Category: Predictive Analytics

6Sense Sales Intelligence and Alerts

6Sense Account Spotlight
6Sense Account Spotlight

6Sense rolled out enhanced Sales Intelligence features to its ABM Orchestration platform.  New features help track account engagement over time, visualize anonymous intent at key accounts, and display engagement status by personas.  6Sense also added ABM Alerts and updates to its reference company dataset.  

According to 6Sense, “the Sales Intelligence enhancements change the way revenue generating teams create and drive pipeline with easy-to-consume insights designed to drive sales action in coordination with marketing.”

 “ABM is not a marketing-only initiative – it is crucial that account managers, sales development reps and other members of the sales team are collaborating and aligned.  Sharing critical target account insights such as recent topical interest and engagement history in a sales platform that the sales team is familiar with makes it easier for revenue teams to take action.”


Matt Senatore, Service Director of Account-Based Marketing, SiriusDecisions

6Sense Sales Intelligence is based upon CRM and marketing automation data, web engagement data, and 6sense’s anonymous intent data.  Intelligence is displayed across three tabs:

  1. Activities: Buying Stage, Top Branded and Generic Keywords, and Engagement Scores over time
  2. Persona Map: Engagement levels by job and function with associated engagement level
  3. Additional Insights: Firmographics, Technographics, Website Visitors by location, Top pages viewed by account

ABM Alerts deliver weekly activity profiles on key accounts to sales reps.  The email alerts include a spotlighted account “that has shown a significant volumeof relevant activity, making it especially interesting or urgent to act upon.”  6Sense spotlights firms that have not been recently contacted but are showing high-levels of engagement or intent.

The alert also provides up to five accounts which are newly engaged or reengaged, five accounts with multiple people engaging, and five accounts with declining engagement.  ABM alerts provide direct links to account profiles in 6Sense and Salesforce.

ABM Alert account details include a summary of the top activities associated with that account over the past week, including keyword research, and web visits.

“This update was designed as a response to sales teams’ requests to be empowered with insight to prioritize their time better, make their outreach more relevant, and shed light on what their prospects really care about at any given time,” said VP of Product Amar Doshi. “For those who subscribe to the BANT qualification approach, getting an early advantage on learning about need and timing can make all the difference in deal outcomes.”

Bombora Intent Data Added to InsideView Apex

InsideView Apex now supports intent segmentation across 3000+ B2B Bombora topics.
InsideView Apex now supports intent segmentation across 3000+ B2B Bombora topics.

InsideView added Bombora intent intelligence to its Apex “go-to-market” ICP/TAM service.  InsideView highlighted two use cases: Refining a list of ideal prospects to focus on those showing intent and expanding a list of buyers to find additional prospects with similar intent and other characteristics.

Refining an ICP list helps marketers target their best prospects based upon open web research currently being performed at their ICP accounts.  Thus, custom campaigns can be targeted to accounts likely in market for specific solutions.  Instead of blanketing ICP accounts with general messages, a more refined approach can be taken with a higher likelihood of the message resonating.

Conversely, Intent data can be used to expand an ABM list.

“InsideView’s Targeting Intelligence platform provides a single point of access for all B2B data and targeting signals, from firmographics, contact details, news events, personal connections, technographics, and now intent data. Adding Bombora intent data makes go-to-market planning in Apex that much more powerful. Now you can discover even more ideal prospects, and home in on the specific accounts in your target market that are not only an ideal fit for what you sell but are also currently in-market.”

  • InsideView VP of Products Marc Perramond

I find the first use case, refining a list for targeted messaging, to be more compelling.  Intent data is ephemeral.  A firm that is researching a topic this month will have moved onto other topics a month or two later.  Using intent data to message to these companies on intent-based topics today is powerful.  It allows vendors to reach out to prospects before they have begun talking to prospective vendors.  It is a powerful method to answer the questions whom to call (account-wise), when to call, and what to say.

InsideView Apex intent filtering allows marketers to target their ABM list with messages that are likely to resonate.
InsideView Apex intent filtering allows marketers to target their ABM list with messages that are likely to resonate.

