Category: M&A

Flash: Clari Acquires Groove

Revenue Platform vendor Clari announced the acquisition of Sales Engagement Platform Groove this morning.  The transaction is expected to close on August 21.  No deal details were released.

“This is the most transformative day of our history,” Clari CEO Andy Byrne told VentureBeat. “It’s a big acquisition for us.  When we started this company, our thesis was grounded in the belief that AI would revolutionize how businesses manage revenue. More specifically, our vision was to assist CEOs in answering the critical question of whether they would meet or miss revenue targets.  We aimed to offer a predictive solution to address the common issue of revenue leaks that many companies face. Our goal was to help them achieve what we call revenue precision.”

The courtship began two years ago when Clari customers began asking about Groove. Around the same time, Groove was implemented internally. The firms launched a Groove / Clari integration last year with a strong UVP.

The deal brings the firms closer to creating a full customer lifecycle platform, with Groove supporting Sales Engagement and Engagement Analytics alongside Clari’s Conversational Intelligence (Clari Copilot), Digital Sales Room, and Revenue Operations capabilities.  Clari will recommend sales actions that limit revenue leakage, which reps can execute in Groove without switching applications.  Groove engagement data will be fed back into Clari, helping identify deals at risk.

“Most CEOs have a tough time answering the most important question in business: ‘Will we meet, beat, or miss on revenue?  By bringing together Clari and Groove, revenue leaders can implement their revenue collaboration and governance strategy across all internal and external workflows, giving them full visibility and control over the company’s most important business process – Revenue.”

Clari CEO Andy Byrne

Clari’s vision is to “bring the entire revenue process into one unified platform so our clients can consolidate, simplify, [and] accelerate” their go-to-market.

According to Clari CMO Kyle Coleman, every CRO, CFO, and CEO he has spoken with over the last six months has emphasized the need to consolidate, simplify, and accelerate their revenue cycle.

“We’re really excited to be able to lean onto this macro trend of consolidation.  But it’s not just consolidating for the sake of saving money.  It’s consolidating for the sake of reducing complexity, simplifying, and improving your revenue results,” Coleman explained to GZ Consulting.  He is ”really confident” in the firm’s expanded capabilities and sees them as “exactly what revenue teams [want] right now.”

From 2013 until 2021, Clari focused on building revenue reporting and a revenue database (RevDB) with time series data.  Information is gathered from CRMs, emails, calendars, etc., with Groove soon feeding its activity data.  RevDB also ingests external data from data warehouses and Clari’s digital sales room functionality.  Data is stored and analyzed in RevDB with support for six products:

“Clari’s RevDB architecture has been a long-term investment by Clari and is the secret sauce that powers the company’s unmatched revenue AI (RevAI) capabilities,” stated Clari.  “With Groove added to the Clari portfolio, revenue teams will get real-time insights and suggested actions across every revenue workflow to create and convert more pipeline, while company leaders will be able to see every input, tie every activity to results, and precisely predict revenue outcomes.”

Clari with Groove brings together six product categories to serve the full revenue team.

“We’re augmenting the CRM with information that reps are never going to create manually.  And then we’re pulling that into our database to build our machine learning and AI models,” explained Coleman.

Last year, Clari acquired Conversational Sales Platform Wingman and added it to its deal monitoring and analytics workflows.  The integrated service was recently rebranded Clari Copilot.

“It expanded the workflows that we’re running for revenue teams, bringing call recordings into the flow of work,” remarked Coleman.  “You can actually hear and see what the customer is saying…Making CI less of a call recording solution for a call center and really more of a purpose-built solution for revenue teams.  While we’re doing that, we’re also adding this whole new dataset into the revenue database that makes us very capable for NLP and prescriptive AI…The RevAI capabilities we have made us capable of recording all these new AI use cases…We have all these different types of AI that we leverage across the platform.  We have the predictive components.  We have the generative components, and we have the natural language processing.  And we’re finding the right ways to expose that…in the flow of a rep’s work [and] in the flow of an executive’s work, so they’re actually getting the insight they need when they need it.”

Groove, already a Clari partner, allows sales reps to go from forecast and deal risk alerts to integrated actions, providing feedback loops and recommendations as a “closed loop of Insight and Action.”

When I spoke to the firms last year about their partnership, they presented an excellent joint value proposition presentation.  This messaging continued forward into their acquisition briefing.

A common issue for revenue teams is identifying revenue leaks and mitigating them.  Revenue leaks exist across the entire revenue lifecycle.  For example, deal slippage is identified in real-time by Clari, allowing reps to take action via Groove to bring the deal back on track. 

When Clari identifies a deal slipping for competitive reasons, it can suggest a play be executed in Groove.  Likewise, Clari can identify sub-par win rates, overly generous discounting, and low conversion rates for early-stage opportunities.

As Groove is native to Salesforce, it records all activities in real time, providing “full-funnel forecasting” and analytics to Salesforce and Clari.  Groove activity will also begin feeding into Clari’s RevDB time-series activities and conversations database.

“We can tie our campaigns through to revenue in Salesforce, and that is something that they (Groove’s competitors) cannot do,” argued Groove VP of Marketing Kristin Hersant.  “Then all of that rich data, tying engagement through to revenue, is pulled into Clari and used in the analysis, and that is available today.”

Coleman explained that while you can’t win a deal at any moment, you can certainly break a deal.  And once a deal is lost, “it’s very difficult to un-lose” it.  Thus, “if you don’t do the right thing at the right time – handle the right objection or pull the right person in or do the right kind of follow-up” – the deal could be jeopardized.  Therefore, “handling revenue critical moments expertly and in a prescribed way” and governed by best practices is critical in addressing revenue leaks.

“Having all of that insight into all these moments that exist and then having confidence that every one of your employees is going to be able to execute on them?  Well, this is what’s so exciting to us,” said Coleman.

Clari customers benefit from a consolidated selling platform for prospecting and engagement.  The platform will turn insight into action, allowing sales reps to kick off a Groove Flow immediately.  They will also better understand “top-of-the-funnel effectiveness and tie it to down-funnel results.”

