I have not conducted a recent study of Tier 2 data vs. other contact data sources, so cannot speak to its quality.
Two other vendors directly collect and verify contact direct phones and emails. If direct-dial accuracy is a key concern, also evaluate DealSignal and SalesIntel.io. DealSignal performs overnight reverification so is better for marketing than sales. SalesIntel performs 90-day reverification cycles and claims to be significantly less expensive than Zoominfo. Both companies offer contact enrichment, contact prospecting, and enterprise software connectors (CRM, MAP, Sales Engagement, Chrome).
ReachOut 2.0 identifies LinkedIn pages and URLs and maps them to ZoomInfo Intelligence. Profiles, which include firmographics, emails, and direct dials, may then be quickly uploaded to CRMs or sales engagement platforms.
Sales Intelligence vendor SalesIntel closed out a successful second year on the market with growth in content, staff, and functionality. In Q1, SalesIntel will be formally rolling out a new data enrichment service along with Salesforce and Marketo connectors. The firm added over 150 new clients in 2019.
In 2019, SalesIntel increased its verified contact data by 80% to 4.5 million contacts. Data is hand-verified by a team of over 200 full-time and 1,200 on-demand SalesIntel-trained researchers. Due to human verification, the company claims a 95% accuracy level for its contacts and is now able to identify the exact locations of executives.
“For a company just 18 months old, 2019 was in many ways, a test of our grit, competence, and above all, the value we create for our clients. I can say with 100% confidence that we have passed with flying colors. We plan to continue making significant investments across the board, the fruition of which you’ll see in the next year.”
SalesIntel CEO Manoj Ramnani
In 2020, SalesIntel intends to grow its coverage by millions of contacts and expand coverage internationally. The firm also plans to extend its technographic coverage by “tens of millions” of values. The roadmap includes integrations with Marketo and Bullhorn.
“As we continue to expand our data coverage, strengthen our platform and sign more clients, we’ll also continue to scale our team with more client success, data engineers, and researchers to maintain the highest standard of concierge data services that our clients appreciate and love,” said CEO Manoj Ramnani.
SalesIntel also began offering Account, Contact, and
Lead record enrichment. Technographic data, which is available in the
prospecting service from HG Insights, is not included in the match and append
service; however, SalesIntel noted that joint clients can obtain technographic
data enrichment directly from HG Insights.
The enrichment report details match rates, updated and
enriched record counts, and the number of records that were appended (see
Figure 1).
SalesIntel is selling enrichment processing as an
add-on to the existing prospecting service. Pricing starts at $5,000 per
annum and is volume-based.
Enrichment is currently available via the SalesIntel
portal and will be available as a Salesforce integration later this month. A
Marketo integration is scheduled for later in the quarter.
SalesIntel recently rebranded its Chrome plug-in as RevDriver. Subscribers can export to CRM, MAP, SalesLoft, or Outreach. A RevDriver Marketo connector will be available later this month.
InsideView launched its new Data Integrity service for Salesforce. Data Integrity is a customer data management solution that provides data visualizations, ongoing data hygiene maintenance, and data health analysis for CRMs. According to the firm, the service is fully integrated with Salesforce and “offers an easy migration path for customers using Data.com.”
“Data is the world’s most valuable resource—it’s the new fuel. Maintaining the quality of that resource should be paramount for every company. InsideView Data Integrity was created to help companies get the most out of their data by maintaining an accurate and rich customer database, and check on the health of that data at a glance.”
InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti
Salesforce
admins control which records are managed, which fields updated, and the
frequency of updates. Along with historical match and update trend
graphs, they can review a data hygiene dashboard that displays the number of
family tree linkages, duplicates, past employments, lead-to-account mapping,
etc.
Data
Integrity features include
Account, Contact, and Lead “stare and compare” updates
Separate Match Score thresholds for accounts, contacts, and leads which allow for differing degrees of match accuracy based on the record type
An Update CRM button within the InsideView Sales product. Updates are subject to rules set by the Data Integrity account administrator.
Validation of business emails associated with leads and contacts
Dashboards for Accounts, Contacts, and Leads which provide segmentation analysis, duplicate and match rates, email counts, segment/team distribution, etc.
