Month: August 2022

RollWorks Journey Events and Sales Inights for HubSpot

ABX Platform RollWorks launched Journey Events for HubSpot, a consolidated account-level view of the customer buying journey.  The service helps B2B teams understand which activities are helping move customers through the decision process and which activities are sub-optimal and should be adjusted.

“Due to its ability to surface every marketing and sales activity driving an account’s progression, Journey Events for HubSpot also provides sales teams a comprehensive look (both immediately and over time) at how an account is moving—what is working and what is helping to drive the account progression, including seeing every action alongside an account spike,” stated the firm.  “This helps sellers plan and personalize outreach by identifying the optimal time to contact an account and tailor messaging based on the last action that may have had an effect.”

Journey Events pulls engagement, intent, and stage data from HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, RollWorks, and G2.

RollWorks Journey Events was announced last fall and is now available inside HubSpot.

RollWorks gathers time-stamped events such as meetings booked, opportunities generated, and SDR emails.  It then matches activity history against intent, engagement, and journey stage data.  As a result, sales and marketing professionals can visualize account progression against activity history to determine the efficacy of various activities. 

“At a critical time when marketers across the board are being asked to do more with far less, RollWorks Journey Events for HubSpot stands out for its ability to help all go-to-market teams be more efficient with their ABM strategies.  Being able to see each and every marketing and sales activity that’s driving account progression is huge.  With that, for example, you won’t send irrelevant messages in an email or waste money sending a gift to an account if it isn’t ready.  Instead, your organization can focus on what’s working and foster a common language between sales and marketing.”

Jodi Cerretani, RollWorks’ Head of Demand Generation

RollWorks has established HubSpot as a key partner and invested significantly in HubSpot connectors.  In June, it launched Sales Insights for HubSpot, which employs data science to provide a “360-degree view of accounts throughout the buying journey, helping B2B marketers and sales teams to eliminate the guesswork and create more timely and efficient sales outreach.”

It also has enjoyed significant success with its RollWorks ABM HubSpot App, which passed 500 installs in April, 150% above its nearest platform competitor.  The integration enables teams “to identify high-fit, high-intent accounts and buyers, reach them efficiently, and measure impact.”

“RollWorks is laser-focused on engagement quality innovation, and we are incredibly proud of our acceleration and momentum within the HubSpot ecosystem,” stated Justin Cooperman, VP of Product Management.  “With Journey Events for HubSpot, we’ve raised the bar on relevance and personalization between seller and prospect.”

RollWorks Sales Insights for HubSpot identifies spiking ad engagement and website visits.

Sales Insights identifies accounts with spiking engagement based on visitor intelligence and advertising views.  RollWorks flags accounts with Account Spikes compared to baseline activity and visualizes engagement within HubSpot.  As a result, revenue teams can prioritize marketing programs and sales outreach based on spiking engagement.

Sales Insights de-anonymizes existing HubSpot CRM contacts and automates sales alerts when engagement activity spikes.  It also identifies unassigned spiking accounts and notifies sales reps via email when there is spiking engagement.  Additionally, within the HubSpot Company Record, an account timeline displays activity across the website, ads, intent, CRM, marketing automation platform, etc.

Likewise, marketing can analyze which campaigns lead to engagement surges and tailor ABM campaigns accordingly.  They can also build nurture workflows for spiking accounts. “There’s a difference between ‘pipeline’ and ‘pipedream.’ I prefer the former,” said RollWorks VP of Sales Shawn Cook.  “When my sales teams know who and what content a prospect is engaging with, they can take on the role of trusted advisor and advance the conversations with the accounts that are likely to buy from us.  Sales needs to not only know what the content is but also why that piece of content was created.  This is where the alignment is magnified.”

Sales Insights for HubSpot is included as part of the $995 per month RollWorks Account Based Platform license.

Postal via RollWorks’ Sales Insights for HubSpot Connector

Offline Marketing Engagement Platform Postal.io announced an ABX platform partnership with RollWorks. The integration, which leverages RollWorks’ Sales Insights for HubSpot connector, adds direct mail, e-gifting, and branded swag delivery options to RollWorks omnichannel engagement.