Clari customers “can use it [Groove] both to fill the funnel and execute the funnel, turning insights into action in real-time – closing that loop and knowing what’s happening at the top of the funnel.”  Revenue teams can tie activities to revenue results and “hone and change” their revenue process.

Groove customers also benefit from platform unification as they prioritize activities, simplify forecasting, and enjoy a better understanding of deal status.  They will leverage analytics that tie activity to revenue impact, thus improving outcome predictions.

Furthermore, leaders will receive “end-to-end visibility of the revenue process by connecting sales engagement with conversion.”

“The goal is to consolidate all revenue-critical technology for all revenue-critical employees,” stated Coleman.  While the focus is on supporting the revenue team, Clari is finding that other stakeholders, such as finance and product management, also benefit from the ability to track sales activity.

For antitrust reasons, Clari has not discussed pricing with Groove for the six products but expects to have it locked down by the end of the month.  Reps will be quickly trained on the combined offering, and a unified team will be at Dreamforce.

“We’re bringing all of our quota carriers together for a two-day super deep dive – everything you need to know about the Groove product [and] everything you need to know about the combined platform.  We don’t want our sales reps to show up uninformed when they take the first meetings, and we expect there to be a healthy amount of demand coming in for this combination,” explained Coleman.  “We’re on this path to be a truly multi-product company.  And part of that journey is creating a true co-sell playbook.  When does it make sense to sell the full platform?  When should it be Groove standalone?  When should it be Groove plus Copilot?”

“The ultimate goal from a Go-to-Market standpoint is to be the single revenue platform that’s used by all revenue employees,” continued Coleman.  “We feel really good about this vision that we have to be the most used platform.”

Clari already has $1.5 trillion in revenue under management and over 1,500 customers.

Groove co-founders Chris Rothstein and Austin Wang will join Clari and oversee the Groove product line’s strategy, product direction, and customer success.

“I’m incredibly excited about the power of combining Clari’s Revenue Platform with Groove’s best-in-class pipeline creation and conversion capabilities,” said Rothstein.  “Together, we will create more pipeline and enable sellers to act on opportunities with incredible speed and effectiveness.  Revenue teams are looking to win more, faster — and Groove and Clari are bringing the rocket fuel.”

The first stage of the Groove integration is planned for October.

“This acquisition will create a sense of urgency in the market that leads all key players to step up their focus to create their own version of a revenue orchestration platform,” opined Forrester Principal Analyst Seth Marrs.  “It’s a significant win for all companies looking to improve sales performance.”

“Consolidating to create a more comprehensive platform is the best option in this environment,” continued Marrs.  “Those that don’t, face the less appealing prospect of a down round or going out of business.”

“B2B sales tech buyers want to take advantage of AI for sales and simultaneously reduce complexity in their tech stack,” said Gartner Senior Director Analyst Dan Gottlieb.  “Clari with Groove now has the pieces to deliver a complete revenue hub with interconnected workflows and deep data integrations.”

Leadinfo Acquires Leadcamp

team.blue subsidiary Leadinfo acquired Intent-based Sales Engagement Platform Leadcamp.  Leadcamp expands the Leadinfo value proposition from web visitor tracking to broader lead engagement.  Leadcamp, based in Ghent, Belgium, captures email, web, meeting, and content engagement and employs AI to identify “high-intent active prospects.”

“We always want to offer our customers new products to make them more effective in their chosen markets,” said team.blue Group CEO Claudio Corbetta.  “This acquisition is a great example of investing in a fast-growing business to advance our expertise and product range in the lead generation space.”

The Leadcamp Heat Score measures multi-channel engagement providing both a composite score and engagement by channels.  Additionally, AI-powered notifications let reps be “proactive and timely” in their follow-ups, “avoiding missed opportunities” and increasing the odds of closing each deal.

Heat Scores also act as customizable triggers for reminders and alerts, streamlining the buying journey.  Triggers include form submissions, multiple website visits within a prescribed period, Heat Score thresholds, and calls made.  Leadcamp claims that trigger automation speeds up the buying process three-fold.

Email functionality includes sales email tracking, link monitoring, engagement analysis, and a content library.  Sales teams also have access to sequences (cadences), templates, and volume throttling.

“We are excited about the acquisition of Leadcamp and the addition of their expertise in targeted marketing campaigns and automation tools to our platform,” commented Leadinfo Founder Han Kleppe.  “This acquisition will enable us to better support our customers in finding new customers and to put their lead generation on autopilot.”

The Leadcamp acquisition is the second European firm folded into Leadinfo since it was acquired by team.blue last July.  In October, it acquired German visitor tracking firm Webprospector.de.

Leadinfo claims to be the market leader in Benelux and the most prominent international provider in the D-A-CH region.  It consolidated its position in the Netherlands over the past eighteen months with the acquisitions of Leadexpress (December 2021) and LeadElephant (January 2022). 

Leadinfo supports over 3,000 customers in Benelux, D-A-CH, Great Britain, and Scandinavia.  Customers include Lavazza, Quis Machinery, Channable, and Creditsafe.

Leadinfo was named a 2022 Fast 50 technology growth leader by Deloitte, placing 8th in the Dutch market.

Anteriad Acquires BNZSA

My plan yesterday was to deal with the sale of my house (open house Sunday with contract offers yesterday), but I couldn’t fully focus on that as important announcements were coming from Europe: B2B full-funnel marketing vendor Anteriad bought Demand Generation vendor BNZSA.  Separately, Sales Intelligence and B2B data vendor Echobot, which merged with Visitor Intelligence platform Leadfeeder last year, rebranded as Dealfront and launched its new platform.

Both BNZSA and Dealfront emphasize the diversity of the European market and their ability to meet market needs across national boundaries with localized support and GDPR compliance.

BNZSA, a Madrid-based demand generation firm, has been on a tear the last few years, growing several hundred percent per annum through H1 2022 (H2 growth data was not announced).  BNZSA provides Anteriad with a solid foundation for global marketing and GDPR-compliant data.  In addition, it offers B2B demand generation services to over fifty multinational clients, including Oracle, SAP, Acer, Dell, and Fujitsu.

