I have been posting my articles as LinkedIn posts for the past few months, but I wanted to link some of the recent articles. The biggest recent announcement was Informa’s bid to merge its Informa Tech division with TechTarget. I also covered their new IntentMail GenAI capability.
Informa Tech CEO Gary Nugent said, “This combination brings a new revenue scale, resilient revenue growth, and increased revenue stability.”
TechTarget Merges with Informa Tech
Informa PLC, a FTSE 50 UK Group company, announced a definitive agreement to combine Informa Tech’s digital business with TechTarget. The combined business will “create a leading global platform in B2B Data and Market Access, focused on helping vendors in enterprise technology and other markets accelerate revenue growth.”
The “New TechTarget” will be positioned as a “unique end-to-end solution provider across the go-to-market: from strategy, messaging and content development to in-market activation via brand, demand generation, purchase intent data and sales enablement,” declared the firms. “The combination brings scale benefits, diversified revenue streams, and strategic expansion opportunities by expanding TechTarget’s current addressable market and enhancing the resilience of its business by increasing its presence in new markets and new buyer personas.”
Informa is contributing its Informa Tech digital business and $350 million in cash in exchange for 57% of the combined company. The cash is to be paid to existing shareholders when the deal closes. TechTarget’s shareholders will retain a 43% equity stake in the combined company…
IntentMail employs GenAI to draft Priority Engine Emails framed by Prospect-level intent.
TechTarget unveiled IntentMail AI, a beta GenAI feature that drafts Priority Engine emails. TechTarget emphasizes its intent data as it is tied to opted-in readers of its 150 B2B Technology websites. Thus, IntentMail AI offers opted-in prospect-level intent that supports precision messaging around top-of-mind topics when buyers are in-market.
“Unlike other offerings recently reaching the market, only IntentMail AI combines recent, relevant account information together with deep insights on what the specific targeted recipient has been actually researching on TechTarget’s global publishing network,” explained TechTarget. “As such, IntentMail AI will not only help drastically reduce the time it takes for sales teams to more effectively personalize outbound outreach, it stands to dramatically increase conversion.”
IntentMail AI is part of TechTarget’s “personalized assist AI-driven product strategy.” CEO Mike Cotoia believes that opted-in prospect-level intent will differentiate its GenAI offerings from competitors across three dimensions: relevancy, efficiency, and precision focus…
B2B content syndication vendor NetLine launched INTENTIVE, their buyer-level intent platform at last week’s Forrester event in Austin. INTENTIVE offers “real-time insights into truly ‘who’ is actively expressing intent within a B2B account.”
INTENTIVE is similar to TechTarget’s Priority Engine but broader in focus. Whereas Priority Engine’s intent data is focused on enterprise and health tech, INTENTIVE supports a wider range of 247 industries, including pharma, aviation, manufacturing, and enterprise technology, etc.
“By design, TechTarget is highly focused on supporting the needs of B2B marketers and is targeting technology decision makers. They expanded to healthcare, but that’s about it,” noted Chief Strategy Officer David Fortino to GZ Consulting. “We view our platform as persona-agnostic and diversified” due to the broader scope and depth and breadth of NetLine’s audiences which now also includes Informa media properties and events.
Fortino described TechTarget Priority Engine as a “phenomenal product” but geared toward a more select audience of technology buyers. As such, Priority Engine is “Apple-esque,” while INTENTIVE is the “Android alternative in the marketplace.”
NetLine’s intent data is all “first-party-sourced data” and not cookie-based. Furthermore, it is transparent and includes professional bios, job types, job levels, locations, and engagement activity.
By surfacing individual activity data, NetLine is going beyond “black box metrics.”
INTENTIVE provides buyer-level activity data within accounts. Both online (e.g., webinars attended) and offline (e.g., conference sessions attended) activities are displayed with weights applied based on activity type.
Fortino also emphasized that INTENTIVE is both persona and industry-diversified, so not limited to IT Buyers.
INTENTIVE’s buyer-level intent activity spans 11,000 topics. Intent data is captured from millions of first-party content registrations, 285 distinct event activity types, and 329,000 keywords.
