TechTarget, which gathers second-party, opted-in intent data, released IT Deal Alert Priority Engine Email Alerts. The overly wordy offering helps “enterprise technology sales teams quickly identify and take action on the best opportunities in their territory.”
TechTarget research found that firms that “target active prospects with timely, relevant outreach generate twice as many opportunities.” Active prospects are more likely to respond to sales rep outreach, accept meetings, attend meetings, and convert to opportunities (see TechTarget graphic on the bottom).
Priority
Engine Email Alerts are delivered weekly and customized for each recipient.
Alerts may be set up by sales rep territory or ABM account lists to
monitor “relevant buyer activity” at target accounts. Sales reps can then
click on the alerts to view account reports, contacts, and purchase intent
insights (e.g. buying stage, competitors under consideration, relevant topics).
TechTarget offers both first and second-party intent, so reps know about both technology research conducted on TechTarget’s 140 B2B Technology media sites and on their company’s website (first-party intent is supported via a KickFire OEM deal).
As
TechTarget Account profiles include detailed intent data, reps are better able
to qualify opportunities, tailor their message, and avoid landmines set by
potential competitors. Ideal Customer Profile Accounts are labeled,
helping reps prioritize key Accounts.
“Sales reps
are busier than ever and can easily miss opportunities, especially if they
don’t have the right data in front of them,” said TechTarget SVP of Products
Andrew Briney. “Priority Engine Email Alerts deliver the best
opportunities in their territory directly to their inbox with all the
intelligence they need to close more deals faster.”
In their
investor presentation in November, TechTarget laid out a series of future
enhancements including timeline views of territory activity, contact-centered
call lists, SFDC single sign-on, opportunity timelines, leveraging data on
customer website visitors, and individual-level qualification and ranking.
Several items, including alerts, territories, and Salesforce syncing,
have already been released.
TechTarget
will also be launching a Priority Engine Express service for SMBs and resellers
this quarter.
The new Funding Events Spotlight Filter allows reps to focus on accounts with recent private equity or venture capital funding events.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator rolled out its Q4 release to end-users and admins over the past few weeks. Yesterday, I covered their new data validation flag and Admin tools. Today, I am discussing the rest of the release including new alerts, list sharing, and SNAP (Sales Navigator Application Partner) enhancements.
Sales Navigator added two more Saved Account Alerts: headcount growth and Senior Leadership Hires.
When sharing lists, owners may now designate them
view-only or editable.
“List collaborators with edit permissions will be able to add, remove, and comment on Leads or Accounts within a Shared List, and alerts will be sent to collaborators when Leads or Accounts have been added to or removed from a Custom List or when there are new comments on a Custom List.”
LinkedIn Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn
LinkedIn added SNAP integrations for Tableau and Power BI. They also extended SNAP integrations to Oracle Sales Cloud Lead and Account pages (Contacts were already supported).
Teams will benefit from improved TeamLink recommendations on “who to reach out to first for a warm introduction, using connection strength scores based on a members’ interactions.”
PointDrive Roadmap
Finally, LinkedIn teased an improved PointDrive service that will be “deeply integrated” into Sales Navigator beginning in early 2020. PointDrive provides sales reps with a custom landing page for delivering multi-media content with descriptions and company branding. The multi-quarter release will streamline access to PointDrive functionality. However, PointDrive will no longer support shared content.
SalesLoft Leveraging Data Validation Flag
SalesLoft is one of the first vendors to take advantage of the Sales Navigator Data Validation process. SalesLoft uses the Data Validation flag to notify the SDR or sales rep. SalesLoft automation rules can then trigger workflows based on whether a prospect on the decision-making committee has left or whether an admin or champion at a customer has changed jobs. These insights help reps evaluate whether an opportunity may be in jeopardy, the likelihood of closing this quarter pushed out, or they need to move quickly to identify new buying committee members or champions.
“Customers leveraging LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Data Validation are now able to use real-time insights to influence critical
workflows when their prospects and customers change jobs,” said SalesLoft CMO
Sydney Sloan. “Ultimately, this saves time spent reviewing customer data
manually, and it will increase the quality of all opportunities as salespeople
progress through the buying cycle.”
LinkedIn Sales Solutions has begun rolling out its Q4 release to Sales Navigator subscribers. New features include a data validation flag for contacts, improved geographic filters, a funding events spotlight, two new alerts, additional SNAP partners, and extended administrative tools.
A new data validation flag warns users that a contact
is no longer at a company listed in the CRM. If the company differs
between LinkedIn and the CRM a “Not at Company Flag” is written to the CRM.
The flag is both displayed to the rep and available as a trigger for contact
clean-ups and removal from marketing campaigns.
LinkedIn added three new reports which leverage the
field:
Opportunities at Risk: Proactively identifying when a buyer has left an open opportunity
Past Customers at New Companies: Identifying contacts at current customers (potential champions) who have joined new companies
Out-of-Date Contacts: All potential contacts that need to be updated
LinkedIn is hemmed in by commitments to its members’
data privacy. Thus, it cannot append or sync full contact information
like other vendors. The data validation flag simply alerts sales and
marketing that a contact is no longer at a firm. It does not upload
information on the member’s new company to the CRM.