BNZSA’s team offers local market expertise and campaign support in 26 languages.

“The combination of Anteriad and BNZSA provides an industry-leading offering of B2B demand generation products and services to clients across the globe,” stated Anteriad.  “The acquisition of BNZSA will enable Anteriad to expand its international data coverage by integrating BNZSA’s unique GDPR-compliant data.  Bringing together Anteriad’s intent data, account-based marketing, analytics, and performance marketing capabilities and BNZSA’s tele-based conversion-oriented services will provide differentiated, full-funnel B2B demand generation capabilities at a global scale supported by regional and local leadership and talent.”

MeritB2B rebranded as Anteriad in April 2021 after a series of acquisitions that expanded the company’s scope.  It previously acquired several MarTech firms, including intent-data vendor True Influence (Nov 2021), ABM MarTech and Audience vendor 180byTwo (Nov 2020), and B2B data vendor Compass Marketing (Jan 2020).

“Anteriad is a company that’s ahead of its time and ahead of the market.  Our positioning directly reflects our focus on being uniquely able to provide our customers the solutions they need to get ahead and take the lead,” said Anteriad CEO Rob Sanchez in 2021.

Anteriad had strong growth last year, with a 15% increase in US new customer wins and 30% globally through Mid-September.  The firm enjoys loyal customers with an average retention rate of eight years.  Furthermore, multi-service clients generate more than 60% of revenue, “showing the value of a full-funnel partner versus point solutions.”

The BNZSA acquisition “brings together Anteriad’s intent data, account-based marketing, analytics, and performance marketing capabilities and BNZSA’s tele-based conversion-oriented services,” providing multinational customers a “differentiated, full-funnel B2B demand generation capabilities at a global scale supported by regional and local leadership and talent.”

“BNZSA, powered by Anteriad,” will act as Anteriad’s international and EMEA headquarters.  BNZSA adds three hundred employees who specialize in ABM and multi-touch campaigns.  BNZSA supports programmatic display based on its firmographic, technographic, and intent datasets.  Its customers can build integrated multi-channel marketing programs that leverage BNZSA’s EMEA-based, multi-lingual contact center.  As leads are generated, BNZSA staff offers a “Warm Handover” process which ensures that leads are appropriately transitioned to sales teams.

Anteriad CPO Ken Lordy described the acquisition to GZ Consulting as a “highly complementary combination of data and technology assets with full-funnel campaign management.”  Consequently, the combined firms “now serve the full funnel demand generation needs of all our marketing clients at a truly global scale.”

Continued Lordy, “BNZSA’s services include native language speaking BDRs at one of the largest call centers in EMEA, ensuring an individualized approach and understanding of each market’s distinct local customs.”

BNZSA identifies potential prospects for its customers, surrounds them with “messaging and brand awareness,” and collects engagement metrics that inform content development and enhance BNZSA’s prospect engagement.  BNZSA tracks interest and intent and maintains an ongoing dialogue with prospects.   Nurturing includes the period between contacting prospects and providing a ‘Warm Handover’ of leads to account executives.

“Following this approach has a positive uplift in conversions to our Warm Handover Process, where BNZSA agents broker, arrange, and moderate a call between the prospect and our customer’s sales or product specialist,” said Paul Briggs, BNZSA Director of Global Corporate Development in 2021.  “This ultimately boosts closed-won opportunities for our customers up to 300%.”

BNZSA digital services include SEO strategy, performance marketing/SEM, email marketing, content marketing, content syndication, marketing automation, and UX and CX design.

“BNZSA understands the individualized approach and distinct local customs of each market it serves,” said Anteriad.  “BNZSA’s nuance in culture across regions includes BDRs that speak over 26 native languages at one of the largest call centers in EMEA.”

The combined company offers “data, technology, and a differentiated high-touch client service model” that supports “rich B2B demand generation and ABM solutions and in-market customization at global scale.”

BNZSA CEO Brahim Samhoud maintains a “significant ownership stake in the combined business.” He will report directly to Sanchez.  Samhoud emphasized that both companies have a client obsession that “will take B2B marketing to a whole new level, driven by data and technology, powered by people.”

“Anteriad means to ‘Get in Front’, and acquiring BNZSA delivers on that philosophy.  By expanding our global reach through this acquisition, Anteriad establishes itself as a true global leader in tech-enabled B2B marketing solutions.  BNZSA brings an extremely talented leadership team and a differentiated offering that is made even more valuable by their local presence in key markets around the world,” said Sanchez.  “Leadership at Anteriad and BNZSA are both invested in our people, our clients, and our growth.  With this solid foundation, we will accomplish remarkable things for our clients in the global B2B marketing community.”

Deal terms were not disclosed.

Tomorrow, I will cover the Dealfront rebrand.

Corporate Visions Acquires Primary Intelligence

Sales Research and Advisory firm Corporate Visions acquired win/loss analytics firm Primary Intelligence.  Primary Intelligence’s TruVoice platform conducts surveys, online interviews, and live phone interviews.  In addition, buyer feedback is displayed in Competitive Intelligence platform Crayon and available in battlecards, newsletters, and dashboards, providing “more depth, context, and insight from the buyer’s perspective.”

TruVoice can also be used for customer experience, competitive analysis, and churn analysis.

Primary Intelligence has collected win/loss intelligence through manual post-mortem deal interviews for twenty years.  Automating the process both lowers the cost of intelligence collection and widens the scope of intelligence collected.  Survey response rates are between 25% and 35% due to the request coming from the sales rep.  Online surveys run ten to fifteen minutes and are dynamically adjusted based on the responses.  TruVoice collects both qualitative and quantitative responses.

Primary Intelligence Buyer Insights provide a roll-up of win/loss insights at an account. Users can drill down to “direct evidence” from the interviews.

“We’ve taken the live interview model that we have honed over our entire existence and turned it into an online experience, where we call it an online interview.  But it really is something that a respondent can do in ten minutes on a mobile device.  There are some quantitative questions for them to record voice responses, which we then transcribe and…publish that data.  And then we still do the live interview.”