“Postal’s offline engagement platform optimizes omnichannel campaigns at scale,” said Mike Stocker, VP of Partnerships at RollWorks. “Together, and through a HubSpot connection, RollWorks and Postal help marketers ensure that these sending and gifting campaigns are data-driven and result in better conversions.”

RollWorks customers can now send a Postal gift when an account is spiking or send a direct mail based on intent or journey stage progression. Marketing can also automate gift sending to key stakeholders when demand unit engagement thresholds are reached (e.g., impressions, ad clicks, page views, etc.)

“The increased demand of Offline Marketing Engagement is a testament to a change in the way companies are engaging with prospects, customers, and employees,” said Postal CEO Erik Kostelnik. “Through the power of Postal and RollWorks, when you can orchestrate digital ABM programs with offline, your programs no longer have to be siloed and episodic. They are systematic, which ultimately drives efficiency and better outcomes.”

RollWorks → HubSpot → Postal.io Workflow.

RollWorks has established HubSpot as a key partner and invested significantly in HubSpot connectors.  In June, it launched Sales Insights for HubSpot, which employs data science to provide a “360-degree view of accounts throughout the buying journey, helping B2B marketers and sales teams to eliminate the guesswork and create more timely and efficient sales outreach.”  Last month, RollWorks announced Journey Events for HubSpot.

RollWorks has enjoyed significant success with its RollWorks ABM HubSpot App, which passed 500 installs in April, 150%.  The integration enables teams “to identify high-fit, high-intent accounts and buyers, reach them efficiently, and measure impact.”

Continue to part II on RollWorks Journey Events and Sales Insights for HubSpot.

Leadspace – SalesIntel Partnership

CDP and DaaS Platform Leadspace deepened its partnership with company and contacts vendor SalesIntel to deliver richer profiles.  The expanded profiles will assist with territory planning, campaign building, and ABM programs, helping convert a “company’s total addressable market into new opportunities and customers.”

Leadspace is promising at least a fifty-percent cut in third-party data licensing expenses for human-verified contacts, firmographics, and technographics.  “This frees companies to reinvest their savings into advanced AI-assisted technologies to fully optimize funnel conversion,” stated Leadspace.

Leadspace aggregates third-party data from over thirty vendors, with data spanning 70 million companies, 240 million buying centers, and 280 million business professionals.

Leadspace delivers “fully-enriched, 360-degree buyer profiles of current and high-performance lookalike customers” that align the company’s territories with its TAM and ICP.  It then activates ABM-derived audiences across multiple channels, including Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and LiveRamp. 

Leadspace offers connectors for major platforms, including Salesforce, MSD, Marketo, Pardot, and HubSpot.

“Leadspace is redefining the performance of B2B sales and marketing teams.  We have over a decade of experience in delivering the most extensible B2B profiles in the industry.  And unlike other offerings, the Leadspace platform is data source agnostic, open, and extensible,” stated Alex Yoder, CEO of Leadspace.  “Companies large and small need and deserve complete and active profiles, but today many companies struggle to keep their profiles up to date and complete.  We’ve worked with SalesIntel for several years, and this expansion in our partnership to include human-verified B2B contacts and technographic data in the Leadspace B2B graph is a testament to their being the leading vendor for the most affordable direct dial and accurate contact data in the industry.”

SalesIntel employs a global research network of nearly 2,000 editors who double-verify its data each quarter, ensuring a 95% accuracy level of its contacts.  It also provides firmographics and technographics.

“At SalesIntel, we are committed to providing the best sales intelligence available for revenue teams of all sizes.  Leadspace requires the highest quality data to fuel its platform, so this partnership expansion comes naturally.  We are honored to be a trusted provider,” said SalesIntel CEO Manoj Ramnani. “With customers having access to accurate contact data and over 200 million technographic data points, they will be equipped with the most accurate insights so they can expand reach, grow pipeline, and increase close rates.”

Abstrakt Salesloft Connector

Abstrakt’s playbooks and real-time coaching are available within Salesloft

Abstrakt announced an integration with Sales Engagement Platform Salesloft to deliver its real-time call coaching and automated playbooks for calls initiated on Salesloft.  Abstrakt also offers real-time call transcription and passes call details to the contact record after each call.

