Tag: DemandBase

Demandbase Smarter Sales Intelligence

Demandbase Smarter Sales Intelligence brings together first and third-party intelligence.

ABX Platform Demandbase announced a Smarter Sales Intelligence solution that combines Demandbase Sales Intelligence with additional tools, data, and prescriptive insights.  UX enhancements include prescriptive dashboards with personalized account and contact recommendations.

The firm had a little fun with its press release, publishing a semi-tongue twister headline, “Demandbase Saves Stressed Sellers by Simplifying Sales with Smarter Sales Intelligence.”  But wait!  There’s More!  Demandbase also released a 90-second infomercial touting their Sales Intelligence solution that “consolidates sales intelligence tools in both first and third-party data, and all in one place.  It’s like having a superpower for smarter selling!  Get easy access to insights, best-in-class predictive models, and contact recommendations integrated within your existing tools.”

Many of the UX changes were based on customer feedback, with the critical account information at the top.  Content includes the journey stage, top intent keywords, people, predictive scores, and firmographics.

“The idea is that we’re bringing all the information that sellers care about and then presenting it on one screen so that they don’t have to go places to find it,” explained Demandbase Senior Product Marketing Manager Travis Breier to GZ Consulting.  “It’s a unification of the data.”

Sellers “don’t enjoy the research aspect” of account-based selling, continued Breier.  “They just want to be doing outreach.”  Therefore, Demandbase is “meeting the sales reps “wherever there’s spending time, whether that is their browser, CRM, or SEP.”

The Prescriptive Sales Dashboard provides a “unified and prioritized view of a seller’s territory/account list.”

Prescriptive Sales Dashboards proactively inform sellers where they should direct their attention, when they should reach out, and what they should say.  Both accounts and contacts are recommended, with suggestions specific to each rep’s territory.  The Dashboard calls out the top accounts and contacts for outreach based on activity and intent; that is, which leads have the highest probability of converting into opportunities.

The Sales Dashboard offers multiple filters, identifying accounts that:

  • “I should reach out this week.”
  • “have been in the news recently.”
  • “are most engaged.”
  • “have the highest intent.”
  • “have a high likelihood to become an opportunity.”

And contacts that

  • “I should reach out this week.”
  • “Are not in my CRM.”
  • “Are part of the buying group and from Top Accounts.”
  • “Are former buyers.”
  • “Are trending on my website.”

High engagement lists are likely to be compelling for reps.  In many cases, they will be aware of the engagement as they are directly involved.  Still, there will also be situations where they are unaware of the engagement (e.g., Customer Success set up a trial at the account or individuals attended a webinar or responded to a marketing campaign) and missing an opportunity for outreach.

Recommendations are not black-boxed but include engagement data and known contacts in the buying group.  If a rep disagrees with a recommendation, a feedback button helps train the model.

“One of the biggest risks when you’re trying to get adoption from the sales persona on something like this, is losing their trust,” explained Breier.  “We want to give some context and qualify the recommendation that we’re making.”

Demandbase also identifies and recommends contacts for outreach, even if they aren’t currently in the CRM.  Along with names and titles, Demandbase feeds emails, mobile phones, technographics, intent signals, and persona-based messaging.  New fields include Demandbase’s predictive scores:

  • Pipeline Predict Score: How likely an account will become a pipeline opportunity.
  • Qualification Score: Likelihood an account will ever become a customer, regardless of where it is in the buyer journey.

Demandbase continues to build out its data coverage, with 83 million companies, 147 million contacts, 87 million emails, and 40 million direct dials. Much of its third-party content was integrated after they acquired InsideView and DemandMatrix two years ago.

Account Insights displayed within the Outreach Demandbase tab (new UX).
People Insights displayed within the Outreach Demandbase tab (new UX).

Furthermore, Demandbase simplified its user interface to display the most important information about prospects and customers.

Yesterday, I wrote about Demandbase’s new Outreach connector which integrates Demandbase’s Sales Intelligence product within the Outreach Sales Engagement Platform.

Demandbase / Outreach Integration

Demandbase announced a native Outreach integration with other SEPs in development.  Streamlining Sales Intelligence and Sales Engagement allows reps to “focus on engaging with prospects and closing deals, rather than wasting time on manual tasks.”  The I-frame integration supports core Demandbase Sales Intelligence functionality within Outreach workflows.  For example, sales reps can research companies and contacts, build lists, and launch Outreach sequences inside of Outreach.

The Demandbase Sales Intelligence Watchlist displayed as an I-frame tab in Outreach.

Users will see common information, tools, and workflows presented in the same format as their CRM but in Outreach’s Account, Prospect, and Opportunity records.  There is also a standalone tab in Outreach similar to the Demandbase standalone tab found in CRMs.  This Custom Tab supports company and contact searching, prospect list building, connection management for warm introductions, customer and prospect news tracking, and custom buying trigger configuration.

“We’ve noticed that the order of preference as far as where sellers spend time actually starts with their SEP – So, Outreach.  And if they have to, they’ll go to CRM,” observed Demandbase Product Marketing Manager Travis Breier.  “When you look at Outreach users who have Demandbase and Outreach, they can spend all of their time within Outreach and never have to go to the Demandbase platform.  They’re not missing out on any information… It’s just one less thing that they have to learn and one less barrier to access the Demandbase information.”

