn data could undermine the trust members have in LinkedIn or limit the permissions granted to LinkedIn.  If LinkedIn played fast-and-loose with member data, they would have less standing, but LinkedIn does not permit downloading of member data to Excel or the uploading of member data to CRMs.  Sales Navigator treats member data as view only in its SNAP connectors.  Thus, LinkedIn is placing data privacy rules on itself that it cannot place on third-parties that gather LinkedIn data.  More broadly, parent company Microsoft has committed itself to GDPR as a global data privacy standard.

Analyst David Raab of the Customer Data Platform Institute had a tongue-in-cheek view of the case: “In what I like to think of as CSI: Obvious Division, a federal appeals court ruled that LinkedIn can’t block scraping of published member data because people had no expectation of privacy for their public profiles.  It’s rather amazing LinkedIn thought they could win with that one.” .dialogRendere

Technology Training Trends

LinkedIn Learning course catalog
LinkedIn Learning course catalog

LinkedIn told CNBC that the top three tech skills in demand are artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing.  However, they noted that many technology skills have a market value of only six years, so soft skills such as critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving should also be honed.  In order for workers to keep up, they should avail themselves of courses from LinkedIn Learning or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

“It’s important for companies to continue to invest in their people so that they are upskilling and reskilling their people to keep up with the roles that are in demand,” said Feon Ang, LinkedIn Vice President for Talent and Learning Solutions, Asia Pacific.  “But, at the same time, people need to continue to invest in themselves and have a growth mindset,” said Ang.

At last month’s Tenbound Conference Mark Dean, Head of Sales Development-Americas for LinkedIn, noted that soft skills are becoming increasingly critical for employees.  LinkedIn research found that 57% of leaders weighed soft skills over hard skills.  In demand skills include creativity, persuasion, and collaboration.  In short, he asked, “Can they tell a story?”

“In the age of continuous change, global competition, and the use of AI, the employees who will become leaders and visionaries are the ones who can communicate effectively and create connection within the organization.  It is only when employees have a sense of shared purpose and connection that they will do what it takes to help the organization succeed.  The best way to build this connection is through authenticity, vulnerability, and storytelling.  Soft, human-focused skills are the currency of the future.  Employees need to take it upon themselves to grow and learn on a continual basis, whether it’s finding a mentor or continually investing in their growth to hone these skills.”  

Lynne Levy of Arena Consulting

For Salesforce skills, there is Trailhead which the firm promotes at both public forums and on earnings calls.

LinkedIn Q3 2019 Sales Navigator Release

Elevate provides a curated feed of content to company employees for social media distribution. The curated content is now fed into Sales Navigator for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook sharing
Elevate provides a curated feed of content to company employees for social media distribution. The curated content is now fed into Sales Navigator for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook sharing

LinkedIn announced its Q3 Sales Navigator enhancements which are currently being rolled out to clients.  Key features include LinkedIn Elevate integration, improved save a lead functionality, InMail active status, list cloning, and improved customer support.

Elevate is a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions offering which supports employee content promotion.  A curator provides thought leadership pieces, press releases, and open web content to corporate employees.  About one-third of Elevate content recipients also have Sales Navigator seats.  Most clients are midsize or enterprise customers.

Elevate is sold based on the number of seats with volume discounts.  Enterprise licensing is also available based on the company size.

The Elevate integration delivers curated content to the Navigator home page.  Content may be shared to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.  Sales reps may add personal comments with the share.

Elevate provides metrics to help firms track increased site traffic, leads, and new hires.

LinkedIn Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn noted that the Elevate integration resulted in a dramatic increase in both the percentage of sales reps sharing content and overall content being shared.  

According to LinkedIn, content that is shared by employees has double the engagement rate of non-shared content.  Furthermore, social enterprises are “58% more likely to attract top talent and 20% more likely to retain them.”

Social sales reps are also more successful.  LinkedIn stated that social sales reps that regularly share content are 45% more likely to exceed quota.

“Marketers will still be able to control what content they’d like to see employees post.   But now Sales Navigator users will have an even easier time boosting their brand and the brand of their company.”


Doug Camplejohn, VP of Product Management, LinkedIn Sales Solutions

LinkedIn introduced custom list sharing in Q1 and extended the functionality this quarter.  Previously, lists were shared but ownership resided with the list creator.  Shared lists may now be copied, providing the copier with full list management capabilities.  Other new list management features include shared list removal and bulk saving of all leads or accounts from a shared list.

LinkedIn also improved the lead connection flow.  Now, when a connection is proffered through Sales Navigator, users can check a box to add the contact to their leads list, even if the connection is ignored or declined.  This allows the rep to track the contact.

Sales Navigator redesigned its Help Center with “more intuitive navigation,” easier search, article tagging, and tables of content.  Click to chat allows users to chat with support reps.  The Sales Navigator community has been extended to seven European languages.  The Learning Center has been rebranded the Customer Hub.