A Processes Dashboard which tracks Data Integrity processing and action items
B2B DaaS and
sales intelligence firms have been looking to take the lion’s share of
Salesforce’s Data.com business which is now being decommissioned. The
opportunity is likely around $250 million (legacy clients business plus
additional revenue from superior offerings). The Prospector and Clean
services are no longer sold, but final contracts are being fulfilled through
the middle of next year. InsideView offers both sales and data management
solutions as does Dun & Bradstreet, Zoominfo, and Infogroup.
Data Integrity Processes Dashboard
Clean data
is critical to a series of B2B data workflows including territory assignments,
account hierarchies (corporate linkage), lead-to-account management,
segmentation analysis, duplicate record prevention, and email validation. Accurate
and complete data is also critical for account planning and messaging, ICP /
TAM analysis (supported via InsideView’s sister product Apex), and reducing the
time spent by sales reps entering and maintaining company and contact data.
Data
Integrity pricing is tiered based on the number of CRM seats.
InsideView
covers 13.5 million global companies and 32 million contacts spanning eighty
fields. Account data includes standardized addresses, sizing variables,
and parent/subsidiary linkages.
The firm
recently expanded its AsiaPac company coverage in four countries: New Zealand
(25K total), Hong Kong (40K), India (150K), and Singapore (40K). Total
coverage for the region (Asia, Oceania, Middle East) is now at 840K companies.
The expanded coverage is derived from existing and new vendors along with
government registries.
Data
Integrity is currently available for the AppExchange with Microsoft Dynamics
365 queued up next. Other CRMs will follow.
Cognism Intelligence within Salesforce. Hybrid Engagement Platforms Continuously update CRMs and MAPs.
The market
is beginning to evolve a set of hybrid engagement vendors that deliver a broad
set of sales and marketing services. The boundary between sales and
marketing is quickly crumbling. Hybrid engagement services manage both
data and workflows. Features include
Data Services: Prospecting, Webforms & Batch Data Enrichment, CRM/MAP Data Maintenance, De-duping, Data Health Reports
Lead Management: Lead Scoring, Lead-to-Account Mapping and Routing, Dynamic Lead Prioritization, First and Third-Party Intent
Future functionality will include Next Best Actions, Embedded 1:1 Video, SNAP (Sales Navigator) Integrations, and Programmatic Advertising.
No vendor provides all of these services and some provide them as separate offerings, but firms such as Dun & Bradstreet, Zoominfo, Infogroup (Salesgenie), Lead411, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Cognism have all taken steps over the past two years to meet the emerging requirements of the CRO.
For the
moment, I’m calling these emerging offerings Hybrid Engage Platforms, but that
is a placeholder name as the market evolves.
B2B DaaS and contacts vendor DealSignal announced the availability of CRM Data Health, a Salesforce module that continuously refreshes, enriches, and reverifies lead, contact, and account records. DealSignal data is GDPR-compliant and based upon AI validation and human verification.
“Rather
than comparing dirty CRM data against other static data sources that may
themselves be outdated, DealSignal CRM Data Health takes a dynamic, on-demand
enrichment and verification approach that uses both AI and human intelligence
to ensure near-perfect accuracy,” stated the firm. “DealSignal CRM Data
Health delivers a reliable alternative for companies looking to replace
Data.com.”
Like other CRM hygiene apps, CRM Data Health includes a free data health audit. The CRM data enrichment includes detailed contact profiles, Bombora buyer intent, and firmographics. Along with CRM hygiene, customers can enrich inbound leads, events lists, and third-party lists.
“Bad CRM data is a pervasive issue that has a negative ripple effect on B2B marketing and sales performance: from inaccurate ABM targeting, to bounced emails that can damage sender reputation, to outdated or irrelevant contacts that clog marketing automation systems at a great cost,” said DealSignal founder & CEO, Rob Weedn. “Industry studies find that up to 50 percent of CRM data is incomplete, out-of-date, or inaccurate. Compounding the issue, data decays at a rate of over two percent per month, so maintaining data health is a constant challenge that requires an on-going solution—much like you can’t get in shape by going to the gym once. We’ve introduced DealSignal CRM Data Health to help Salesforce customers continuously maintain rich, accurate and verified target audience data, and keep it fresh on a regular schedule.”