However, vendors should be careful about using intent to expand their targets.  Identifying the key intent topics is crucial, but building an ABM list based upon ephemeral intent signals risks adding firms that had surging interest over the past few weeks, but have already made purchasing decisions, chosen not to pursue a technology, or were simply performing due diligence.  Surge scores simply mean that there was a recent peak in topical interest above the mean.

Defining who are your best candidates amongst your pool of ABM accounts for specific messages is a clear winner.  Adding accounts to an ABM list based upon a short-term surge in interest is likely to result in wasted marketing dollars.

Until recently, Bombora has had more success selling their intent file to predictive analytics companies than sales intelligence firms.  However, sales intelligence companies are now figuring out how to present intent data to sales reps and marketing professionals without having to provide sales training sessions on the nuances of intent data.  For example, DiscoverOrg recently redesigned its OppAlerts to focus on the few key topics relevant to the client and then limited the intent signals to the top few percent of surging accounts.  This level of refinement gives sales reps confidence that when they see a surging topic at an account, it is truly surging and not simply an anomaly.  And because numeric surge scores have been removed, the rep merely needs to know that there is a high certainty that individuals at the account are actively researching the topic in question.

B2B tech media company TechTarget delivers intent data to sales reps from its Priority Engine service.  While other intent services are at the company level, TechTarget has opted-in readers performing current research on a topic.  Thus, TechTarget can identify company, executive, topic, and buying stage for its intent file.

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Data Privacy

Speaking at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC), Apple CEO Tim Cook forcefully called for expanded global privacy protections akin to GDPR:

Our own information — from the everyday to the deeply personal — is being weaponized against us with military efficiency. These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded and sold. Taken to the extreme this process creates an enduring digital profile and lets companies know you better than you may know yourself. Your profile is a bunch of algorithms that serve up increasingly extreme content, pounding our harmless preferences into harm…

We shouldn’t sugarcoat the consequences. This is surveillance…

We should celebrate the transformative work of the European institutions tasked with the successful implementation of the GDPR. We also celebrate the new steps taken, not only here in Europe but around the world — in Singapore, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand. In many more nations regulators are asking tough questions — and crafting effective reform.

It is time for the rest of the world, including my home country, to follow your lead.

We see vividly, painfully how technology can harm, rather than help. [Some platforms] magnify our worst human tendencies… deepen divisions, incite violence and even undermine our shared sense or what is true or false.

This crisis is real. Those of us who believe in technology’s potential for good must not shrink from this moment…

They may say to you our companies can never achieve technology’s true potential if there were strengthened privacy regulations. But this notion isn’t just wrong it is destructive — technology’s potential is and always must be rooted in the faith people have in it. In the optimism and the creativity that stirs the hearts of individuals. In its promise and capacity to make the world a better place.

It’s time to face facts. We will never achieve technology’s true potential without the full faith and confidence of the people who use it.

He also warned about the dangers of AI which fails to protect privacy:

Artificial intelligence is one area I think a lot about. At its core this technology promises to learn from people individually to benefit us all. But advancing AI by collecting huge personal profiles is laziness, not efficiency.

For artificial intelligence to be truly smart it must respect human values — including privacy. If we get this wrong, the dangers are profound. We can achieve both great artificial intelligence and great privacy standards. It is not only a possibility — it is a responsibility…

Yesterday, Cook tweeted that privacy is a human right

Tim Cook on GDPR

based upon four principals:

  • Data Minimization – Personal data collection should be minimized or de-identified.
  • Transparency – Individuals have the right to know what is being collected and for what purpose.
  • Right to Access – “data belongs to users” with personal data available to individuals for copying, correcting, and deleting.
  • Right to security – “security is foundational to trust and all other privacy rights”

Cook isn’t the first CEO to call for a global GDPR. Microsoft has built GDPR into its products and CEO Satya Nadella has expressed similar thoughts. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff discussed data privacy and cybersecurity on a May earnings call and SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin has also voiced concerns.

Radius-Leadspace Merger Aborted

Radius and Leadspace quietly called off their merger back in August, agreeing not to point fingers at each other and continue supporting joint customers.