LinkedIn has been knocked in the past for its lack of subscription service support.  Improved training and support tools along with chat indicate that the firm now realizes that enterprise subscription services require a higher level of customer support than free or consumer services.

Sales Navigator included a set of small enhancements including expanded list sorting options, an increase in list size to 2,500 leads or accounts, and an active status indicator from InMail.  A user is only shown active if they permit it in their privacy settings.

Zoominfo: New Branding & Packaging

Zoominfo offers pricing and packaging similar to its legacy offerings, helping ensure a smooth transition to their new platform.

Yesterday, DiscoverOrg announced that it is rebranding with the Zoominfo name. The firm determined that it was easier to build brand perception than brand presence. They also rolled out a new combined platform and packaging.

While the firm officially launched their new platform yesterday, the two legacy platforms will continue to be available to clients under current contracts and pricing structures.  The 100 customers who have licensed both products since acquisition will be moved to the joint platform.

The second issue the firm confronted was their pricing structure.  Zoominfo pricing was based on the number of records purchased or maintained under a subscription license with a significantly lower initial price point.  DiscoverOrg provided broad access to their database with an average contract value of around $30,000.  The new product line offers pricing and functionality similar to legacy Zoominfo offerings at the lower end and pricing and packaging similar to DiscoverOrg at the upper end.  Thus, as contracts expire and customers migrate to the new platform, there should not be significant sticker shock.

The Starter package for a single user supports basic company and contact information, direct dials and verified emails, quick search, and prospect list building.  The service is designed to help users “find their next customer.”

The Professional package is akin to the broader Zoominfo service.  Professional helps three users “prospect with ease.”  Additional features include a Contact Accuracy Score, recent and saved searches, list management, customizable tags, and list matching.  Professional also supports CRM, MAP, and Sales Automation solutions.

The Advanced package supports unlimited page-level exports and provides “deep insights” for five users.  The package is similar to DiscoverOrg with technographics, org charts, Scoops (sales triggers), web references, similar companies, personal contact details, investors, funding data, and rich bios with education and work histories.  Other features include data enhancements and alerts.

Finally, the Elite package provides “actionable intelligence” including intent data and alerts (OppAlerts), ideal customer profiling and scoring (AccountView), Company Attributes, NeverBounce email verification, and department-level employee counts.  Elite also begins with five users and supports unlimited page-level exports.

Additional products include

  • FormComplete: a web form enrichment service
  • WebSights: a newly launched visitor id service.  The service is still in beta and based upon their extensive IP addresses tied to company intelligence.
  • Enrich: CRM and MAP data maintenance

DiscoverOrg emphasizes that it has “solutions for businesses of every size” on its pricing page.  While this is generally true and they have done an excellent job of combining two companies with much different pricing models, they do not have a single-seat sales intelligence solution priced to compete against LinkedIn Sales Navigator, InsideView, or D&B Hoovers. However, DiscoverOrg has never offered such a product and it has had high growth rates from the beginning. With the Zoominfo acquisition, they are much more competitive at the lower end of the market save the single-seat sales intelligence scenario.

Zoominfo has historically focused on the sales and marketing function, but Schuck sees a broader user base.  “The thing that ends up happening is they invest in CRM, marketing automation and open the door to any information to go into those systems,” he said.  

New use cases include website visitors, trade show and webinar attendees, and ongoing data hygiene.  

“There’s no mechanism to update that data.  Meanwhile, companies are growing, they’re shrinking, they’re doing a merger or acquisition, an IPO.  They’re hiring a new CEO, a new CMO, a new CIO.”

Zoominfo CEO Henry Schuck

Zoominfo plans on sending their executives to communicate the new brand and capabilities at conferences and tradeshows this fall.  The firm also plans digital advertising and offline advertising (e.g. billboards) in key markets.

Flash: DiscoverOrg Rebrands as Zoominfo

Zoominfo Executive Details include Employment by Job Function
Zoominfo executive details include employment by job function

After DiscoverOrg acquired Zoominfo in February, the firm maintained both brands and announced that a new platform which supported both services would be available this summer.  At the time, the assumption was that the Zoominfo brand would be retired and the firm would move forward as DiscoverOrg.  After all, DiscoverOrg was the larger of the two firms and the brand was highly associated with data quality, technographics, and rich executive profiles while Zoominfo was known for having the largest set of B2B emails and direct dials spanning companies of all sizes and positions.

DiscoverOrg commissioned research into both brands and found that Zoominfo had broader brand awareness.  The research also indicated that it would be less expensive to increase brand equity than brand awareness.  Both brands had their strengths, but, according to Chief Growth Officer Katie Bullard, it was easier to buy brand perception than brand awareness.  Furthermore, research indicated that the Zoominfo brand perception had improved since acquisition.

“There was significantly more — three times — the market awareness around the ZoomInfo brand than the DiscoverOrg brand,” said CEO Henry Schuck.  “I’ve tried to pride myself on making the decision that is right for the business and not necessarily easy for me or convenient for me.  This was obvious.  This was the right decision for the business, and I wasn’t going to let the nostalgia for the DiscoverOrg brand overshadow that.”