With the decommissioning of Data.com, vendors like Dun & Bradstreet, InsideView, Zoominfo, and DealSignal are jumping into the fray. If you are looking to make your sales reps more effective, your segmentation more accurate, or your Einstein predictions more precise, then you should be evaluating a Lightning Data or general data quality solution for your CRM.
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.
Reachforce Smartforms support thin forms that are less likely to be abandoned, enrich leads with firmographics, and allow the user to select the proper location. Data entry and enrichment is performed in real-time allowing for immediate scoring and routing decisions.
Leadspace formally closed its ReachForce acquisition on July 1st. Coincidentally, that was the same day that Dun & Bradstreet closed on its Lattice Engines acquisition. Thus, Forester’s top two B2B CDPs (Q2 2019 Forrester Wave), were strengthened on the same day.
According
to Forrester, “Leadspace offers comprehensive data that includes a proprietary
second-party data asset with numerous sources of intent data and access to
third-party data sources. It also has strong segmentation capabilities
(e.g., ideal customer profile and total addressable market modeling for ABM)
and can help sellers decide who to call next and what to offer.”
ReachForce adds two core products to Leadspace: The well-regarded Smartforms web form service and the SmartSuite data hygiene platform.
SmartSuite
provides “a one-stop-shop for data management, cleansing, and enriching, with
an easy-to-use interface which shows quickly the ‘state of the union on data
within CRM and MAP systems,” blogged Leadspace CEO Doug Bewsher.
Reachforce
and Leadspace share over 200 joint customers, so integrating the services and
standardizing their content sets will provide direct benefits to those clients.
The firms share seven of the top ten enterprise software companies as
clients.
Leadspace
provides an additional set of data partners which can be combined with
Reachforce data sources. Leadspace data partners include DiscoverOrg, Dun
& Bradstreet, Bombora, KickFire, and others.
“Customers
will now be able to leverage all of these data sources seamlessly in real-time,
through a single API and interface, offering a genuine single source of truth,”
wrote Bewsher.
The
Leadspace CDP supports a broad set of CRM, MAP, and digital advertising
platforms including Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Microsoft Dynamics,
HubSpot, and LiveRamp. Smartforms will be an additional “activation
product,” which “seamlessly and simply onboards new customers and customer
intelligence into Sales and Marketing engagement platforms.”
Smartforms
performs real-time data enrichment to lead records, allowing them to be
properly scored and routed. One of the long-standing benefits of
Smartforms is the opportunity to shorten forms and perform real-time
firmographic enrichment. Not only is the enriched data more accurate, but
form abandonment rates are significantly lower, resulting in a higher return on
digital marketing campaigns.
“What’s more, combining Smartforms with existing Leadspace capabilities like reverse IP information, detailed account- and person-level data, and AI modeling, means we can offer highly-accurate site and ad personalization on both the account (ABM) and persona level. For our customers, this means even more precise and personalized engagement and targeting, particularly those currently using our ABM solutions. (We will be announcing more on this offering in Q3 as we integrate the Reachforce and Leadspace platforms.)”
Leadspace CEO Doug Bewsher
The merger also allows Leadspace to incorporate its proprietary AI-driven intelligence, automated scoring, and models within Reachforce products. Leadspace is beginning to move partner platforms from systems of record or systems of engagement to systems of intelligence. “CDPs combine vast data and data management capabilities with advanced AI to create a system of intelligence that guides Marketing and Sales to their best customers, and delivers razor-sharp insights and recommendations on how and when to effectively engage them,” said Bewsher. “The CDP is being rapidly adopted by B2B businesses now — including many enterprise companies at the forefront of marketing and sales strategy and innovation — and it’s proving equally as effective for them.”
InsideView Append for Salesforce is a Lightning Data Solution for ongoing data enrichment and maintenance.
InsideView went on the offensive to capture Data.com customers as Prospector and Clean are phased out over the next year. InsideView is offering their free Data Health report “as many Data.com customers have seen a degradation of data quality since the announcement was first made over a year ago.”
Data.com Prospector and Clean contracts are no longer renewing beginning this month.
“Customers
tell us that the switch from Data.com to InsideView was not only easy but gave
them more confidence and made their data more useful than ever,” said Umberto
Milletti, CEO of InsideView. “Now we’re adding more data, more
technology, and more analytics to make InsideView even better, because it’s not
just about the data. It’s about how it helps drive marketing, sales, and
the bottom line.”