“At the end of the day, private to private mergers are incredibly hard to pull off. In this case, despite all of the best intentions in the world, we could not get to something that would work for all sides,” Leadspace CEO Doug Bewsher told Demand Gen Report. “We are excited to see the evolution and clarity around the whole customer data platform really starting to define itself in B2B.”

Bewsher remains bullish about Leadspace and the Audience Management space:

Leadspace pioneered this space when we launched our Audience Management Platform two years ago. We continue to see great success with customers as they both simplify their data management processes and bring additional data driven insights and recommendations into their activities. Whether driving an ABM strategy, a content marketing / inbound lead driven strategy, or outbound prospecting, the right data and insights deployed into systems of engagement is typically the first step in any company’s success…

We look forward to working with you to develop, build and lead this category as we continue our mission to help B2B sales and marketing teams drive a new level of engagement, targeting and resulting revenue for their organizations.

Leadspace had a strong Q2 with its “best ever revenue growth.”  New customers include SAP and Splunk.  Growth was driven by the increasing recognition that B2B firms require a data-agnostic Customer Data Platform “which brings together many different data sources at the company- and individual-level, drives recommendations, insights and a single source of truth through AI, and then has a single point of integration into multiple executions systems (CRM, MAP, Ads etc),” said Bewsher.

“Radius and Leadspace agreed to continue operating independently and are now partnering to support joint customers,” said Radius.  “Radius’ customer data platform is the first for B2B, and we will focus on offering enterprise companies integrated, unified and trusted data across all go-to-market systems, while Leadspace’s audience management platform will continue to equip companies with audience enrichment and analytics.”

Both firms no longer talk about predictive analytics and emphasize Customer Data Platforms.  The Predictive Analytics space has been squeezed by both DaaS vendors with light scoring tools and integrated AI solutions such as Einstein.

What is Fit Data?

A Subset of the D&B Hoovers location selects with regional filters for the US and UK.
A subset of the D&B Hoovers location selects with regional filters for the US and UK.

Last month, I discussed intent data, one of a trio of datasets that assist with lead scoring.  This month I’m touching upon Fit data and next month I’ll be discussing Opportunity data.

Fitness data consists of firmographics, technographics, and verticalized datasets that help define whether a company is a good prospect.  Biographic values such as Job Function, Level, Skills, and Responsibilities should also be employed when evaluating contacts or leads.

Firmographics are the basic variables that have long been used to define a good prospect.  Firmographics include location, size (e.g. revenue, employees, assets, PE/VC funding, and market cap), industry, and year founded.  Other commonly used dimensions include Ownership Flags (Minority Owned, Woman Owned, Veterans Owned, SOHO, Franchise), Ownership Type (Public, Private, Nonprofit, Government), and Parent/Sub/Branch.

Ownership flags are used for both inclusion and exclusion with SOHO and Franchise flags generally used to exclude small businesses and those with limited purchasing authority.  Subsidiaries and Branches are often excluded as they also have more limited purchasing authority, but are included when looking for locations to sell into after an MSA is signed or when evaluating entry into overseas markets.  In these cases, knowing all of the locations of current accounts and top prospects is quite valuable.  Likewise, logistics companies look for companies with many locations.

Several vendors support radius searching around a ZIP code.  This select is valuable for both event planning (e.g. 50 miles from a tradeshow) or for sales reps when traveling and looking to include additional accounts and prospects on a trip.

A recent study by Dun & Bradstreet found that three of the top five dimensions used when targeting B2B accounts are firmographic (Location, Industry, and Company Size).

Firmographic variables such as geography, industry, and company size are commonly used for specifying target accounts (Source:
Firmographic variables such as geography, industry, and company size are commonly used for specifying target accounts (Source: “The 6th Annual B2B Marketing Data Report,” Dun & Bradstreet, Sept 2018).

Furthermore, Account specific lists for ABM generally employ firmographic criteria when building or extending ABM lists.  (Online activity is an intent variable which was discussed in my last What Is.)