“The value of win-loss-no decision analysis at scale is that you have continuous, near real-time feedback on a higher percentage of accounts for improved insights and confident strategy adjustments across all of your revenue teams,” said Primary Intelligence CEO Ken Allred.  “But the biggest breakthrough is having the ongoing rep-by-rep, deal-by-deal intelligence to drive situational training and enablement.  This eliminates the bias of reps providing their own feedback or requiring managers to review hundreds of hours of call recordings.”

Gong and Crayon Partnerships

Primary Intelligence recently partnered with conversational sales platform Gong to integrate in-cycle deal intelligence.  Primary Intelligence delivers a daily log of competitive mentions to sales reps, providing them with battlecard links and links to call transcripts that help them write follow-on messaging that parries competitive statements.  The Gong integration ensures that conversational intelligence from deals is available alongside post-deal analysis, providing a clearer view of why deals are won or lost, comparative strengths and weaknesses versus competitors, and improved messaging.

“Our approach in the last five years or so has been [asking] ‘How can we take the operational lift and automate as much as possible?” explained Primary Intelligence President Nick Siddoway to GZ Consulting.  “Now it’s a process that begins in Salesforce or whatever CRM you’re using.”

The Performance Gaps view displays competitive strengths and weaknesses as seen by buyers and displayed by priority.

Primary Intelligence also recently partnered with Competitive Intelligence Platform Crayon, marrying competitive and win/loss intelligence in a common platform.  The joint solution “helps teams better understand their competitors.”

“In today’s competitive climate, competitive intelligence and win-loss analysis are essential for B2B companies looking to increase win rates,” stated the firms.  “While win-loss interviews and surveys with buyers are filled with critical competitive insights, getting these insights updated into competitive intelligence deliverables, such as battlecards, has traditionally been a slow, manual process — until now.”

Crayon and Primary Intelligence highlight competitor offerings’ relative strengths and weaknesses, providing improved positioning for sales and marketing teams.  A separate pricing module helps debunk sales rep claims that deals are regularly lost on price, providing a more accurate view of deal loss.  By helping differentiate offerings and identify why deals are won or lost, vendor offerings become less price sensitive. 

Primary Intelligence also provides views at the rep level, providing insights into the strengths and weaknesses of reps and where they would benefit from coaching.

“The future of sales enablement is providing custom, rep-specific coaching in the flow of work.  Ideally, those recommendations are based on actual performance feedback from real customers,” said Erik Peterson, Chief Executive Officer of Corporate Visions.  “The acquisition of Primary Intelligence will enable us to make invisible problems visible and then provide personalized coaching to individual reps and revenue teams based on how buyers and customers respond.”

“What better evidence that your strategies and spend are actually working as intended than actual customer feedback connected to wins, losses, and no decisions, as well as renewals and expansion cycles?” Peterson added.

B2B DecisionLabs

The acquisition provides Corporate Visions with 100,000 buying decisions spanning twenty years, which will be incorporated into its B2B DecisionLabsresearch and advisory business.  Corporate Visions, which positions itself as a Decision Science company, calls Primary Intelligence its “fourth lab.”  B2B DecisionLabs incorporates behavioral research, brain studies, and field trials, alongside customer feedback.

TruVoice customer feedback is Corporate Vision’s latest B2B DecisionLabs laboratory.

“We will engage our B2B DecisionLabs research director, Dr. Leff Bonney, co-founder of the Florida State University Sales Institute, to effectively leverage the incoming data points into insights using all applicable and appropriate academic research-based approaches, tools, and techniques,” explained Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions and Chief Visionary at B2B DecisionLabs, to GZ Consulting.

“Our expectation is that this steady flow of buyer-driven deal insights will completely distinguish B2B DecisionLabs among other research and advisory firms who rely on their subscriber clients to provide data snapshots and self-reported survey responses to formulate their industry insights,” continued Riesterer.  “This will be in addition to our completely unique brain study lab and ongoing field trials with actual clients.”

The Primary Intelligence dataset provides a deep set of historical and cross-industry data that captures deals both in progress and after closing.  This research complements its other three research laboratories.

“This will give our advisory clients even more confidence in the B2B DecisionLabs recommendations compared to opinion surveys and moment-in-time snapshots of data,” said Riesterer.  “It will also mean we can provide more reliable tools than you otherwise get from peer communities that only curate unexamined personal experiences and unsubstantiated claims of expertise.”

“This ongoing flow of customer-sourced data will also be used to continually expand and enhance our revenue growth services to ensure Corporate Visions’ clients always have access to the industry’s best and most updated intellectual property,” Riesterer added.

Corporate Visions offers science-backed revenue growth services for sales, marketing, and customer success.  Along with hosting conferences and training, Corporate Visions helps firms “articulate value and promote growth” in three ways:

  1. Make Value Situational by distinguishing your commercial programs between customer acquisition, retention, and expansion.
  2. Make Value Specific by creating and delivering customer conversations that communicate concrete value, change behavior, and motivate buying decisions.
  3. Make Value Systematic by equipping your commercial engine to deliver consistent and persistent touches across the entire Customer Deciding Journey.

By April, Corporate Visions plans to combine automated win-loss-no decision customer feedback with automated skills coaching and customer messaging content from Corporate Visions.  Riesterer intends to launch the “first fully automated, situational enablement solution that identifies rep-by-rep weaknesses based on actual customer feedback, to direct specific, custom coaching videos to help address these challenges – in the rep’s flow of work.”

This vision shifts sales rep training from “just-in-case” event-based generic classroom training to “just-in-time” situational coaching and enablement that is customized to each rep and deal.  This training will be “always on, deficit-based situational coaching and enablement” that does not require managers to “listen to a bunch of calls or read a lot of feedback and then formulate a custom coaching plan.”