“With nearly 15k+ pieces of content on the platform, a given customer’s assets usually account for 0.03% of all content. For years, our clients gladly worked with us to source first-party leads that specifically engaged with their own content,” blogged NetLine Content Marketing Manager Jonathan Steiert. “The reality, however, is that 99% of their ICP were engaging with content on our platform—they just weren’t engaging with their content. They were missing nearly all of their buyer’s journey.”
NetLine was acquired by Informa in late 2021, so it benefits from Informa’s content and event registration data across 100 million event activities. Event Intent is gathered from over 500 annual B2B events hosted by Informa.
“We were acquired not because of what we were doing at the time but based on the vision of filling out a buyer-level intent platform on top of all of the various content consumption signals that we’re processing every single day of the year,” explained Fortino. “By being part of Informa, we were able to aggregate not only all of the content consumption and buyer behaviors occurring through all of the NetLine powered content experiences, but also all of the Informa properties and all of the Informa offline events.”
When Informa met with NetLine before acquiring it, “Informa was sitting on a massive amount of event-specific intent data that was looking for a mechanism and impetus to action that data into a subscription-oriented product.”
Fortino sees two high-level categories of intent vendors (he omits second-party review sites): Vendors such as Bombora that provide third-party intent based on page views and firms with a broad set of B2B content that drive buyer-level intent. Firms such as TechTarget and Foundry provide “some transparency into what individuals are doing on the sites that they own and operate.” The transparency gives users “a bit more granularity into downloading a white paper, webinar, and so on.”
Fortino argues that NetLine’s advantage is the scope of activity generated across Informa, NetLine, Industry Dive (34 B2B publications and newsletters), and events. Activities go beyond page views.
“There’s everything from…submitting a demo request to expressing an interest in learning more about a given topic, to taking a course and being certified, to the most extreme: going to an event and sitting in countless sessions and being scanned each time you’re going into one of those sessions. All of these 285 things are visualized inside the product as well. So, you can know that this person downloaded a toolkit that helps them predictably model X or they’ve registered for this event.”
Thus, NetLine is marrying online, offline, and customer-content-based intent data.
The signal intensity of some activities is much greater than that of others. “While pageviews can be brief, attending a conference is a very robust form of intent…Compare that to a group of people, let’s say it’s a CEO, a CTO, a director of DevOps, are flying to Vegas for four days to attend the Black Hat conference,” argued Fortino. “They’re sitting in six and a half hours of material each day for three days about malware [and] other enterprise security topics.” The difference in signal intensity is “night and day,” continued Fortino. “Those three people spent maybe 30 grand for three days going to that event.”
Furthermore, “We are looking at the seniority of the person taking those activities. We’re looking at the types of activities that they are actually doing,” including how those activities map to buyer journey stages.
Conversely, if the user is anonymous, “we’re actually disinterested in scoring that information and playing up the value of that information,” argued Fortino. Pageview-based intent is interesting but not actionable for sales reps. “If you’re telling me someone at SAP is trending for these three topics, I don’t even know where to begin.”
INTENTIVE’s real-time dashboard consolidates activity at both the buyer and account-level. Additional insights include buyer trends and confirmed projects, “a buyer-first view of professionals who have confirmed they have an active pain point, identified challenges, and shared their timeline to invest.”
Daily Buyer-Level Intent email alert
Other features include customizable email notifications, a native Salesforce app, and real-time buyer and account scores.
“Prior to today, there has been significant buzz about intent,” argued NetLine CEO Robert Alvin. “But the majority of existing intent-based products relied solely upon company IP recognition and webpage visits which doesn’t tell you “Who” is intending to do what. With INTENTIVE, NetLine has changed the meaning and raised the bar when it comes to intent. Marketers now have access to deeper buyer-level insights allowing them to accelerate the sales process from their marketing endeavors.”
Furthermore, Alvin noted that buyer-level insights eliminate hours of guesswork and accelerate prospecting, messaging, and understanding a prospect’s timeline.
Most intent solutions deliver account-level intent but lack buyer-level insights. They identify accounts (or accounts and locations), but do not usually indicate the individual behind the activity. Furthermore, other intent solutions capture their intent from one primary touch point – Pageviews.