Playbooks guide sales reps with the “correct questions, relevant customer stories, or high-level demo points for every possible scenario.”  Playbook questions are highlighted during a call, and responses are immediately tagged.  Playbooks can be configured by team, rep role, persona, and stage. 

“Our partnership with Abstrakt shows commitment to our customers by bringing a first-of-its-kind, real-time call coaching software to our platform,” said Devin Schiffman, VP of Alliances at Salesloft. “Real-time is a critical element of sales coaching, and this strategic partnership will continue to drive more opportunities for our customers.”

Abstrakt real-time coaching and playbooks help sales reps focus on prospects “without missing qualifying questions.”  It also provides recommendations for managing objections within 0.2 seconds.

Call recordings and transcripts are available within a few seconds of call completion.  The service also provides talk tracks, talk ratio metrics, topic tagging, and playbook completion percent.

Next Step Items are on the Abstrakt roadmap.

Abstrakt is available as both a standalone and Salesloft integrated solution.  Salesloft is Abstrakt’s first integration partner.  Outreach and HubSpot connectors are coming soon.

“When we looked into the market, we knew we wanted to do two things: work with the leader in the sales engagement space (Salesloft) and make sure Abstrakt filled a void in their current offering (which we do),” said Abstrakt CEO Greg Reffner.  “I am very excited about the opportunity to provide a great experience for all Salesloft & Abstrakt customers.”

Abstrakt supports sales, recruitment, and insurance agent use cases.

Abstrakt is priced at $100 per user per month, with a ten percent discount for annual payment.  Volume discounts are available.  There is no surcharge for the Salesloft connector.

Abstrakt will have five employees by the end of the month with a distributed workforce.  It has managed its initial product development with Beeso Studio, a startup studio in Omaha Nebraska. Abstrakt launched in April 2021 and operated as a paid beta until early this year.  Crunchbase lists them as receiving $730,000 in pre-seed funding.

G2 Aiming for $100M ARR by End of Year

Nathan Latka interviews Godard Abel

On Nathan Latka’s podcast, Godard Abel, CEO of G2, said that he expects to hit $100 million ARR before the end of the year.  G2, which raised $157M at a $1.1B valuation in June 2021 (Series D), grew at 40% over the past year.  At the time of its Series D, its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) was $55 million.

G2 maintains a product/vendor taxonomy for its review site, with vendors identifying their product categories.  “If you’re a software vendor, you want it to be right on G2,” said Abel.  That way, its seven million monthly visitors can properly discover a vendor’s offerings.

Along with categorizing vendors, G2 editors determine the key features for each product category and let customers rate these capabilities.

The number of G2 listings grew 48% over the last year.  Its fifty-person research team collaborates with its “community of vendors” to maintain vendor and product profiles.

G2 also licenses its taxonomy to partners and investors.  For example, ServiceNow licenses the G2 taxonomy for its ITS Management tool for categorizing apps.  Abel also noted that around fifty of the “World’s leading SaaS investors” have licensed G2 data to help understand the SaaS competitive landscape and adjacent markets.

G2 has additional revenue streams.  It offers second-party opted-in intent data and a G2 Track service for tracking SaaS expenses.

Nathan Latka interviews SaaS CEOs and posts them to his podcast. This data is then loaded into his database of SaaS metrics. As he regularly reinterviews executives, there is often historical ARR and employment data. The database is a freemium service with limited free data.

G2 Revenue (Source: GetLatka.com)

Lusha Salesforce Data Exchange

Lusha Enrichment Editor

Contacts database Lusha announced the general availability of its Salesforce Data Enrichment (SFDE) service.  The new service provides on-demand, periodic, or continuous data enrichment, ensuring that company and contact data remain accurate. 

An Enrichment Editor helps operations managers understand how many records need enrichment and the number of leads, contacts, and accounts recently added to Salesforce and available for enrichment.  The Salesforce admin can run an initial enrichment against the full database or target a subset of records for enrichment, with the Enrichment Editor supporting custom audiences for updates based upon multiple Salesforce field criteria.

The Salesforce admin performs the initial field mapping during the integration setup.  Custom fields are supported, and the admin can choose whether to override existing values during enrichment.  Lusha recommends that admins create special fields, such as Lusha Email, to avoid overwriting current field values.