“Being a seller has never been easy, but the proliferation of data and tools has led to stressed-out sellers with lost productivity, lower quota attainment, and less revenue,” says Gabe Rogol, chief executive officer at Demandbase. “With our simplified and smarter Sales Intelligence solution, reps no longer need to waste precious time figuring out their next steps and executing them.  Instead, they can close more deals and make more money.  Think of our intelligence as a sales superpower, all within the tools sellers use every day.”

Demandbase Sales Intelligence is integrated with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Outreach, Slack, and browsers.  The Sales Engagement integration enables reps to add contacts to Outreach sequences and personalize the messaging.

“Integrating Demandbase’s Sales Intelligence directly within our platform will unlock new levels of value for sales teams looking to efficiently create and predictably close more pipeline,” said Outreach CEO Manny Medina.  “With this next-generation integration, sellers can more easily and quickly find and contact accounts, get data-focused insights, and unlock new levels of productivity — all while never leaving the Outreach Sales Execution Platform.”

Demandbase recently dropped the Cloud Designations for its products, emphasizing its unified functionality within the Demandbase One platform.

“We found that it kind of creates this illusion of complexity that we don’t feel serves it justice as far as the actual products you’re spending time in,” said Palmer.  “They’re even more interconnected.  Most of our customers are now buying three or more products.  We’ve got bundles and packages of everything, so we’ve just moved away from that whole cloud nomenclature to just Demandbase One.”

The Cloud services will now be called Demandbase ABX, Demandbase Advertising, Demandbase Sales Intelligence (FKA InsideView), and Demandbase Data.

A Hot Leads feature that provides SDRs with key engagement insights and the ability to take action on unknown leads will soon be available.  Hot Leads will be displayed in the Prescriptive dashboards and identified by engagement activity, intent, recency, news/company/job changes, technographics, etc.  Hot Leads will be GDPR and PII compliant.

In other news, Demandbase was named a Notable Provider in Forrester’s Account-Based Selling Technologies Landscape, Q2, 2023 report.  Seventeen vendors were included in the report.  Account-Based Sales vendors “improve visibility into the potential of each account; increase sales rep efficiency; and increase pipeline value (deal size), win rates, and forecast accuracy.”

“The landscape for B2B GTM teams continues to change at [a] breakneck pace.  At Demandbase, we’re committed to shaping that market evolution to empower our customers to achieve their most audacious goals,” said Demandbase CPO Brewster Stanislaw.  “This year, we’ve placed a deep focus on making sellers’ jobs easier and more effective with AI-powered insights and seamless workflows, and we believe our inclusion in this report further validates that direction.”

Continue to my coverage of Demandbase Smarter Sales Intelligence.

Demandbase Standalone Intent

Both services provide keyword intent, with Standalone Intent delivered to third-party platforms. (Source: Demandbase)

ABX Platform Demandbase, which also offers a data cloud and sales intelligence solution, rolled out its keyword intent dataset for third-party platforms.  Demandbase Intent is available both inside the Demandbase One platform (embedded) and delivered to other platforms (standalone).  Demandbase Intent joins Demandbase’s other Data Cloud assets, including firmographics, technographics, and contacts.

Standalone Intent, which supports 375,000 keywords and ingests 18 billion daily signals, provides buying signals for predictive models, data stores, and analytics.  Data is delivered via API, cloud delivery, or CSV flat files.

New keywords are added weekly, with historical intent maintained for twelve months.

Demandbase Intent helps marketing teams target in-market accounts and refine their messaging.  Furthermore, Demandbase Intent can trigger campaigns, avoid churn, and expand accounts.

“Our intent takes multiple sources into account, providing a much stronger and more accurate signals than others in the space,” said Demandbase VP of Product and Industry Marketing Jackie Palmer.  “By using Demandbase Intent, data scientists, corporate strategists, and sales and marketing analytics professionals can build and improve their predictive models, helping them to better understand buyers’ goals and navigate the anonymous buying journey.  As they identify patterns, trends, and opportunities, they can be more precise in prioritizing accounts and gaining deeper insight into their revenue potential.”

Demandbase claims that its keyword library provides superior targeting compared to taxonomically-based intent datasets, allowing vendors to target niche industries and segments, track competitor offerings, and dovetail on partners’ intent.  Furthermore, customers can add new keywords “to fit their needs, whereas other intent providers limit customers to a finite, predefined list of topics.”  They can then feed keyword intent to their data lakes, data warehouses, or business intelligence platforms, making the intent data available to data scientists for propensity-to-buy models.

Palmer told data scientists, “What you can do is build your…propensity-to-buy models, all the different things you need for predictive analytics around your account intent activities.  You can stream that directly into your CRM systems, marketing automation systems, or any go-to-market systems that you need to.”

Demandbase Intent can be used alongside other intent datasets.  Demandbase One also supports Bombora’s third-party intent, G2 second-party technology research intent, website visitor intelligence, and other datasets licensed by its Demandbase customers.

“Our mantra is the more intent data, the better,” Palmer explained to GZ Consulting.  “So, that’s why within the platform, we always integrate with Bombora, G2, etc.  But this is now for standalone people that may not want the Demandbase platform but also want to add additional concepts of intent into their data lakes [and] data warehouses.”