“The basis for 99.9% of all intent data on the market comes directly from pageviews. Sans INTENTIVE, these solutions curate these data sets based upon this behavior, which lasts seconds, if not milliseconds, long,” expounded Steiert. “These pageviews are then referenced against historical baselines at the IP address and company domain. Effectively, every single existing intent vendor (thanks in large part to Bombora’s mostly commodified status sets) offers the same level of insights as their competitors.”
INTENTIVE provides a wider array of business intent at the buyer-level.
However, NetLine offers a broader array of buying activity that includes analyst reports, demo requests, disclosed areas of interest, event attendance, and confirmed projects.
“The age-old questions for anyone in sales are: 1. Who do I call next? and 2. What should we talk about?”, said Heinz Marketing President Matt Heinz. “Buyer-level intent data answers both of those questions.”
The baseline INTENTIVE license includes three explorers, corresponding to three targeted intent categories with up to 25 topics per explorer. Explorers can have multiple audiences for segmentation (e.g., size, industry, geography) and email notification.
Keywords are tied to topics, but free-form keyword selects won’t be available until the V2 release.
Account and buyer Intent Trendlines and activity are available as soon as an explorer is defined.
The Explorer Dashboard displays buyer and account trendlines, accounts with buyer activity, and buyer-confirmed projects. The dashboard is displayed immediately after defining an explorer and uniquely loads historical intent data for immediate review and actioning.
Fortino noted that other intent platforms typically take 45-60 days to curate data for optimal use.
Confirmed Projects were initially sold as NetLine Intent Discovery, but that product was transitioned to a core feature within INTENTIVE.
NetLine collects first-party project data as readers register for and consume content. NetLine “intercepts those users, asks them a very short survey about their pain points, their urgency to address those pain points, challenges that they have, and most importantly, the timeline to invest in correcting those things.”
Account Activity details include confirmed projects, activity type, engaged buyers, and trending topics.
The Account Activity dashboard is filterable by function, level, and firmographics. Users may drill down to any account to see who is displaying intent and the nature of their activity. Saved filters can be set as daily email alerts.
Users can drill down from Accounts to Buyers or the reverse.
While buyer-level intelligence is provided, NetLine does not display PII beyond customer content interactions. Fortino noted that sales teams already have other vendors for contact data (e.g., ZoomInfo, Dun & Bradstreet, Clearbit), but they are not providing buyer-level intent.
“This just comes back to permission data use. I know a lot of vendors love to throw in this idea of recommended contacts where they’re really just using ZoomInfo data,” explained Fortino. “We may do that, but honestly, it’s a bit disinteresting again because it’s just commoditized data sets that everyone has access to.”
Fortino’s near-term focus is building connectors with other platforms. At launch, Salesforce is natively supported, but others will soon follow.
There is currently a waitlist for INTENTIVE access. NetLine is offering a 14-day free trial.
Pricing is similar to existing account-level intent providers but obviously delivers buyer-level insights. The license includes three explorers, unlimited seats, and the Salesforce app.
Fortino argued that the unlimited seats are a “strong differentiator when you’re evaluating existing solutions,” particularly at enterprise accounts with many users.
Informa, a UK-based intelligence and events company, acquired B2B content syndication vendor NetLine Corporation, adding audience development, buyer-level intent, and B2B digital demand generation capabilities. The firm also announced that it had taken a stake in Totem, its OEM partner for ConnectMe, a virtual and hybrid event solution.
NetLine will join Informa Tech, “one of the world’s largest providers of intelligence, industry forums, and marketing services to the tech industry.” Informa Tech supports over 250 global events, 40 media publications (e.g., Information Week, ITPro Today, Network Computing), newsletters, research (Ovum, IHS Markit | Technology, Heavy Reading, and Tractica), and training.
NetLine’s B2B content syndication lead generation network reaches more than 125 million unique visitors per month and processes more than 700,000 leads monthly.
Back in July, NetLine rolled out Lead Management Platform, a SaaS solution for capturing B2B leads and amplifying marketing content. The Lead Management Platform, initially developed for tier 1 B2B media companies, supports centralized lead capture, qualification, routing, and analytics tied to amplification campaign capabilities. The Lead Management Platform requires no coding, allowing marketers to quickly test and rollout white-labeled gated content.