InsideView
covers twice as many contacts (35 million) as Data.com including global
contacts and emails. InsideView also emphasized its improved match logic:
Comprehensive analysis of customers’ data quality (i.e. malformed company names, transposed data fields, incomplete addresses, etc.)
Flexibility in match logic based on business needs and data availability (i.e. company name, website/email domains, street address, city, state, country, etc.)
Higher match rates and accuracy using probabilistic intent (e.g. inferring a match result based on geographic or industry clustering, etc.,) within the input file.
Clear explanations of why records match and suggestions for those that don’t match.
Other enhancements include expanded location data with site counts and “fine-grain control for selecting CRM records under management and field level update rules.”
The Top Five Lightning Data vendors (August 8, 2019)
In the Sales Intelligence category, the top four B2B sales intelligence AppExchange offerings come from Zoominfo, DiscoverOrg, D&B Hoovers, and InsideView.
InsideView also announced that its Microsoft Dynamics Insights service will be available at no charge through the end of current MS Dynamics 365 contracts. Current Insights customers simply need to opt-in. Companies that do not qualify can license Insights directly from InsideView.
“Microsoft is committed to delivering stellar customer experiences and it became clear to them, after announcing changes to their data augmentation strategy in January, that many customers love and value InsideView Insights,” said InsideView Senior Product Marketing Manager Janice Bowen. “In response to their needs, Microsoft decided to continue providing InsideView’s data and intelligence solution for an extended period of time.”
Synthio announced general availability of their Contact Data Management for Salesforce (CDM-SF) service which provides automated contact record updates from their 160 million record reference data set. Synthio manages over two million monthly contact record updates to its reference database. These updates flow through the CDM to Salesforce and marketing automation platforms. Synthio both maintains contact records and enriches missing fields.
“Historically,
data maintenance has been expensive and burdensome, costing American companies
upwards of 3 trillion dollars per year, according to a survey by IBM,” said
Synthio CEO Bill Curran. “And bad contact data affects more than the
bottom line. Synthio’s CDM-SF platform will give B2B companies the
satisfaction of knowing that they have complete and correct data as the
foundation for their mission-critical programs.”
Synthio notes several benefits to Contact Data Management platforms:
CDMs provide a just-in-time view of companies and contacts which counters the 30% per year decay rate of contacts.
CDMs offer a deep set of contacts by function, level, and title, providing sales and marketing teams with a rich set of additional targets.
CDMs support a broad array of buyer attributes, allowing for precision targeting and messaging.
CDMs improve customer segmentation and analytics.
Synthio also offers automated contact maintenance for Marketo (Adobe), Oracle (Eloqua), and HubSpot.
Human-verified contacts vendor DealSignal released an Enrichment module for maintaining data quality. Along with company and contact enrichment, DealSignal appends Bombora third-party intent data, helping identify which prospects are actively researching key topics. The service supports inbound lead enrichment and scheduled data maintenance.
Because inbound leads are enriched, they can be quickly segmented, scored, routed, and prioritized. ABM companies can immediately determine whether a lead matches a target persona and ideal customer profile, ensuring such leads are immediately sent to sales for action.
Contacts are matched against DealSignal’s universe of
human-verified contacts and enriched with direct dials, firmographics, and
intent scores.
A wizard helps map DealSignal fields to Salesforce or
HubSpot. Admins set sync and refresh schedules.
“We’re always excited when our partners develop innovative new ways of using intent data to help marketing and sales teams drive revenue. By extending lead enrichment automation to include Bombora’s Company Surge data, DealSignal will provide revenue teams valuable insight into whether a buying committee is forming or one curious person just happened to download some content. That added insight will help marketing and sales teams work together more effectively to drive the most value from their inbound leads.”
Charles Crnoevich, Head of Partnerships at Bombora
Inbound Lead Enrichment service is the first B2B DaaS platform to combine human-verified contacts and firmographics with third-party Bombora intent. The platform takes skinny inbound leads and enriches them with accurate, actionable insights and contact details, helping determine which leads should be immediately routed to sales and which should be retained. Reps can then prioritize prospects that are currently in-market for products or services like theirs and craft highly personalized messaging, thereby improving their odds of exceeding quota.