Furthermore, keyword intent is “totally complementary” to taxonomic intent data sources.

The Demandbase AI assesses keyword usage and the age of the article (older articles provide higher relevance), related articles the user has read, and “rare and hyper-qualifying keywords and themes to identify personas and buying committee roles.”

“We track the relevant articles,” explained Demandbase Data Cloud Product Marketer Imran Ahmed to GZ Consulting.  “If you want to look at how the market does it, they do it through co-ops.  They do it through metatags.  We’re doing it through articles that help us identify not only the keywords but help us gather all the users looking at those keywords across the web.  That brings up signal relevance and helps us get more granular and more exposure.”

Demandbase Intent does not look at Google search terms but looks a layer deeper at which articles are being viewed.

“Demandbase intent data is based on years of AI research and delivers more breadth and relevance than any you’ll find anywhere else.  Why?  Because we own the technology to identify anonymous accounts and pair that with our direct access to the bidstream — the source for the most intent signals.  Then we beef up the relevance of those signals using a combination of AI and natural language processing.”

Standalone intent is priced per keyword.

Standalone intent has been generally available since December and already has several clients.  However, due to the calendar, the firm held off on announcing the service until late January.

Demandbase Intent by the Numbers (Source: Demandbase)

Resources

Demandbase CRM Connectors

Demandbase sales and marketing engagement data can be visually displayed in Dynamics 365.

Demandbase unveiled a pair of CRM connectors for HubSpot and MSD 365.  The bi-directional, native integrations allow Demandbase One to push data into the CRMs for automated workflows, Lead-to-Account mapping, tracking, and responding to engagement activity.  Syncing is performed nightly.

“This release creates a unified interface that empowers revenue operations, sales, and marketing teams to grow predictable pipeline and close larger deals,” blogged Demandbase Senior Product Marketing Manager Travis Breier.  “The integrations enable a variety of rich workflows for customers to enhance their analytics, derive valuable insights, target more efficiently, and build reporting that aligns with their own CRM data set and their GTM needs.”

Demandbase launched the unified first and third-party view in its Salesforce connector this summer and has now expanded it to two other leading CRMs.

Demandbase offers a set of Calculated Fields that includes intent, engagement, and predictive scores that are synced and displayed in CRMs.

Demandbase feeds intent and engagement data, firmographics, technographics, and Demandbase Calculated Fields into CRMs.  With this data, operations can create CRM custom sales views, reports, and dashboards that display website activity, intent, and heatmaps.  Sales reps can view both sales intelligence and engagement data from a unified view. 

Furthermore, CRM data is available for list building and filtering in Demandbase One.  Users can define selectors, set up orchestration, create Demandbase campaigns, visualize and apply Demandbase intent and predictive scores, analyze journeys, and build reports.  Furthermore, “accurate account identification, combined with their CRM data, also means better predictive models, marketing and sales alerts, personalization opportunities, and more.”

For example, past opportunity data from the CRMs are now available to Demandbase pipeline predict and qualification scoring models to assist with account prioritization.  Demandbase also helps, “align messaging to each stage” of the buyer’s journey and assists with list building and campaign execution.

Conversely, Demandbase is syncing its insights (e.g., intent data, web traffic, most engaged contacts) with the CRM, helping reps prioritize accounts and prepare for account interactions.  Insights include Demandbase’s configurable data, such as its scores and engagement minutes that populate custom fields.

Demandbase brought firmographic, contact, and technographics databases in-house following the May 2021 acquisitions of InsideView (firmographics, contacts, and event triggers) and DemandMatrix (technographics).  Intent data includes first and third-party intelligence such as Surging Intent, Demandbase Keyword Intent, Campaign Responses, and Web Page Visits.

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

“Both of these integrations improve orchestration, delivering greater sales and marketing alignment and a friction-free experience,” stated Demandbase.

“These integrations ensure our customers who use Dynamics 365 and HubSpot CRM realize the full value of the Demandbase platform.  Pairing Demandbase natively with the CRM allows our customers to orchestrate a seamless go-to-market motion with full alignment between marketing and sales.  We’re providing the full power of our Account Intelligence in these connected systems and saving sales and marketing teams time by providing them actionable insights wherever they want to consume them.  The result is better performance with less manual effort at every stage of the customer journey.”

Demandbase CPO Brewster Stanislaw

Demandbase is not done with the connectors.  It plans to add additional functionality to the CRMs, including “new sales-focused experiences, additional capabilities in the Demandbase app in Dynamics, enhanced Lead-To-Account functionality, and the ability to automate and scale account-based / people-based plays directly from your activities.”

Demandbase supports both HubSpot CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

Demandbase Unified CRM View

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

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

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

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

The Demandbase Timeline provides current and historical intent data.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demandbase Audience Management Destinations

ABX Platform Demandbase released one of its “largest product launches of the year”: Audience Management Destinations.  While the firm has long supported B2B Campaigns via display advertising and LinkedIn channels, Audience Management Destinations extends its reach into consumer platforms and social advertising.

“B2B buyers are people, too, and B2B marketers can and should be advertising on those channels,” said Demandbase CMO Jon Miller.

New advertising channels include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Bing, and Adobe Audience Manager.  Additional services will be rolled out next year.