“The platform is entirely focused on helping marketers more efficiently translate their gated content experiences into more efficient outcomes,” explained NetLine’s Chief Strategy Officer David Fortino to GZ Consulting in July. “If and/or when the Marketer has the need to increase lead volume beyond what their own channels can support, they can simply convert their inbound oriented campaign already built within the interface, add a budget, and tap into NetLine’s audience for on-demand scale. No IOs, no negotiations, no phone calls. Simple on-demand access to [the] largest B2B lead generation platform on the web.”
NetLine immediately matches visitors against its 52 million global B2B contact database (60% US) via cookies or email addresses. In addition, lead forms are both customizable and dynamic, allowing companies to specify which information is to be captured and dynamically removing fields in its form display.
NetLine claims that over 70% of its audiences are immediately recognized so that there is zero or limited typing required. Most users will be required to enter only five to seven fields, a significant reduction in data entry versus traditional and non-predictive forms. And because data entry is reduced, abandonment rates are lower, generating a higher return on marketing spend.
The lead forms are content-form agnostic. A common format can be deployed against all content, including webinars and virtual experiences, resulting in a standard data capture format for all content categories. Forms are also customizable, supporting both basic themes and white-labeled user experiences that match corporate templates.
When a form is submitted, NetLine auto-generates confirmation emails and shares data with enterprise software platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, Marketo, and ON24. In addition, dynamic filtering removes leads that are poor candidates from being distributed to downstream systems. As a result, the content is fulfilled, but low-quality leads are not passed downstream.
The Lead Management Platform lets marketers amplify content to targeted audiences with an open auction CPL pricing. Marketers “simply convert native campaign, add budget, and gain immediate access to the largest volume of content-generated B2B buyer-level data on the web, where more than 700,000 first-party leads are generated across more than 300 industries each month.”
Amplification is targeted, with ads displayed based upon geography, company size, function, and level. Marketers may also upload company names or domains for targeted ABM campaigns.
CPL pricing begins around $4 per lead, subject to a monthly budget.
“Before today, B2B Marketers needed at least a handful of technologies to run their lead gen programs: software to capture, enrich, scrub, filter, fulfill, report within their own sites and an entirely different suite of vendors to amplify their content beyond the reach of their inbound forms,” said Fortino in July. “Now, B2B Marketers can do it all with one simple self-service interface. Whether they want to centralize lead capture or create a hub for qualification, routing, analytics, and companion content amplification campaigns, the platform does it all, allowing B2B Marketers to reduce their costs while simultaneously becoming more efficient in the process.”
A free version supports up to five campaigns and 100 leads per month with dynamic forms, integrations, and reporting. The Standard version, priced at $49 per month, supports 50 campaigns, 500 leads per month, and custom colors and styles. For enterprise marketers, the Pro edition, priced at $199 per month, supports unlimited campaigns and leads, fully customizable branding, and one custom domain with unlimited sub-domains.
Both monthly and annual pricing are available, with annual pricing discounted by 20%.
Buyer-level intent data vendor NetLine rolled out its Lead Management Platform, a SaaS solution for capturing B2B leads and amplifying marketing content. The Lead Management Platform, which was initially developed for tier 1 B2B media companies, supports centralized lead capture, qualification, routing, and analytics tied to amplification campaign capabilities.
“The platform is entirely focused on helping marketers more efficiently translate their gated content experiences into more efficient outcomes,” explained NetLine’s Chief Strategy Officer David Fortino to GZ Consulting. “If and/or when the Marketer has the need to increase lead volume beyond what their own channels can support, they can simply convert their inbound oriented campaign already built within the interface, add a budget, and tap into NetLine’s audience for on-demand scale. No IOs, no negotiations, no phone calls. Simple on-demand access to [the] largest B2B lead generation platform on the web.”
NetLine immediately matches visitors against its 52 million global B2B contact database (60% US) via cookies or email addresses. In addition, lead forms are both customizable and dynamic, allowing companies to specify which information is to be captured and dynamically removing fields in its form display.
NetLine claims that over 70% of its audiences are immediately recognized so that there is zero or limited typing required. Most users will be required to enter only five to seven fields, a significant reduction in data entry versus traditional and non-predictive forms. And because data entry is reduced, abandonment rates are lower, generating a higher return on marketing spend.