SFDE is an Enterprise add-on and is subject to an access fee.  Analyst Relations Manager Alina Sharon-Green warned GZ Consulting that “extensive usage may require the purchase of additional data credits.”  As a launch promotion, enterprise customers will receive SFDE for free through the end of the year.

Lusha already supports Send to Salesforce functionality but does not provide I-frame support or “stare and compare” updates within AppExchange records.

“Companies spend huge amounts of resources building CRMs of both current and prospective leads but suffer from the speed the data becomes outdated and irrelevant,” said CEO Yoni Tserruya. “B2B sales organizations rely on their CRM to identify the right prospects – so when this data is incomplete or inaccurate, their time is wasted, and opportunities are lost.  With our new SFDE solution, sales teams are given direct access to Lusha’s extensive database of accurate contact and company information to automatically enrich their existing data and gain new insights on their prospects to scale business results.”

Lusha has grown its database to 100 global million contacts, which includes 60 million emails and 50 million direct-dial phones.  All contact records are processed through a seven-step verification process.  Lusha also profiles 15 million global companies. Lusha continued its rapid pace of growth, doubling its paid user base in H1, “with significant growth in Enterprise users,” stated Sharon-Green.

Crunchbase Series D

Crunchbase reporting on its funding rounds in Crunchbase Pro.

Funding intelligence vendor Crunchbase closed on a $50 million Series D led by Alignment Growth, with OMERS Ventures, Mayfield, and Emergence Capital also participating.  The oversubscribed round raised total funding to $106.5 million.

“Investors we spoke with echoed the trends we’re seeing in Crunchbase data: We are in the middle of one of the most challenging times for startups to raise,” blogged Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell.  “So, the fact that we had more firms trying to invest in us than we were even looking for is a huge vote of confidence in our company, brand, and the products we’ve built.”

Jager noted that the firm has moved beyond funding data for PE and VC firms to a broader information platform that supports sales, recruiting, finance, and business development professionals.  I would add Competitive and Market Intelligence professionals to their user list as I regularly use Crunchbase and Owler for deal intelligence.

Crunchbase began as a funding database at TechCrunch but was spun out as an independent organization in 2015 and has evolved into a sales intelligence service.  The Crunchbase Pro offering supports company discovery, qualification, tracking, Salesforce syncing, and engagement (via contact data and email templates) at a low price ($49 per month billed annually).

Crunchbase Pro Build-a-List

“As difficult economic conditions impact more companies, knowing whether a target account is on the upswing or not gives prospectors the power to focus outreach on decision-makers with buying power,” McConnell said.  “Our tools encourage account-based selling, which encourages deal-makers to prioritize their prospecting efforts based on the companies they should be contacting rather than the individuals.  This is the opposite approach to ‘spray and pray,’ which relies on massive contact lists and leads to the kind of spammy outreach that no one likes.”

Recent enhancements include territory filters, diversity flags, machine-learning company recommendations, a Chrome extension, and email alerts for priority accounts, lists, and saved searches.  They also added a contacts database and email templates.

Crunchbase has retained its focus on emerging (funded) companies.  This focus is both an advantage and disadvantage.  Emerging companies are often the fastest growing businesses with expanding needs and fewer incumbent vendors that need to be displaced.  They are also more open to cutting-edge technology, encourage quick decision-making, and are less risk averse.  Conversely, they represent a relatively small percentage of the overall economy, deals are smaller (but with significant upside at renewal), and they are more subject to economic volatility.

Another advantage of focusing on emerging companies is that the leading sales intelligence databases have weak coverage of these firms.  When companies collect or ingest data on global companies of all sizes, they lack the editorial bandwidth to deliver detailed information on emerging companies.  Specialist databases such as Crunchbase offer funding details, acquisition histories, editorially-written business descriptions, and more accurate sizing data.

“The Crunchbase SaaS platform combines rich and proprietary company data with direct access to decision-makers within a single intuitive interface—at compelling price points—making it a powerful tool for driving ROI across a variety of use cases, from sales to recruiting and more,” stated new Crunchbase Board member Alex Iosilevich from Alignment Growth.  “We expect that Crunchbase will continue to gain accelerated industry adoption and are excited to support the company’s growth momentum alongside strong participation from the existing investor group.”