Technographics are an example of a verticalized dataset.  Generally they consist of vendors, products, and product categories.  Originally, such data was only available from technology sales intelligence vendors such as DiscoverOrg and HHMI (now Aberdeen Services), but HG Data built and licensed a technographics dataset which is now widely available in data marketplaces, predictive analytics, and sales intelligence platforms.  Aberdeen followed suite in licensing their dataset as well.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a set of unique selects for targeting departments, department headcount growth, and employment growth.  Unfortunately, this data is not downloadable or available for lead scoring.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a set of unique variables for building lists. Unfortunately, the variables are not exportable.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a set of unique variables for building lists.

Biographic variables are also important when determining fit.  Job function and level help determine whether a lead is likely to be a decision maker, influencer, or noise.  Most vendors map job titles to taxonomies of between 8 and 60 job functions and 4 to 8 levels.  Other biographic variables include education, years at company, former companies, and interests.

Data availability and currency may also play into Fit both directly and indirectly.  If a select is weakly populated (e.g. Education, Skills), then many potential targets will be omitted from lists or given low scores.  In some cases, lowering the lead score due to a missing field makes sense.  Lead scores should incorporate the availability of emails, direct dials, and LinkedIn handles because this information increases the likelihood of successfully communicating with a prospect.

TIP: When evaluating vendors, ask about the fill rates on key fields you anticipate using in your lead scoring or prospecting.

In a similar vein, last update dates should also be used as a filter.  Data from SHRM indicates a 2016 average contact decay rate of 27% when accounting for job departures, lateral moves, and title changes.  And this is only at the contact level.  The rate is even higher when including company name changes, relocations, and bankruptcies / facility closures.  Thus, the last update field is a relevant fitness variable for prospecting but not inbound lead scoring.

In short, lead fitness can be defined by a broad set of who, what, and where variables related to companies and contacts.

True Influence InsightBase 2.0

True Influence LogoTrue Influence rolled out version 2.0 of its InsightBase ABM platform with enhanced intent data, improved contact data, and an Advanced Relevance Engine which ranks accounts according to ABM demand level. 

InsightBase provides intent analytics across 4,000 business topics and fifteen countries.  Intent is then matched to contacts, firmographics, and location-level technographics.

According to the firm, InsightBase 2.0 “combines the most advanced data and analytic technologies to create a comprehensive monitoring solution that specifically identifies Intent Signals, which are proven pieces of data that indicate buying interest and purchase acceleration. These signals are collected in real-time as the result of web-based activities – such as web impressions, searches, email opens and more — to create a profile showing which companies and locations are actively in the market for a specific solution.”

In March, True Influence announced a partnership with Dun & Bradstreet to match and enrich company and contact data. Other partners include Zoominfo (contacts), Aberdeen Group (Technographics), and Bombora (intent).

True Influence offers connectors for Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce.

“Today, companies tend to rely on first-party lists or behavioral data to plan their B2B marketing approach, but that is just a small piece of the puzzle,” said True Influence CEO Brian Giese. “The fact is, B2B decision makers take a complex journey before making buying choices by conducting research for their next big purchase. To be truly competitive, it’s critical to have a complete, worldwide picture of your prospects’ overall online purchase journey.”

TechTarget: Priority Engine Hitting on All Cylinders in Q2

TechTarget LogoTechTarget, which offers both IT media sites and technology sales and marketing intelligence, posted $31.5 million in Q2 earnings, up 18% year-over-year.  Growth was driven by their Priority Engine Technology Sales Intelligence service which grew revenues 60% year-over-year.  The firm noted that “revenue growth continues to be driven by our leadership position in purchase intent data and our customers’ transition to becoming data driven sales and marketing organizations.”

IT Deal Alerts revenue was up 21% to $14 million as the customer base grew from 500 to 600 clients.  The firm also signed more than 40 new Priority Engine clients in the quarter (to approximately 250).

The new Priority Engine enhancements, which were released in early May, have been “well received in the market place.”  New features included improvements to the user experience, a new Salesforce widget, persistent URLs, list assignments, user roles, and improved topic filtering.