Demandbase does not store Personally Identifiable Information (PII), so its social outreach is GDPR and CCPA compliant.  Instead, Demandbase leverages LiveRamp’s identity resolution, an opted-in identifier system that matches individual identifiers across platforms.

Demandbase also expanded its integration with LinkedIn.  Previously, it only supported account-level targeting on LinkedIn, but now marketers can target at either the account or person level.

Demandbase Targeting

Marketers will build audiences using a set of selectors that include first-party data, third-party data, intent, technographics, and activities. (See the image on the right).  They can then activate campaigns to their targeted buyers across the business and social web.

“This will allow a highly consistent customer experience across social networks and other platforms,” explained Miller on LinkedIn.  In addition, the new release expands marketing’s outreach and orchestration across a broader set of channels “using the account intelligence and the Demandbase One platform.”

“We’re constantly learning about how the B2B buyer thinks and acts, and this new account-based social targeting functionality plays a role in reaching buyers more holistically,” said Miller. “By viewing the buyer not just as someone within a target account or in a buying committee, we recognize that buyers are individuals, too.  This mindset shift — and the corresponding ability to engage with them as such across business and social platforms — gives our customers yet another advantage in today’s B2B go-to-market landscape.”

Demandbase claims that it is the only system that runs both “people and account-based plays from one system.”  Marketers can target specific audiences and “then automatically apply the most effective sales and marketing tactics to advance the account in its journey, across every touchpoint, and with the most relevant messages.”

Demandbase augmented its company and contact intelligence in April with the acquisitions of InsideView and DemandMatrix.  The two firms supplemented Demandbase’s firmographics, contacts, and technographics and provided Demandbase with a set of sales intelligence, B2B DaaS, and ICP/TAM tools. 

Demandbase supports its own intent data along with partner datasets from Bombora and G2.  TrustRadius is coming soon.

“Demandbase’s solutions are stronger in certain areas and helps drive top of the funnel engagement or audience targeting, while InsideView has been more focused on bottom of the funnel data.  We realized the two companies are quite complimentary and we could combine our customers to offer a much more complete solution to all of them.  Today we have an integrated top of the funnel to bottom of the funnel marketing and sales data provision to allow customers to look at the full funnel and identify a more appropriate addressable market, including what kind of technologies those companies use.”

InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti to MarTech Series this week

The three companies combined to create a four-cloud solution that supports Advertising, ABX Marketing, Sales Intelligence, and Data.

“What’s exciting about this is the ability to provide all of this to customers as one solution,” continued Milletti.  “We have done a lot of work since the merger was completed to combine all of our technologies and go to our customers with information on how much more we can do for them.”

Demandbase combined its Demandbase One platform with InsideView and DemandMatrix to support four clouds.

Flash: Demandbase Acquires InsideView and DemandMatrix

ABX Platform vendor Demandbase acquired InsideView and DemandMatrix, providing it with an established and well-regarded Sales Intelligence platform, company and contact data, technographics, and data hygiene capabilities.  The acquisitions follow on last year’s acquisition of ABM Platform Engagio, which was unified with Demandbase as part of the Q4 Demandbase One platform release.

“It’s a feeling of expansion, born of learning so much from our customers, and born of the digital transformation that has happened in the last year,” said Demandbase CEO Gabe Rogol.  “This is an intentional step for us beyond being solely an ABM leader and into broader B2B go-to-market. That’s important because ABM is just a part of the go-to-market challenges that B2B companies face.”

The new services are packaged as an ABM Suite consisting of four clouds: ABX, Advertising, Sales Intelligence, and Data.  Customers will have the flexibility to order various elements of the suite, selecting the clouds and services that fit their needs.

“Our focus has been on building the most complete ABM solution (we call it ABX, because it’s not just marketing),” said Rogol, “and that was the impetus behind acquiring Engagio, putting a lot of the top of funnel and lower funnel stuff together.  That will still be important.”

While some may view this as Demandbase growing beyond ABX, it is an opportunity for them to complete the ABX vision.  I have long been critical of Demandbase’s limited framing of ABM within the marketing department.  While they acquired Spiderbook, a small sales intelligence vendor, a few years ago, it withered on the vine and is no longer mentioned by the firm.  InsideView provides them with an opportunity to realize ABX as a complete customer lifecycle solution.  There are still missing elements such as sales engagement tools and chatbots, but they are now working on a much wider canvas.

Demandbase is in a sprint to establish the ABX platform space against vendors such as Terminus, 6Sense, and Dun & Bradstreet.  It has been using the ABM three-letter acronym for a dozen years and was a lonely voice extolling ABM for half of that time, arguing for a shift from demand generation marketing to account-based strategies.  Earlier this year, it shifted from ABM to ABX (Account Based Experience), which places a greater emphasis on long-term relationships with customers and the broader revenue team (sales, marketing, customer success).

“We’re proud to join forces with these two great companies. Our vision is bold. We are transforming how B2B companies go to market, helping them deliver great experiences at every stage of the account journey. This requires great data — and we now have the premium B2B data and intelligence solutions to help companies identify, understand, and engage their customers and prospects. With this move, Demandbase moves from being ‘just’ a leader in account-based programs to being the definitive leader in B2B go-to-market…

These new offerings let us work even more flexibly with our customers. Customers can mix and match to focus on the areas most important for them, whether that’s data embedded to their existing systems, or advertising, or sales intelligence, or a full account-based transformation. We are moving aggressively to deliver on this mission, and no company will move faster than us to achieve it.”