Crunchbase continues to grow its product and data.  It supports 75 million unique annual users and over 60,000 customers.  Furthermore, SaaS products drove a 5x year-over-year increase in new recurring revenue in Q1 2022.

“We took a step back from rapid growth in favor of a more measured, balanced approach,” stated McConnell, who noted that the firm has focused on capital-efficient growth.  The firm dialed back its Burn Multiple from 3 ($3 spent to acquire $1 in new ARR) in 2019 to 0.22 in H1.

“The recent onslaught of down rounds and mass layoffs from companies who very recently hit unicorn status shows how outsized burn rates can be hidden behind oversized funding rounds, covering up the reality of weak business fundamentals,” McConnell said.  “I’m especially proud of the fact that we have been able to generate growth while keeping our burn rate in check.  In the first half of this year, we drove $9 million net new ARR at only $2 million burn — that’s best in class according to Bessemer’s efficiency benchmarks and puts us on the path to profitability…We plan to double our business-to-business software ARR this year, ending around $38 million in ARR just for this customer segment.”

Iosilevech argued that Crunchbase is well-positioned for ongoing growth and does not expect follow-on rounds.  “They’re managing the business in a capital-efficient way so that the capital that they raise will really be the last round they need before a major milestone in the company’s history, whether it’s an IPO or something else.”

Funds will be deployed towards additional headcount and expanding platform functionality, beginning with a HubSpot connector.  The firm is also looking to expand its machine-learning recommendations for sales, expand its data insights, and add usage tracking dashboards “to help customers track efficacy of activities on Crunchbase, along with the number of opportunities and ARR available to them.”

Crunchbase has grown to 220 employees with a remote-first operational model.  It added seventy staff during the first half of the year and is aiming to add another fifty-five employees before year’s end.  It was cash flow positive in Q1.

Crunchbase did not disclose its new valuation figures.

Demandbase Unified CRM View

ABX Platform Demandbase announced that it is the first sales intelligence and account engagement platform to integrate both services jointly into CRM.  Demandbase offers a single view that combines first-party and behavioral data from the Demandbase ABX cloud and third-party datasets (firmographics, technographics, contact data, and news & social insights) from the Demandbase Sales Intelligence Cloud.

“Doing so gives B2B sellers access to all the information they need to spot and close larger deals faster,” stated the firm.  “This first of its kind application guides sales teams to know where and when to engage with the right accounts and decision-makers, leading to higher win rates, shorter sales cycles, and bigger deals — boosting CRM adoption in the process.”

Demandbase brought firmographic, contact, and technographics databases in-house following the May 2021 acquisitions of InsideView and DemandMatrix.  Intent data includes first and third-party intelligence, including Surging Intent, Demandbase Keyword Intent, Campaign Response, and Web Page Visits.

Revenue Operations can also select intent data from Bombora and G2, which are processed through the ABX platform’s predictive models.

The Demandbase Timeline provides current and historical intent data.

The Demandbase platform also supports activity timelines, product and competitor intent datasets, and persona-based engagement heatmaps, helping revenue teams assess account potential and determine where accounts stand in the buyer’s journey.

Heatmaps may be viewed by engagement, people, or journeys.  Both preset and custom options are available.  In addition, users can drill down to details by clicking on a row or column header.

The SFDC Heatmap is presented at the Account level with Engagement Minutes (Demandbase’s contact engagement model) displayed within the heatmap matrix.

Sales users can utilize this heatmap to find champions at an org via the highest engagement and understand with which roles they need to communicate.

The Demandbase Heatmap is available with both preset and customizable views.

The platform also supports long-running InsideView for Salesforce functionality, including

  • Company and contact profiles
  • Prospect list building for companies and contacts
  • Contact searching at accounts
  • A news viewer that combines company news, social posts, and blogs
  • Corporate family trees
  • Add to CRM with duplicate checking
  • CRM “stare and compare” updates

According to Demandbase, the unified UI lets customers “consolidate their tech stack, replacing ABM, sales intelligence, advertising, and other vendors with Demandbase One, the Smarter Go-To-Market solution.”