Based on this research, the firm decided to retain the Zoominfo brand and deploy the DiscoverOrg brand as a “powered by” brand booster.  Thus, the new platform will be labeled Zoominfo Powered by DiscoverOrg for the next year or two.

“The new platform will be known as ZoomInfo powered by DiscoverOrg and combines the strengths and benefits of the DiscoverOrg platform with those of the ZoomInfo platform, which it acquired in February 2019.  Designed to be the single source of B2B data truth for sales and marketing professionals, the new platform offers a suite of software tools coupled with unrivaled data coverage, accuracy and depth.  As a result, customers gain a highly actionable 360-degree view of contacts, companies, and opportunities to target and convert.  Deeply integrated into both workflows and technology stacks, ZoomInfo powered by DiscoverOrg works seamlessly with all the leading sales, marketing and CRM platforms…”

With this launch, ZoomInfo Powered by DiscoverOrg features an unparalleled combination of proprietary AI and machine learning tools, a vast contributory network, deep two-way business application integrations, and human verification from over 300 researchers.  The result is the most unique [sic] and effective SaaS platform designed to empower companies to deliver more predictable and sustainable growth.”

Zoominfo Press Release (September 10, 2019)

The firm’s mission is “To create a world where every company has a clear view of their ideal customers and how to connect with them.”

The new Zoominfo logo is black with a standalone Z and a rising arrow.  

The site is simplified from DiscoverOrg’s last design with white, gray, lavender, and black as the primary background colors.  Red and lavender are employed for buttons and hyperlinks.  Most text is black with white employed for text in buttons and black backgrounds.  The site is much less frenetic than the last DiscoverOrg design.  A splash of lavender and light use of pastels, which are not often used in B2B websites, provide a calming effect.

The new website tagline is “Your business deserves more.”  The firm continues, “ZoomInfo gives you more.  We combine the leading business contact database with best-in-class technology to pinpoint, process, and deliver the marketing and sales intelligence you need— exactly when and how you need it, to always hit your number.”

Zoominfo employs four methods for acquiring company and contact intelligence: signature block mining; automated online crawling and machine learning; in-house editorial teams: and third-party data licensing.

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) reached $350 million across 13,500 customers.  ARR has grown significantly since the Zoominfo acquisition.  According to Inc., combined 2018 revenue was $222 million.  As ARR is higher than revenue when a subscription service is growing, the likely 2019 revenue is around $300 million+.

Zoominfo also has to reposition its data acquisition model.  DiscoverOrg began employing web data acquisition tools last year, so that methodology was already understood by their clients.  The firm also has licensed data sets in the past, however sparingly.  The new website discusses four methods for data gathering: signature block mining; automated online crawling and machine learning; in-house editorial teams: and third-party data licensing.

Signature block intelligence comes from Zoominfo’s community members that permit access to signature blocks in exchange for Zoominfo access.  It is the most controversial of their methods as data is being harvested on third-parties without their consent.  While both companies are GDPR compliant, Zoominfo’s approach was simply to add an EU contact filter.  This is an area that they will likely need to address further, particularly as US states adopt GDPR-like regulations and Zoominfo expands its “personal contact details.”

Machine learning gathers technographic and firmographic intelligence from job boards, web sites, news, and SEC filings.  It is a standard data gathering method and broadly employed across the industry.

“We use cutting edge AI/ML technologies to help GTM [go-to-market] teams stay laser-focused on the right markets and best opportunities to hit their number.”

Zoominfo website

Human research for gathering and verifying company and contact data has long been at the core of DiscoverOrg’s brand and value proposition.  Zoominfo continues to maintain the DiscoverOrg editorial team of over 300 researchers.  The editorial process is the basis of their high data quality and rich biographic and technographic intelligence.  As such, it is the justification for their premium pricing.  Hopefully, the firm doesn’t make the mistake that D&B did after acquiring Hoovers and allowing its editorial capabilities to atrophy when a high-quality dataset (Hoover’s editorial coverage of 42,000 companies) was mixed with a much larger universe of companies and contacts (D&B WorldBase).  Given DiscoverOrg’s long-term focus on data quality and editorial research, it is unlikely that they would make this mistake.  Conversations I’ve had with Schuck and Bullard over the years support this thesis.

Zoominfo coverage counts as of September 10, 2019.

Finally, third-party datasets are licensed.  Content includes public company data (long a gap of both services), M&A details (added last year), government data sources, and social media feeds.

The database has grown to 20 million company profiles with 5 million C-level contacts, 16 million decision maker direct dials, and 20 million decision maker emails.  Globally, Zoominfo provides 66 million emails and 42 million direct dials.  They also maintain departed contact details to assist with data hygiene.

According to the Portland Business Journal, private equity firms TA Associates, The Carlyle Group and 22C Capital have invested at least $790 million in Zoominfo.  The PBJ also noted that Zoominfo is profitable.


Tomorrow, I will provide additional details around Zoominfo’s product packaging.