Furthermore, Priority Engine is shifting the firm to a recurring revenue model with 34% of revenue now attributable to longer-term contracts.  Approximately 80% of subscription revenue comes from medium and large firms and 20% from smaller firms, “typically VC-backed start-ups.”  The revenue renewal rate for medium and large customers is “well over 100%,” said the firm in its earnings press release.  “Those customers are finding great value in our purchase intent data and are renewing and buying more from us at high rates.”

However, TechTarget has a higher churn rate on smaller customers due to common issues inherent to smaller firms such as “changing go-to-market priorities, budget or funding reductions, personnel turnover, etc.”  The issue of small customer churn exists for both their core services and longer-term contracts.  To reduce churn, the firm is taking three steps: improving the ease of use of products; expanding their Customer Success team which owns customer on-boarding, training and monitoring; and building a dedicated sales team responsible for renewing and upselling.  Splitting sales into hunters and farmers will allow the “existing sales team to hunt for new opportunities.”

TechTarget also announced the acquisition of contact data management firm Oceanos.

Bombora Natively Integrates with Marketo

Bombora's intent file, which spans 4,100 B2B topics, is available in Marketo.
Bombora’s intent file, which spans 4,100 B2B topics, is available in Marketo.

Bombora partnered with Marketo to natively integrate its intent file into the Marketo Engagement Platform.  Bombora collects anonymous company-level activity from B2B media sites and determines intent as a company surge score across 4,100 B2B topics and 2.8 million companies.  The surge score indicates an uptick in baseline interest in customer-specific B2B topics.

The intent scores help identify and prioritize sales and marketing activities around prospects with active purchasing research programs. Firms with high surge scores can then be targeted for programmatic marketing, digital messaging, and sales outreach.  Surge data also flag dormant accounts which are re-entering the purchasing cycle, assist with messaging around key topics, and inform lead scoring and routing decisions.

According to Bombora, only fifteen to twenty percent of companies in a target list are engaged in an active purchase cycle.  Thus, understanding which companies are in market is critical to marketing effectiveness.  “It arms you with insight into which of your target companies are more actively researching your products or services compared to historic baselines – indicating intent to take action,” said Bombora.

“With the Marketo Engagement Platform acting as the hub to make this understanding more actionable, there is exponential value to how Bombora’s intent data can be leveraged across an organization,” stated Bombora CEO Erik Matlick.

“As a marketer, the best buyers to engage with are the ones that are already actively researching,” said Marketo SVP of Strategy and Alliances TK Kader.  “Providing intent data from Bombora to our customers creates an opportunity for them to engage with buyers who have a high propensity to buy, ultimately delivering better pipeline to sales and increasing the velocity of the sales process.”

Marketo is also offering best practices and campaign setup advice.

MintigoAI Launched

Demand Center is a Predictive Audience product that helps marketers generate the right audience for each prospect.
Demand Center is a Predictive Audience product that helps marketers generate the right audience for each campaign.

Predictive Analytics company Mintigo unveiled its new MintigoAI service.  Mintigo describes their solution suite as “a comprehensive intelligent customer engagement platform powered by AI” for mid-size and enterprise companies to “drive greater pipeline and revenue.”  The “customer lifecycle solution” includes CRM and MAP connectors, ABM targeting tools, inbound lead enrichment and prioritization, upsell / cross-sell recommendations, and a new Buying Stages capability.

Buying Stages determines where accounts and leads are in their buyers’ journey.  The solution assesses lead enrichment, fit, intent, and behavior data to determine customer intent and stage.  Data is sourced from 1.7 billion user interactions per day spanning 13 million global companies.  Buying Stages tags accounts into three categories: Target (based on fit), Awareness (based on intent), and Consideration (based on behavior).  Buying Stages evaluates the “aggregate actions of leads” and weighs both anonymous web traffic and site visit activity.  Mintigo also factors in firmographic, technographic, and social intelligence.

“To plan, strategize and execute B2B marketing effectively in today’s world, marketers need a high-definition view of their customers,” blogged CEO Jacob Sharma.  “Using AI and predictive analytics, we built MintigoAI to mine billions of data points and identify the set of insights that make a company’s actual customers unique. These insights range from hiring patterns to technology installs to firmographic data, and much more. The result of this process is the ICP, which MintigoAI uses to identify right targets within existing marketing databases and proactively discover new high-propensity targets that display the ICP characteristics.”