“The beauty of this unified sales UI is that all the data a salesperson needs is readily accessible, right in the CRM where they’re already working.  It’s revolutionary for sales teams,” said Demandbase CRO Allison Metcalfe.  “No more toggling between systems or wasting time in generic outreach that doesn’t drive sales.  Instead, they’ll have deeper insights and greater visibility into prospective deals, gaining knowledge about what buyers are doing around the web, what they engage with, who to contact (and how), and what the most relevant messaging is.  The actionability, productivity, and efficacy of such functionality is practically limitless.”

In other news, Demandbase was named to the Fast Company “100 Best Workplaces for Innovators.” The magazine noted that Demandbase reinvests 20% of its revenue in R&D.

HG Insights Platform 2.0

The Opportunity Generator assembles targeted lists based on fitness and intent.

Market Intelligence vendor HG Insights released version 2.0 of its platform to deliver the “actionable insights” technology vendors need to better “understand their markets in-depth, make decisions, and Go-To-Market (GTM) with precision and confidence.”  Platform 2.0 supports technographics, install data, spend data, twelve million company profiles, contract intelligence, and intent signals for nine million global companies.

“The HG Insights Platform goes beyond simple high-level market reports to provide business leaders with actionable insights to make successful Go-To-Market decisions,” said Robert Fox, CTO of HG Insights.  “Customers are already using HG Insights to allocate resources more effectively, prioritize the right product initiatives, and give their sales and marketing teams the account details they need to pursue the best opportunities—and now we are building on these capabilities with Platform 2.0.  I am excited at the speed of innovation the new platform launch unlocks as HG Insights maintains itself as the market leader of technology intelligence.”

HG Platform 2.0 supports modules for company profiling, marketing intelligence, contextual intent, and opportunity generation.

Platform 2.0 offers self-serviceable intent insights where marketers identify accounts with the highest current propensity to buy based on market signals.  Intent Insights begins by matching each vendor’s Ideal Customer Profile and intent topics to define a set of target accounts.  Account scoring then ranks the target accounts based on a combination of intent signals and market fit (firmographics and technographics).

Marketers can then employ IT spend intelligence to prioritize accounts by budgets, construct equitable sales territories, and analyze market spending trends.

The platform is supported by a “ground up” architectural refresh that improves HG Insights’ ability to scale up its data and insights delivery.  In Q4, the firm plans to release a new API and native Salesforce integration served by the new platform.

Other platform features include improved account scoring, saved search lists, account match logic enhancements, self-serve customer reporting, and UX enhancements.

Install data enhancements include company hierarchy mapping and “new trending features that capture intensity trending over time.”

“These improvements give a more dynamic experience to our technology install data and can answer a broader variety of questions about product usage,” said Darcy Moss, Director of Product Marketing.  “Data coverage and precision have improved—you are now able to profile installs at a global, country, and city/state level.  Intensity Trending and Momentum deliver an improved understanding of technology usage.”

HG Insights, which began as a technographics vendor, now supports modules for opportunity generation, market intelligence, account profiling, and contextual intent.  The Market Intelligence module, released in early 2021, helps marketing and strategy analysts size markets by IT spend, tech installs, firmographics, geography, company size, etc.  It also lets them:

  • Analyze vendor penetration and identify threats, trends, and opportunities
  • Allocate resources and territories more efficiently
  • Identify untapped market potential with whitespace analysis

Contextual Intent, an add-on service, combines technology install data and buyer intent signals “to create a new scoring and filtering experience for laser-focused company targeting.”  HG Insights processes two billion weekly intent signals spanning over 120 million verified tech installs.  Its technology taxonomy support over 14,000 products, solutions, and services.

Contextual intent helps identify prospects researching or evaluating a product that is

  • Not detected in a current install
  • In a category where HG Insights has detected the installation of another product from the same vendor
  • A potential displacement of a competitor’s offering

HG Insights expanded its IT spend and intelligence insights when it acquired Intricately back in March.  Intricately’s proprietary sensor network gathers cloud product adoption, usage, and spend data for seven million global businesses across 21,000 cloud offerings.  Data are collected from over 150 global Internet points of presence, helping Intricately map digital infrastructure.  Its insights are delivered via an API, integrations, data snapshots, and web applications.

Intent Activity identifies the signal strength, signal location, and buyer’s journey stage.