Data Anonymization

Corporate Visions has already considered which data can be employed for aggregate analytics.  Research protocols are subject to Institutional Review Board (IRB) review and approval.  Data will only be available for aggregate analysis with the consent of customers.  Unique identifiers are stripped from the data and replaced with arbitrary data identifiers, and no individual customer’s data will be published. 

B2B DecisionLabs has “partnered with Florida State University as the primary means of data analysis and have taken the steps as outlined in GDPR protocols regarding ‘Information Processors’ to ensure that data is passed to FSU without any unique respondent identifiers,” explained Bonney.  “To decrease any risk of inadvertent identification of a customer in the data, Primary Intelligence will assign the ‘ID number’ to customer data and then pass [it] to the B2B DecisionLabs and FSU research team, who will have no input or insight into how data ID numbers are assigned.  Additionally, Primary Intelligence will remove any data fields that may be used to ascertain the identity of any one customer.”

The FSU IRB will review Primary Intelligence’s anonymization protocols.

Real-time Coaching

Managerial deal coaching “just doesn’t happen and won’t happen at scale,” remarked Riesterer.  Furthermore, “because the system continues to run and generate customer deal feedback, you will be able to monitor, measure, and modify enablement interventions on the fly to see the impact and make continuous appropriate adjustments.”

Thus, the merged company will combine neural research concerning purchasing behavior and buyer studies, with in-the-moment situational coaching tailored to each rep and deal.

Primary Intelligence’s TruVoice platform

Leadinfo Acquires WebProspector.de

Dutch lead generation vendor Leadinfo is acquiring WebProspector.de, a German visitor tracking company, with the deal closing on November 1.  Deal terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition expands Leadinfo’s presence in Germany.  It acquired Leading Reports in April and opened an office in Düsseldorf in July to improve its sales and support in German-speaking markets.

Leadinfo claims to be the market leader in Benelux and the most prominent international provider in the D-A-CH region.  It consolidated its position in the Netherlands over the past year with the acquisitions of Leadexpress (December 2021) and LeadElephant (January 2022). 

Leadinfo supports over 3,000 customers in Benelux, D-A-CH, Great Britain, and Scandinavia.  Customers include Lavazza, Quis Machinery, Channable, and Creditsafe.

Both Leadinfo and WebProspector.de have focused on their partner networks, with Leadinfo supporting over 1,100 partners.

WebProspector.de clients will migrate to the Leadinfo platform and benefit from a broader set of integrations.  Leadinfo supports over fifty platforms, including Slack, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, and Salesloft.

CRM integrations are bi-directional, with Leadinfo performing duplicate checking against lead and account records.  When sending to CRM, companies may be added as Lead or Account record types.  Additionally, company profiles include deal and task information gathered from CRMs, and users can create new deals and tasks from Leadinfo.

team.blue visitor information displayed in the Leadinfo service.

The Leadinfo platform supports a visitor inbox, real-time lead alerts, web forms, visitor browsing recordings, and triggered workflows.  In addition, its programmatic functionality supports Google Ads and LinkedIn retargeting.

Liquid Content, its site personalization functionality, adjusts websites based on firmographics.  As a result, marketers can customize the text, video, content, and images presented to the visitor, allowing them to segment their website presentation.

Leads are enriched by IP address matching against a reference database of 220 million global businesses.  Firmographics are gathered from global registry filings and web crawling.   Firmographics include address, phone, year founded, industry codes (US SIC 87 and local codes), sizing data, company logos, social media links, business descriptions, etc.  Legal information includes the registration number, entity type, ultimate parent, group size, and employees in the group.  Business descriptions are generally available in the local language.  Other information includes a pinned Google map, page view information, Leadinfo’s lead score, and Leadinfo tags.

Leadinfo company profiles include a proprietary lead score based on visitor behavior.  However, lead scores do not yet adjust for firmographic fit; thus, a company may score high based on behavior but may not be a qualified lead.

Leadinfo displays HubSpot Deal and Task information. Sales reps can also create new tasks and deals from Leadinfo.

In July, Leadinfo was acquired by team.blue, a European cloud services provider with an office in fifteen European countries and Turkey.  CEO Han Kleppe and the rest of the management team continue to run Leadinfo as an independent subsidiary.

Leadinfo is growing rapidly and was recently named to Deloitte’s Fast 50 technology list for the Netherlands.

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.

team.blue Acquires Leadinfo

team.blue, a European cloud services provider, announced that it acquired a majority stake in European visitor intelligence vendor Leadinfo.  team.blue was formed in 2019 when three hosting groups were merged into a European provider of web hosting and cloud computing services.  The firm supports 2.5 million customers across fifteen European offices, aiming to “supercharge the business performance of small and medium-sized businesses.  It describes itself as a “one-stop partner for web hosting, domains, e-commerce and application solutions, with more than 1,800 experts to support.” 

team.blue’s twenty-five offices provide local-language and market “expertise, knowledge, and insight, serving “a rich European landscape of businesses” in fifteen European countries and Turkey.

Team.blue CEO Jonas Dhaenens is looking to augment the firm’s hosting services with B2B cloud applications.  Along with Leadinfo, its value-added services include domain registries, website building (webnode), privacy and compliance tools (iubenda), and WordPress hosting (raidboxes).

Leadinfo supports over 3,000 European customers, claiming to be the market leader in Benelux and the largest international provider in the D-A-CH region.  CEO Han Kleppe and the rest of the management team will continue running Leadinfo as an independent subsidiary.

Leadinfo represents team.blue’s entry into the visitor intelligence and lead intelligence spaces.  It provides lead management services, including visitor intelligence and enrichment, personalization, lead generation forms, triggered workflows, screen recordings (mouse movements and clicks), and over fifty sales and marketing platform integrations.  Leadinfo also supports retargeting services for Google ads and LinkedIn.

team.blue visitor information displayed in the Leadinfo service.

Leads are enriched by IP address matching against a reference database of 220 million global businesses.  Firmographics are gathered from global registry filings and web crawling.  Firmographics include address, phone, year founded, industry codes (US SIC 87 and local codes), sizing data, company logos, social media links, business descriptions, etc.  Legal information includes the registration number, entity type, ultimate parent, group size, and employees in group.  Business descriptions are generally available in the local language.  Other information includes a pinned Google map, page view information, Leadinfo’s lead score, and Leadinfo tags.