Lattice Atlas Customer Data Platform

Lattice Atlas provides a unified customer view for omnichannel audience activation and personalization.
Lattice Atlas provides a unified customer view for omnichannel audience activation and personalization.

Lattice Engines announced commencement of a private beta for its Atlas Customer Data Platform (CDP).  Lattice Atlas matches internal and Lattice Engines data sources, provides a single view of the customer, and supports a centralized audience platform for cross-channel creation and measurement.  The formal launch is planned for the end of the year.

According to Lattice Engines, “Marketing organizations struggle to scale their Account-Based Marketing (ABM) programs because each application they deploy has its own data, segmentation, activation and measurement modules. This has led to a fractured buyer journey because banner ads, social ads, emails and sales calls communicate different messages, which creates confusion. Lattice Atlas solves this problem directly by integrating all the application data into a single place and providing the ability to manage this data, segment on it, and activate it through open APIs.”

“A CDP connects existing systems to create a unified customer view that makes ABM possible. In a world that never stops changing, the power and flexibility of a CDP will help marketers deliver on the promise of ABM.  The features you need in a Customer Data Platform (CDP) will depend on your business, existing systems, and intended use. There are a few key considerations when evaluating CDP solutions for executing ABM programs, including a unification of all data sources, segment creation, campaign execution and predictions.”

  • David Raab, founder of the CDP Institute

Lattice contends that ABM at scale requires a CDP supporting four key attributes:

  • Unified Customer Data: After aggregating and consolidating customer data, a CDP must link identity, behavior, purchase history, and firmographics.
  • AI-driven Audiences: The CDP must not only score accounts and contacts, but identify buying committees, assess buying stage, and recommend the next-best offer.
  • Omnichannel Activation and Personalization: The CDP suggests highly personalized campaigns across relevant channels.  The messaging must remain consistent across all of the channels.
  • Enterprise Grade Governance: The CDP maintains data security and privacy while complying with relevant laws such as GDPR.

Lattice Atlas aggregates client data across platforms and appends it with data from the Lattice Data Cloud.  First-party content is gathered from CRM, marketing automation, web visitor logs, transaction histories, product usage details, etc.  The Lattice Data Cloud enriches the customer view with firmographics, intent data, and technographics.  Lattice also maintains an ABM Identity Graph which organizes customer data by account, buying center, and contact.

“Lattice Atlas was a natural evolution of our platform,” blogged VP of Products Chitrang Shah. “Since day 1, our approach has focused on being deeply integrated with each execution application and managing all data under one platform. Because of this we not only capture the largest amount of data, but also all that relevant metadata that describes it. Lattice Atlas is built on our understanding of these applications and their data to create the first CDP for enabling ABM at scale.”

Audience creation tools predict conversion likelihood, purchase window, and likely spend.  Atlas also supports next-best targets and next-best actions. 

Lattice Atlas connectors support Marketo, Eloqua, Salesforce, and a set of REST APIs.

Other features include GDPR opt out for campaigns and all marketing communications, engagement thresholds to prevent marketing fatigue, and lead-to-account mapping.

The initial Atlas application will be Playmaker which offers prescriptive recommendations to sales teams.  “Playmaker lets them quickly identify top products to sell across all audiences and programmatically deliver those recommendations to the sales teams,” said Shah.  “It also has built-in interactive dashboard to track the engagements (or lack of it) and its impact on the pipeline, enabling out-of-the-box visibility into play ROI measurements and the ways to improve it.”

“The holy grail of B2B marketing is creating 1-to-1 experiences across the entire buyer’s journey. This is why the B2B world is so interested in ABM these days. In order to craft personalized experiences at scale, our customers need a data foundation to better understand their target audiences, and an execution platform to engage those audiences in meaningful ways. With Lattice Atlas, we now enable companies to engage their buyers with 1-to-1 omnichannel experiences, making B2B marketing as personalized as B2C marketing,” said Lattice Engines CEO Shashi Upadhyay.

Lattice has over 200 customers including PayPal, Adobe, Dell, and SunTrust Bank.