Demandbase CEO Gabe Rogol

Acquiring InsideView and DemandMatrix strengthens its position in both marketing and sales.  Furthermore, InsideView’s sales triggers provide Demandbase customers with a rich set of talking points for account managers and customer success teams, letting them know if there are executive changes, M&A events, new partnerships, etc.

Demandbase One added the Sales Intelligence and Data Clouds with this week’s acquisitions.

Demandbase, which offers an ABX Cloud and an Advertising Cloud, now supports a Data Cloud and Sales Intelligence Cloud.  The Sales Intelligence Cloud is based upon InsideView and supports:

  • Prospect Finder – A traditional list-building feature for company and contact data.  Along with firmographic and biographic data, the InsideView prospect finder includes connection variables (Who Know Who “six degrees”), sales triggers (17 + custom variables), data availability (e.g., LinkedIn Connections, Email), and suppression lists.
  • Browser Extension – A Chrome extension for quick lookup and prospecting.  The extension displays InsideView company and contact profiles from LinkedIn, company websites, and CRMs.  Records may be sent to the CRM or Sales Engagement Platforms.
  • News and Social Insights – InsideView publishes daily email alerts based upon their sales triggers.  As these are event-based, most company noise (e.g., stock price fluctuations, scores for teams playing at branded stadia) is removed and duplicates suppressed.  They also support inline social media viewing for Facebook, Twitter, and Company Blogs.  Inline viewing helps account managers and customer success teams stay abreast of key accounts.  It also assists marketing and CI professionals in monitoring key partners and competitors.
  • Corporate Hierarchies – Family trees assist with lead-to-account mapping, selling deeper into an organization, and ensuring that leads are accurately scored and routed.

The Data Cloud consists of Demandbase, InsideView, and DemandMatrix assets.  InsideView contributes close to 100 million global contacts and 17 million companies.  DemandMatrix supports technographics (current tech stack, future technology needs, technology-based skill set trends, cloud consumption revenue, and IT Spend). 

Other Data Cloud services include Demandbase Account Identification, InsideView Apex (ICP Discovery and Expansion), InsideView Data Integrity hygiene tools, and the InsideView API.

“For the last 15 years, we’ve been focused on empowering our customers to experience rapid revenue growth through the power of data.  InsideView’s leadership in sales intelligence made it clear to us years ago that stronger ties between sales and marketing lead to more revenue—and data is the key. By joining forces with Demandbase, we’re combining our legacy and leadership in sales, and the industry’s freshest, most reliable data, with leading marketing technology. Our customers will be able to do more with data across more B2B revenue channels from sales, to advertising, to account-based campaigns. We’re taking the convergence of data and workflow to the next level.”

InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti

InsideView was highly rated in The Forrester Wave B2B Marketing Data Providers Q2 2021 report, scoring a five (highest score) across 14 of Forrester’s 24 evaluation criteria.  Among the categories in which they excelled were data management, data coverage, and customer support.

Rogol emphasized the value of technographics for enterprise technology companies, saying that “for technology companies, the number one feature in a data science model is what technologies your prospect owns.”

“B2B data is complex, and customers consistently ask us for help with their data stack,” said DemandMatrix CEO Meetul Shah. “We started with further innovating technographic data to give customers valuable insights into their prospects and what other technologies they might buy. By now being part of the Demandbase Data Cloud, we’ll be able to provide customers access throughout the B2B data stack to help them realize their revenue goals.”

Both Milletti and Shah will continue running their respective businesses and join the Demandbase executive team as general managers.  The two subsidiaries will operate separately, but the firm will consolidate the data across the offerings.

Acquisition prices for the two firms were not disclosed.  The InsideView service lists its revenue at $30.5 million and 275 employees, which has remained stable over the past few years.  DemandMatrix is listed at $3.0 million in revenue with 90 employees.

InsideView’s self-profile (May 4, 2021)

“At Demandbase, our vision is bold. We are transforming how B2B companies go to market, helping them deliver great experiences at every stage of the account journey.  This requires great data,” said Demandbase.  “We now have the premium B2B data and intelligence solutions to help companies identify, understand, and engage their customers and prospects. With this move, Demandbase goes from being ‘just’ a leader in account-based programs to being the definitive leader in B2B go-to-market.”

InsideView and DemandMatrix customers benefit from the more extensive go-to-market capabilities of their parent.  The DemandMatrix suite helps customers:

  • Design and orchestrate their entire buyer’s journey across marketing and sales
  • Personalize their website experience, track account-level engagement, and attribute revenue
  • Deliver account-based display, native, and social media advertising that is brand safe for B2B
  • Target and segment their market

Rogol admitted that the integration work would not be easy.  “Obviously, we still have a lot of the execution work ahead. One thing to point out is that these are different types of acquisitions than Engagio. With Engagio, the goal was to get to the most comprehensive ABM platform. These are adjacent expansions, so they’re going to operate as standalone businesses pretty much.”