Leadinfo does not disclose the name of its registered data aggregator. 

Leadinfo company profiles include a proprietary lead score based on visitor behavior.  However, lead scores do not yet adjust for firmographic fit; thus, a company may score high based on behavior but may not be a qualified lead.

Contact data is limited to board members and publicly listed employees from LinkedIn and Xing (a D-A-CH competitor of LinkedIn).  Contacts are searchable by name and title, with users able to link to LinkedIn and Xing profiles.

Leadinfo’s visitor intelligence tracks visitors across the website, providing detailed viewing histories.  The company matches IP addresses against its global company database and enriches the leads with firmographics.  Visitors are viewable from a web application that supports filtering by firmographics, visitor activity, lead score, and Leadinfo tags.  Screened lists may be exported as CSV files or programmatic uploads (LinkedIn and Google Ads).

Leadinfo also offers a set of dashboard widgets for tracking and analyzing website activity:

  • Live Widget – Tracks current visitors and site activity over the past 24 hours.
  • Map View – Displays visitor locations on Google Map
  • Companies per Province – Displays a national heat map with activity by geographic region.
  • Most Active Companies – Top 10 or 25 visitors
  • Company Size – Bar Graph by employment band
  • Branches – The top industries visiting the website
  • Most Visited – The top pages

Liquid Content, its name for site personalization, adjusts the website based on firmographics.  As a result, marketers can customize the text, video, content, and images presented to the visitor, allowing them to segment their website presentation.

Leadinfo supports a set of triggers and can segment them based on how each visitor reached the website: Directly, Referral, Email Link, Paid Search (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft), Organic Search, or Social Link (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Xing, YouTube).  Trigger rules support multiple custom selects; thus, lead scores may be coupled with firmographics to ensure actions are based on both visitor behaviors and firmographic fit.  Based on the trigger rules, users can add or delete tags, send emails, enroll companies, and send to CRM.

Triggers are also controlled by enrollment so that additional research from a recent visitor does not trigger additional activities or notifications.  Administrators set a period between activities to prevent notification spam.  Firmographic variables may be used for assigning leads.

Slack notifications may be sent to a channel or person, with the user selecting the notification language.  Thus, Slack triggers can be routed by firmographics for industry or territory reps and sent in the recipient’s language.

Lead forms are available and leverage Leadinfo’s visitor intelligence.  While lead forms do not support triggers, the inputted lead data can be routed via Zapier to various applications.

CRM integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, MS Dynamics 365, Sugar, and Pipedrive.  Other partners include Salesloft, Zapier, and Slack.  Furthermore, Leadinfo has developed an extensive partner network that spans 1,200 agencies.

CRM integrations are bi-directional, with Leadinfo performing duplicate checking against lead and account records.  When sending to CRM, companies may be added as Lead or Account record types.  Additionally, company profiles include deal and task information gathered from CRMs, and users can create new deals and tasks from Leadinfo.

Leadinfo displays HubSpot Deal and Task information. Sales reps can also create new tasks and deals from Leadinfo.

“As a leading digital enabler for companies and entrepreneurs across Europe, we want to offer business value to our customers and partners,” said team.blue CEO Claudio Corbetta.  “Leadinfo is converting visitors into leads which makes the return on investment of the software extremely tangible.  Furthermore, their agency model is a perfect fit with team.blue since this customer segment is dear to us.  We were impressed with the track record of Han in scaling Leadinfo to where it stands today.  We’re eager to help to roll out Leadinfo into new territories.”

The 25-employee firm is based in Rotterdam and just opened its first international office in Dusseldorf.  It will remain an independent company but benefit from team.blue’s operational and financial management.

Pricing is volume-based, with no charge for the core functionality (e.g., triggers, connectors, lead forms).  Prices are based on the number of unique matched companies per month:

The only premium services are screen reporting and liquid content.

Leadinfo grew revenue between 2 and 3X last year.  However, it did not disclose its acquisition price or revenue specifics.

Flash: Echobot & Leadfeeder Acquired & Merged

Growth equity firm Great Hill Partners invested €180 million in Echobot and Leadfeeder, merging the firms into a Sales Intelligence and Go-to-market platform.  Both firms are based in Europe (Germany and Finland) and will benefit from the roadmap set out by North American RevTech firms.

The merged firm will be based in Karlsruhe, Germany, with Echobot CEO Bastian Karweg continuing as CEO.  Leadfeeder CEO Pekka Koskinen will become the CPO.  The combined company has a headcount of 250 across six offices in Europe and the US.  The new firm’s Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) exceeds €20 million. 

Leadfeeder serves around 7,000 customers and Echobot 1,500.

Echobot’s European data coverage

Echobot offers a Sales Intelligence and B2B DaaS platform for the D-A-CH region, UK, and France.  Late last year, it added a broader European data pack.  It supports a database of 20 million European companies and over 60 million GDPR-compliant contacts.  Company and contact data is derived from both registered filings and open web sources and includes directors, shareholders, and financials. 

Echobot takes a “True Compliance” approach which gathers data only from publicly accessible sources.  Furthermore, it provides verification links to the source URLs that allow reps to answer the question, “where did my data come from?”  All data is hosted in Germany.

Echobot’s products include TARGET (prospecting), CONNECT (Sales Intelligence), DATACARE (B2B DaaS), and an API.  In addition, Echobot offers CRM integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and SugarCRM.

“It is our goal to be the leading sales intelligence and go-to-market platform to our core European and North American markets,” said Karweg.  “Thanks to Great Hill, we have now assembled the best data, AI / ML, talent, and operating experience to achieve just that.  We are increasingly seeing organizations looking to take advantage of their own data and third-party data, and then to augment this intelligence with better, more personalized outreach.  The combination of Echobot and Leadfeeder is uniquely positioned to capitalize on a massive market opportunity at the early stages of adoption.”