The lead forms are content-form agnostic. A common format can be deployed against all content, including webinars and virtual experiences, resulting in a standard data capture format for all content categories. Forms are also customizable, supporting both basic themes and white-labeled user experiences that match corporate templates.
Fortino emphasized that no coding is required, allowing marketers to test and roll out their solutions quickly. “Unlike other data enrichment technologies, all of which are restricted to API deployment, we designed the product to support the needs of a nimble marketer ready, willing, and able to move without reliance of developers and/or the need to schedule a project. Our goal was to offer B2B Marketers with the ability to launch a content-centric, white-labeled, gated content experience with system-level enrichment and on-demand scale in minutes.”
When a form is submitted, NetLine auto-generates confirmation emails and shares data with enterprise software platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, Marketo, and ON24. In addition, dynamic filtering removes leads that are poor candidates from being distributed to downstream systems. As a result, the content is fulfilled, but low-quality leads are not passed downstream.
The Lead Management Platform lets marketers amplify content to targeted audiences with an open auction CPL pricing. Marketers “simply convert native campaign, add budget, and gain immediate access to the largest volume of content-generated B2B buyer-level data on the web, where more than 700,000 first-party leads are generated across more than 300 industries each month.”
Amplification is targeted, with ads displayed based upon geography, company size, function, and level. Marketers may also upload company names or domains for targeted ABM campaigns.
CPL pricing begins around $4 per lead, subject to a monthly budget.
“Before today, B2B Marketers needed at least a handful of technologies to run their lead gen programs: software to capture, enrich, scrub, filter, fulfill, report within their own sites and an entirely different suite of vendors to amplify their content beyond the reach of their inbound forms,” said Fortino. “Now, B2B Marketers can do it all with one simple self-service interface. Whether they want to centralize lead capture or create a hub for qualification, routing, analytics, and companion content amplification campaigns, the platform does it all, allowing B2B Marketers to reduce their costs while simultaneously becoming more efficient in the process.”
A free version supports up to five campaigns and 100 leads per month with dynamic forms, integrations, and reporting. The Standard version, priced at $49 per month, supports 50 campaigns, 500 leads per month, and custom colors and styles. For enterprise marketers, the Pro edition, priced at $199 per month, supports unlimited campaigns and leads, fully customizable branding, and one custom domain with unlimited sub-domains. Both monthly and annual pricing are available, with annual pricing discounted by 20%.
NetLine unveiled its new buyer-level intent solution Intent Discovery. Intent Discovery identifies both the individual buying committee member and the buyer journey status. Intent data is gathered from interactions with NetLine’s 12,000 gated content assets from opted-in researchers who are fully permissioned. NetLine describes Intent Discovery as an “always-on monitor” of business research. Research activity is “mined on a real-time basis, and intercepted once a buyer has met or exceeded each element required to define intent.”
Once prospect activity has been qualified for both active intent and firmographic fit, Intent Discovery asks a set of customer-specific questions that further qualify intent and deliver bespoke insights about the prospect and the individual researcher. These insights are then available to sales reps, allowing them to target their messaging to an audience of one.
All content is vendor agnostic, increasing response quality. “Sans branding, the buyer is more likely to truthfully respond. Minus the influence of a brand, and its market perception, B2B buyers are statistically more likely to find trust in the questions and their reason for being asked,” stated NetLine.
Preliminary data from their pilot indicates a 70% increase in participant’s “ability to accelerate account’s conversion to net-new opportunities.”
“Historically, if Marketers wanted to glean true intent insights from their prospects, they had to rely on a mix of their own content initiatives and faceless display advertising campaigns focused on targeting anonymous third-party cookies. With Intent Discovery, Marketers now have access to dramatic first-party scale beyond their own content, enabling them to accelerate the sales process.”
NetLine CEO Robert Alvin
“With this product, we’ve effectively delivered the last mile of B2B Intent: Who is actually expressing intent. First-party sourced buyer-level intent is the Holy Grail of sales acceleration,” said Chief Strategy Officer David Fortino. “Marketers are finally able to capture in-market and intent-rich dialogue directly from their prospects on a fully-permissioned basis at scale. Far too many vendors are delivering account-level insights and guessing at the “who” behind the behavior. We’re not in the business of guessing; it’s time for marketing and sales to understand the who — the person instead of the persona and that’s what we’re delivering on.”