Barb Mosher Zinck of Diginomica was bullish on the transactions, calling it a “smart move” to consolidate the data from three companies under a single platform.  “It’s essentially a Customer Data Platform (CDP) without the CDP name (and some CDP capabilities), providing all the critical information sales and marketing need to find the right accounts and contacts within those accounts. The intelligence DemandMatrix brings on technology is key, as is the ability from InsideView to see when things are changing in a company.”

“I also like that Demandbase has broadened its offering from only account-based marketing to sales intelligence because the two groups are tightly aligned,” continued Mosher Zinck.  “These two solutions can operate separately but bringing them together under the same umbrella with access to the same data is key to ensuring a company-wide focus on customer experience.”

The following Market Flash published on May 4th to my newsletter subscribers. I also offer a detailed InsideView product review for purchase ($349).

Demandbase ABX Personalization

Demandbase, which reframed itself as an Account Based Experience platform last month, announced a pair of enhancements to its service: Site Customization and Form Enrichment.  Site Customization lets marketers display “unique site experiences for their target account” based upon more granular segmentation (e.g., firmographics, intent, website activity).

Other customization enhancements include

  • Preview links for stakeholder review before release
  • Account list targeting with personalized ads
  • Tailored landing pages based upon the stage of the buying journey

The website can be personalized based upon industry, stage, geography, company size, or other variables.  Messaging, CTAs, collateral, and creative elements can be customized based upon the visitor.

“The creative elements and the experience you want to give to your customer or prospect are up to you,” blogged Demandbase Director of Product Marketing Ruth Juni.  “One thing is for sure: Taking the time to think through the messaging from the consumer’s perspective will ensure you’re delivering the right message to the consumer at the right time.”

Marketers can also display unique web form designs with minimal field display.  Demandbase then enriches the submitted form with additional prospect details.

“ABX is rooted in an intense focus on the customer at every stage of the buying cycle, using intelligent insights to know when and how to engage, and what to say to each account,” said Jon Miller, Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Demandbase.  “Your website is one of the most important interactions a customer or prospect can have with your brand, which is why it’s critical that your website experience should be as personalized as email or other channels.  Our new features for Demandbase Personalization make it easy to deliver the right website experience and elevate the entire journey.”

According to Gartner, 98% of marketers argue that personalization enhances customer relationships. “Gartner is predicting that smart personalization engines used to recognize customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase their profits by up to 25% by 2023,” said Demandbase Product VP Seth Myers.  “Personalization is taking center stage in business today.  This makes the case even more for our enhanced Personalization product and its industry-leading features that treat personalization as seriously as it should be treated. We’re bound and determined to keep anticipating what our customers want and need, in order to continue to elevate ABX.”

A screenshot of the Demandbase One Dashboard showing the top trending Intent keywords over 12 weeks.

Demandbase ABX

Demandbase, which pushed Account Based Marketing (ABM) as a business strategy a half-decade before other firms picked up the terminology, is now positioning Account-Based Experience (ABX) as the next generation ABM strategy.  ABX supports buyers across the full customer lifecycle and emphasizes messaging timing and an improved customer experience.

“Account-Based Experience takes the same principles as good CX — trust, empathy, and relevance at every stage of the journey — and applies them to the account-based world,” states Demandbase. “One of the fundamental principles of ABX is recognizing that our buyers live in a world of information abundance and attention scarcity, making any form of interruption marketing ineffective.  Instead, companies need to build trust with potential buyers, identify the ‘magic moments’ when customers are open to engaging, and then orchestrate the perfect interactions across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams.”

By broadening the scope of ABM, “it keeps the customer where they should be, at the center of your go-to-market strategy, whether you are in marketing, sales, an SDR, or part of the customer success team,” said Demandbase VP and ABX Evangelist Beki Scarbrough. “In many ways, ABX simply takes the best practices that have emerged around ABM and applies them across your customer experience.”

According to a 2021 ABM Benchmark Study by Demandbase and RevOps Squared, “53% of businesses say that Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success are equally responsible for their account-based customer expansion strategy.”

Demandbase notes that ABM focused on account fit, defining the Ideal Customer Profile as the most valuable accounts for targeting, but failing to account for timing.  Thus, many ABM accounts had a “poor experience” due to mistimed engagement.  When account outreach is mistimed, prospects are unable to engage “on their own terms and on their own schedule.”

Demandbase also recognized that ABM focused on the marketing department and not the broader revenue team.  While ABM starts in the marketing department, it has long been understood that ABM encompasses marketing, sales, and customer success management.

“Our belief in ABX positions us to expand the ABM category within the industry,” said Demandbase CEO Gabe Rogol, calling it a “powerful go-to-market strategy.”

“ABX uses data and insights to orchestrate relevant, trusted marketing and sales actions throughout the B2B customer lifecycle. It’s all about engaging business buyers with relevant messages delivered in a trusted way on their own terms.”

Demandbase CEO Gabe Rogol

One of my criticisms of Demandbase is that they were focused on the marketing department with few tools for other departments.  While they acquired Sales Intelligence vendor Spiderbook five years ago, the service withered.  Their technology partner list is heavily weighted to marketing with few sales-oriented partnerships beyond SalesLoft and Outreach.  Likewise, the ABM Leadership Council that they founded was marketing-centric and lacked vendors that supported other departments.  Conversely, the parallel Flip My Funnel movement, championed by rival Terminus, has long had a broader set of vendors and departments served.