Leadfeeder IP-to-Account Visitor Intelligence

Leadfeeder offers website visitor intelligence that maps IP addresses to company intelligence.  During the pandemic, it worked to identify remote workers and map them to their employers, helping refine which companies are in-market.  It also supports connectors for Google Analytics, chatbots, audience retargeting, major CRMs, Zapier, and Slack.

“Integrating Leadfeeder’s web visitor identification system with Echobot’s data and prospecting solutions creates a unique platform upon which we can both enable organizations to identify and engage high-intent prospects as well as introduce incremental applications that enhance B2B sales and marketing operations,” said Koskinen.

Karweg envisions an ABM workflow that begins with an ICP analysis that identifies net-new accounts.  The ICP is then mapped against Leadfeeder’s visitor intelligence and Echobot’s firmographics and event triggers to identify high-value, in-market accounts for programmatic marketing.  While programmatic campaigns are not yet supported, they are in development.

Great Hill Partners has also committed an additional €50 million toward future acquisitions.  In an interview with GZ Consulting, Echobot CEO Bastian Karweg indicated that the €50M in dry powder would be used towards acquiring talent, RevTech functionality, or expanded content.

The equity acquisition is a combination of primary and secondary funding, with Great Hill Partners buying out many of the original investors.  It named Growth Partner Derek Schoettle Chairman of the Board and placed Great Hill Partners Managing Director Chris Gaffney and Vice President Greg Stewart on the board of the merged organization.

Schoettle is also on the board of ABX Platform Terminus, another Great Hill investment.  He was the CEO of ZoomInfo when DiscoverOrg acquired it in 2019 (DiscoverOrg subsequently assumed the name ZoomInfo), so he and the new board members offer deep Go-to-Market domain expertise.

“Go-to-market is one of the fastest-growing areas of B2B software.  Sales and marketing organizations need timely, accurate information and intelligent systems to identify and engage their prospects in an increasingly personalized, automated fashion.  By bringing together Echobot and Leadfeeder, we can create the next-generation sales intelligence and go-to-market platform,” stated Derek Schoettle.

The transaction is a merger of equals bringing together two firms of roughly the same revenue and employee base.  Both firms have over €10M in ARR and are growing rapidly.  Echobot grew 70% last year, while Leadfeeder had a 50% growth figure.  Echobot has long been profitable, and Leadfeeder is nearing profitability. 

The firms will initially run as independent brands as they merge their operations and platforms.  The deal closed a few weeks ago but was announced this morning.  Thus, they have already begun combining finance and HR.  The two brands will be maintained in the near term with rebranding under consideration for 2023 as Echobot is also the name of a Mirai malware variant.

Valuation figures were not disclosed, but the final price was determined before the recent valuation declines and did not change.  The firms were both being advised by GP Bullhound, which suggested that packaging the two firms together would result in a more effective growth equity round.  Furthermore, the two companies offered features on each other’s roadmap so were logical complements.

Europe has been tracking behind the US in the Sales Intelligence space, with several national champions now looking to offer European datasets and local UIs.  European sales intelligence and B2B DaaS solutions must meet higher data compliance and privacy standards, incorporate registered data from national registers, support multiple currencies, and many languages.

Echobot covers the D-A-CH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), the UK, and France, with a general European data package added late last year.  A Nordic data package has been accelerated due to the merger, which would increase its competitiveness against Dun & Bradstreet and Vainu.

“One of the most requested developments for 2021 was to access data from the entire European market.  That was not only requested from German customers with a strong export to European countries, but also from new, international users that want to expand into Europe,” explained Karweg last November when Echobot added coverage of over twenty European countries.

“Europe is not one country but many, and there are differences between them, whether it’s to do with culture or data compliance,” remarked Schoettle.  “Having a platform that is unique and linguistic-specific, and serving its markets with high-quality data, is a differentiator.”

“It’s a dream match,” argued Koskinen.  While previously the firm purchased contact data from multiple sources, “it has been difficult to get sufficiently up-to-date and accurate data.”  With the merger, Leadfeeder will offer better data quality and “have all the expertise in-house” to expand its coverage.

Along with higher quality data, Leedfeeder will benefit from a broader set of firmographics, financials, and sales triggers for data enrichment and lead scoring.  Leadfeeder will also be able to cross-sell Echobot’s sales intelligence, prospecting, and data enrichment services to its 7,000 customers.

“We want to be the biggest in Europe,” stated Koskinen.  “It’s going to take a few years, but I think we’re succeeding…We have long had customers all over the world.  After the merger, we will be able to offer something that no one else can.”

Echobot offers German and English-language Sales Triggers.

ZoomInfo Acquires Dogpatch Advisors

On its earnings call last week, ZoomInfo announced a pair of acquisitions that closed on April 1: Comparably (discussed yesterday) and Dogpatch Advisors.

Dogpatch Advisors is a “modern sales advisory consultancy that helps enterprises scale revenue operations, build sales playbooks, use data and insights to create and refine sales, and build outbound operations functions.”  In addition, Dogpatch will “enable ZoomInfo to further drive Enterprise and Strategic revenue through expanded customer playbooks that utilize more data and product categories.” 

Dogpatch was immediately rebranded as ZoomInfo Labs, providing a “new go-to-market thought leadership team” that “drives go-to-market data analysis, product enhancements, and strategy for our enterprise customers.”

Dogpatch CEO Ben Salzman will be heading up ZoomInfo Labs.

“This will immediately expand our capabilities for enterprises and drive enhancements across our suite of products,” stated Schuck.  “Over time, we expect ZoomInfo Labs to put the modern go-to-market playbook within reach of every company.”

“Dogpatch Advisors is professional services and consultancy firm that helps enterprises build out their go-to-market efforts using data and insights and software to make those go-to-market efforts incredibly effective and efficient.  And when we talk with our customers and our prospects…they want a world where their go-to-market motions are driven by data, where our software is interconnected seamlessly, where they have the ability to run innovative sales playbooks, but they don’t have a pathway to get there.