Thus, Demandbase’s shift to ABX is a welcome update to their ABM vision and hopefully involves a broader functional scope of their offerings.  Unfortunately, Demandbase did not reveal any new functionality in support of ABX, so we’ll have to see how they plan to implement this broadened definition.  On April 7th, Jon Miller, Demandbase’s Chief Marketing and Product Officer, will provide additional ABX details at a webinar.

“I’ve always described Account-Based Marketing as ‘fishing with spears’,” said Miller. “It’s a great analogy, but you’ve got to realize that it doesn’t feel very good to get poked by a spear!  Similarly, B2B buyers today want to research potential solutions anonymously, on their own schedule, until the time when they actually do want to engage with a vendor.  ABX lets us work with modern buyers on their own terms: anonymously when they want to be, helpful and relevant when they are ready, and always based on trust. It’s a much better customer experience and it delivers much better long-term results.”

Demandbase Acquires Engagio

Demandbase announced that they acquired Engagio yesterday.  The two ABM Orchestration companies have complementary assets that will help position them in the nascent, but growing, ABM platform segment.  According to Demandbase, “The acquisition reinforces Demandbase’s leadership in the ABM space and positions it to become the dominant B2B marketing platform company.  Furthermore, the acquisition will help accelerate Demandbase’s revenue growth from $100 million to reach its next immediate milestone of $250 million.”

Deal terms were not disclosed.  Engagio CEO and co-founder Jon Miller, who also was a founder of Marketo, said that Engagio was not a distressed asset, but a complementary acquisition based upon a shared vision of ABM.

“Engagio didn’t need to do this deal,” said Miller.  “We had plenty of runway and had taken prudent moves to break even.  This deal didn’t happen because the company was struggling or needed an exit.  We shared the same vision, and that is why the deal happened.”

The firms are long-term partners and have done co-marketing in the past.  A deal has been in discussion since late 2019 when Gabe Rogol became the CEO of Demandbase.

“We had half our road map done but needed this other piece, and Engagio had half their road map done and needed this other piece, and we found each had the piece that the other needed,” said Rogol.

But COVID made the investors nervous as it increased the level of market uncertainty.  “We had a lot of push back from our investors,” Rogol recalled.  “The reaction we got was, do you want to do an acquisition at a time when you don’t know what’s going to happen in a week from now?  We told them this would fulfill each other’s roadmap more than anything else we could do.  This says a lot about our investors and the support that we had.”

Demandbase was an early pioneer in the ABM space, positioning Account Based Marketing as a critical strategy for B2B sales and marketing teams.  While other companies were still focused on demand generation, Demandbase was calling for a strategic focus on key accounts.

Just last week, Demandbase was named a leader in the “The Forrester New Wave: ABM Platforms, Q2 2020” report.  Demandbase was given high scores for its account-based advertising, personalization, product roadmap, and market approach along with its marketing automation connectors.

“We are honored to be recognized by Forrester as a leader among ABM platforms.  ABM is now an established technology category and a proven business growth strategy.  That’s why we continue to see so many B2B companies investing in ABM, even in these uncertain economic times,” said Demandbase CMO Peter Isaacson.  “As Forrester noted in their report, customers recognize our commitment to deliver best-in-class functionalities like site optimization and hands-on customer support to help them become successful.  We believe that this evaluation simply confirms our leadership position, and the power of our platform to help support B2B companies through data, insights, and action.”

In the same report, Engagio was named a strong performer.  Forrester noted that Engagio “offers a channel-agnostic approach to coordinating account-centric engagement across the customer’s existing complementary marketing and sales solutions” but needed to “step up delivery on its product roadmap and vision.”

“This acquisition combines the leader in ABM with Engagio, one of the early pioneers of the category.  It will change how B2B revenue teams operate,” said Rogol.  “Sales and Marketing alignment isn’t enough.  These teams must start moving as one — with a single set of data and insights, orchestrated across the entire buying journey.  Demandbase can now deliver that with the definitive, no-compromise ABM Platform.”

The two firms have been partners for four years and shared “a consistent vision for the category,” along with dozens of common customers, wrote Rogol.  “By bringing together the clear leaders in ABM, we are better positioned than ever to help B2B marketers acquire, grow, and retain customers.”

“Most people who are not ABM experts look at us and think we are competitors.  But in actuality, we have been co-marketing partners.  We jointly founded the ABM Leadership Alliance and we actually have over 30 customers using the product.  So, even though it looks on the surface like there is overlap, in reality, there was very little.

The second thing that we realized is how similar the company’s core values are and how similarly we operate.  Mergers are really hard to get right.  History shows that it is probably more likely than not that mergers do not meet the expectations that people had, but the way you overcome that, the way you make the merger successful, is when the companies have that common values and common operating models.  This was an idea that had to happen because the combination was so compelling, from both a product and a company value perspective.”

Former Engagio CEO / Demandbase Chief Product Officer Jon Miller

Engagio brings a set of complementary content and functional capabilities to Demandbase.  On the data management side, Engagio offers 1st-Party Sales Data, 1st-Party Marketing Data, and Lead-to-Account Matching.  Engagio Orchestration tools include Engagement Analytics, Audience Management, Cross-Channel Automation, Journey Attribution, Customizable Dashboards, and ROI Reporting.  Engagio campaign automation supports LinkedIn Advertising, MAP and CRM integrations, Sales Insights, and 3rd-Party Audience Management.