What we’re hoping to do with ZoomInfo Labs is to provide a mechanism to help our customers see a future that’s innovative, that’s data-driven, where systems are integrated and talk to each other, where our data cloud sits at the foundation of that, and our application layer drives the interconnectivity of that motion… [ZoomInfo Labs] is designed to help our customers not only see that vision but then also achieve that.”

ZoomInfo CFO Cameron Hyzer

Both acquisitions closed on April 1 but were announced on May 2.  Individual deal terms were not disclosed, but the two firms were acquired for “approximately $145 million, inclusive of the purchase of a convertible promissory note and cash, net of cash acquired, subject to adjustments for working capital, transaction-related equity awards, and other customary adjustments.”

ZoomInfo also agreed to pay up to $28 million in equity awards “subject to continued employment and/or attainment of certain financial metrics.”

“We expect these acquisitions to contribute revenue in the low teens millions of dollars in 2022 and create a modest drag on margins of one to two points for the remaining quarters this year,” said Hyzer.

CEO Cameron Hyzer said that Dogpatch was more than an acquihire deal.  While it has a small employee base, Dogpatch has “relationships and a history of really delivering great go-to-market consulting engagements for large clients.”

“It’s a handful of people, but I think that they very much box outside of [its weight] class in terms of the value they’re able to deliver,” continued Hyzer.  “And we think that by bringing that on and being able to deliver those engagements that we’ll be able to further accelerate the solutions that we’re offering as well.”

IDG Acquires LeadSift

Technology media company IDG Communications acquired Halifax-based intent data vendor LeadSift.  LeadSift identifies a daily digest of in-market leads, “allowing B2B marketers to craft the appropriate messaging for outreach and sales follow-up resulting in robust new business opportunities.”

Over the past eighteen months, IDG has been assembling elements of a MarTech solution, having acquired

  • Triblio – Acquired in 2020, The Triblio ABM platform supports account-based advertising, website personalization, sales activation, orchestration, and intent-based audiences.  Triblio is integrated with Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Salesforce, MS Dynamics, and Salesloft.  In addition, Triblio recently added a Smart Score that employs AI for account prioritization.  The Smart Score uses first and third-party intent, website activity, and CRM data “to identify what accounts should be prioritized for sales outreach.”
  • KickFire – Acquired in September, KickFire provides a cookieless, privacy-compliant visitor id service (first-party intent) that de-anonymizes website traffic at the account level and enriches it with firmographics.
  • LeadSift – LeadSift captures third-party, cookieless intent data at the account and contact level.  Each week it captures 80 million intent signals.  The LeadSift database spans 20 million companies and 30 million contacts.  Customers can create custom triggers based on keywords, job postings, and competitor names.

KickFire and LeadSift are complementary intent services. KickFire identifies in-market buyers on a company website, and LeadSift determines which companies are in-market based on B2B media search activities.

IDG also recently launched a second-party intent data service called IDG Neon that leverages B2B Media interactions with “verified data from personal interactions with technology audiences across events, conversations, and surveys.”  Intent data is gathered from the nearly 45 million global B2B technology purchasers and influencers registered across its proprietary network of digital tech publications.

Neon captures branded conversations, event attendance, roundtable participation, conversations with event sponsors, and individuals posing questions at event sessions.  This level of “deeper engagement” indicates “stronger intent.”

IDG brands include CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, Macworld, Network World, PCWorld, and Tech Hive.

“Expectations of tech marketers have never been higher as the technology landscape continues to become more competitive.  By positioning IDG at the intersection of media and MarTech, we help B2B marketers navigate the customer journey across a dynamic ecosystem by leveraging unmatched data sets.  LeadSift’s technology is further enhancing our unique intent data that drives ROI for our customers.”

IDG Communications President Kumaran Ramanathan

“The buying journey for B2B technology purchases are extremely complex and involve multiple decision-makers,” said LeadSift co-founder Sreejata Chatterjee.  “Having a view into those intent signals at the contact level provides a massive competitive advantage and directs your sales team to engage with the right buyers at the right time.”

LeadSift was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2012, focusing on “mining information from public web sources to help businesses identify and engage their customers in the buying journey.”   They were an early proponent of intent data, recognizing its value before it became a core element of ABM programs.

“It is obvious the company that has the most depth and breadth of data wins the B2B demand generation space,” wrote Das and Chatterjee to their customers.  “IDG.com being the #1 Tech Media company with troves of proprietary first-party intent-data across event attendance, engagement with editorial articles, branded conversations, and human-verified insights has a massive head start.  Imagine how scalable and actionable our intent signals will be once we integrate our 3rd-party real-time web-based intent signals with this proprietary first-party intent data stream.”

IDG, based in Boston, provides LeadSift with global reach and access to enterprise customers.  It also offers complementary intent data sets and the Triblio marketing platform for activating the intent datasets.

“3rd-party intent data is one piece (albeit a very important one) of the overall B2B marketing and demand generation puzzle,” continued Das and Chatterjee.  “But what if you could know all the information about your first-party web visitors (IDG | KickFire), cross-reference and prioritize them with 3rd-party intent signals (LeadSift + IDG proprietary first-party data), activate them seamlessly across digital channels (IDG | Triblio), and run highly targeted lead generation programs, all from one single dashboard!”

IDG sees itself at the intersection of media and MarTech.  However, it is not the only tech media vendor playing this angle. For example, TechTarget and Ziff Davis also combine B2B media assets, events (TechTarget’s are digital), multiple categories of intent data, and activation platforms.

“IDG’s goal of moving to the intersection of media and MarTech is to help B2B marketers navigate the customer journey across a dynamic ecosystem by leveraging unmatched data sets,” stated Ramanathan.  “LeadSift’s technology is further enhancing our unique intent data that drives ROI for our customers.”

Account-level intent starts at $12,000 per year. 

Last week, they launched LeadSift 360, a contact-level intent service that supports both keyword and research-based intent signals gathered from over five data sources.  LeadSift360 starts at $30,000 per year. IDG did not disclose deal terms.  LeadSift’s management and staff of fifteen will continue to operate in Halifax.