Just last month, Engagio announced the availability of Scout for Sales, their new email and calendar mining tool that “empowers sellers to understand their target accounts more deeply, prioritize them for maximum results, and take action to close deals faster.”

Demandbase data management tools include 3rd-Party B2B Data, Website Activity Tracking with IP Firmographic Match and Enrich, Ad Campaigns, and Proprietary Intent.  Demandbase orchestration and measurement tools cover Account Selection, Dynamic Audiences, Audience Segmentation, and ABM and Engagement Analytics.  Demandbase offers a set of campaign management tools, which include a Proprietary DSP, Account-based Ads, Intent-based Targeting, Website Personalization, Webforms, and integrations with MAPs, CMS, and analytics platforms.

At its March Innovation Summit, Demandbase rolled out three new capabilities: Site Analytics with improved web engagement metrics; Data Stream, which pushes Demandbase data into BI platforms for expanded account-level reporting; and Self-Service Targeting.

In February, Demandbase released Dynamic Audiences, an ABM feature that helps B2B marketers automate their advertising and marketing campaigns.  Dynamic Audiences automatically adjust campaign audiences with dynamic targeting based upon CRM updates, recent offsite intent activity, website engagement, or other events that support a specific campaign.

“The combination of Demandbase and Engagio accelerates the development of our next generation, account-based B2B marketing platform.  One that spans people and accounts.  One that manages the complete buyer’s journey.  One that is truly omnichannel—from ads to personalization to sales activity.  And one that truly aligns sales and marketing so that you can drive the metrics that matter—pipeline, new business, retention, and upsell.”

Demandbase Acquisition FAQ

Demandbase admitted that the ABM category is still being defined.  In its discussion of the merger, Demandbase offered the following process elements as core to ABM:

  • B2B Customer Data Platform: The CDP supports both first and third-party data sets, multi-platform data ingestion for the creation of a 360-degree customer view, intent signals for both accounts and contacts, and audience segmentation.  “Unifying the data is critical for aligning sales and marketing, as it gives both teams a common understanding of each account, the buying committees within them, and the insights needed to move them through the buyer’s journey,” wrote Rogol.
  • Planning, Orchestration, & Measurement: Analytics and orchestration help sales and marketing teams determine whom to reach out to, a compelling message, and shared metrics for determining success and ROI.  Features include Next Best Action recommendations, dynamic messaging across the buyer’s journey, and “an understanding of accounts and buying teams.”
  • Omnichannel Campaigns: The ABM platform requires a broad set of messaging and marketing tools, including website personalization, advertising, and third-party integrations.
  • An AI/ML-based technology foundation: The ABM platform should deliver real-time insights for personalization, interpreting intent signals, and account-based insights.
  • An Intuitive User Experience: The User Experience needs to hew more closely to B2C product experiences, and “in order to maximize productivity, B2B technologies should be understood without extensive product training,” wrote Rogol.

In the near-term, Engagio and Demandbase will operate as standalone platforms.  An Enterprise Edition will offer both platforms “at an aggressive price point.”  The initial plan is to have a combined platform available in November.  “We anticipate there will be different baseline product versions offered with a continued ‘a la carte’ solution offering for additional functionality to our clients (e.g. Targeting, Orchestration, Engagement, Attribution),” stated the firm’s acquisition FAQ.

“Going into next year, there is just so much innovation that can continue to happen.  The process of B2B marketing and selling is undergoing so much change.  That move from the linear baton handoff to the coordinated soccer team, that just creates new opportunities.  New opportunities for a platform that combines accounts and people into a single solution.  That lets people work, not just to generate new business, but to also drive cross sell expansion and retention, which is so important to so many companies these days.  I think the last piece that I think CMOs can expect from this is just a simplification of their technology stack.  There are 8,000 MarTech companies out there.  It’s a really challenging thing for any company to figure out, “What do I need and what are all the pieces and how do I assemble this thing into something coherent?” Having a unified platform like this lets them have fewer pieces of their stack, simplify the model, simplify the equation and ultimately save money, which a lot of people are looking to do in today’s economy.”

Former Engagio CEO / Demandbase Chief Product Officer Jon Miller

“I think this is good news for the ABM category,” opined senior content marketer and marketing technology analyst Barb Mosher Zinck of Diginomica.  “ABM’s rise to popularity (even though the approach has been used for years in Sales) has been somewhat fast and without a clear definition of what the technology should look like.  Most companies that have an ABM strategy use several tools to make it work.  And that makes it more complex and harder to do.  Integrating these two platforms is going to give us a view of ABM that we haven’t seen with any single technology before.  And that might make it easier for companies to adopt the strategy faster.”

Miller will be joining Demandbase as the Chief Product Officer while Brian Babcock has been tapped as the Chief Technology Officer.  Engagio employs a team of 40, while Demandbase has 300 employees.

“The acquisition accelerates everything I wanted to create in an ABM platform.  We will combine Demandbase’s strong go-to-market function and technological expertise with Engagio’s deep marketing automation and CRM expertise,”  said Miller.  “But it’s our shared vision for reimagining both the ABM and B2B martech landscapes that gets me truly excited for the future.”