The Data Validation flag is available to Enterprise
Edition licensors with CRM sync enabled in Salesforce and MS Dynamics 365.
LinkedIn redesigned its usage reporting with
time-series charts for messaging effectiveness. Expanded analytics
include InMail messages sent, InMail acceptance rates, messages sent, and total
unique connections. The report also includes the top five reps for each
category.
Other new administrative tools include
Coaching/training levels
Chart filtering by custom date ranges, groups, and users.
Data Updates – Saved Leads and Accounts
LinkedIn has integrated Bing location data, making
prospecting more precise. The service covers 2.4 million more cities and
over 2,000 new states/provinces.
Users may also filter by a new funding events spotlight. The new filter “brings these updates to the top of your search results within the Spotlight tab, giving you a helpful cue that it’s the right time to check-in,” blogged Doug Camplejohn, VP of Product Management, LinkedIn Sales Solutions.
Elevate provides a curated feed of content to company employees for social media distribution. The curated content is now fed into Sales Navigator for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook sharing
LinkedIn announced its Q3 Sales Navigator enhancements which are currently being rolled out to clients. Key features include LinkedIn Elevate integration, improved save a lead functionality, InMail active status, list cloning, and improved customer support.
Elevate is a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions offering which supports employee content promotion. A curator provides thought leadership pieces, press releases, and open web content to corporate employees. About one-third of Elevate content recipients also have Sales Navigator seats. Most clients are midsize or enterprise customers.
Elevate
is sold based on the number of seats with volume discounts. Enterprise
licensing is also available based on the company size.
The
Elevate integration delivers curated content to the Navigator home page.
Content may be shared to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Sales reps
may add personal comments with the share.
Elevate
provides metrics to help firms track increased site traffic, leads, and new
hires.
LinkedIn
Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn noted that the Elevate
integration resulted in a dramatic increase in both the percentage of sales
reps sharing content and overall content being shared.
According
to LinkedIn, content that is shared by employees has double the engagement rate
of non-shared content. Furthermore, social enterprises are “58% more
likely to attract top talent and 20% more likely to retain them.”
Social
sales reps are also more successful. LinkedIn stated that social sales
reps that regularly share content are 45% more likely to exceed quota.
“Marketers will still be able to control what content they’d like to see employees post. But now Sales Navigator users will have an even easier time boosting their brand and the brand of their company.”
Doug Camplejohn, VP of Product Management, LinkedIn Sales Solutions
LinkedIn introduced custom list sharing in Q1 and extended the functionality this quarter. Previously, lists were shared but ownership resided with the list creator. Shared lists may now be copied, providing the copier with full list management capabilities. Other new list management features include shared list removal and bulk saving of all leads or accounts from a shared list.
LinkedIn
also improved the lead connection flow. Now, when a connection is
proffered through Sales Navigator, users can check a box to add the contact to
their leads list, even if the connection is ignored or declined. This
allows the rep to track the contact.
Sales
Navigator redesigned its Help Center with “more intuitive navigation,” easier
search, article tagging, and tables of content. Click to chat allows
users to chat with support reps. The Sales Navigator community has been
extended to seven European languages. The Learning Center has been
rebranded the Customer Hub.
LinkedIn
has been knocked in the past for its lack of subscription service support.
Improved training and support tools along with chat indicate that the
firm now realizes that enterprise subscription services require a higher level
of customer support than free or consumer services.
Sales Navigator included a set of small enhancements including expanded list sorting options, an increase in list size to 2,500 leads or accounts, and an active status indicator from InMail. A user is only shown active if they permit it in their privacy settings.
Last month, LinkedIn Sales Navigator rolled out a set of alert enhancements as part of its Q2 release. Alerts are intended to deliver “timely, relevant, and actionable insights” which allow reps to shift from researching to selling and building relationships. As with other recommendation engines, Navigator alerts call out the “Next Best Action” with an “instant snapshot of the things that matter most about your prospects along with recommended action step for each.”
“At
LinkedIn, our goal is to arm you with timely, relevant, and actionable insights
so you spend less time sifting through information and more time focused on
what matters: building relationships and closing deals,” stated the firm in its
release notes. “Alerts on the homepage gives you all the functionality of
Newsfeed in a compressed, easy-to-use dashboard. Don’t worry about missing
anything — all of your favorite items from the old Newsfeed live on as alerts.
We’ve also added some new types of alerts as well!”
New
alerts are highlighted in blue at the top of the feed. Each alert
contains an action step (e.g. Message, See Article, See List). Alerts may
be filtered by type and individual alerts may be deleted or turned off.
Three
new alert categories were released
An account has had a funding event
A colleague shared a custom list
Pending actions in Sales Navigator Coach
LinkedIn
recommends that Navigator Alerts be reviewed once or twice a day.
“Every sales professional faces the challenge of how to best spend their time, maximize their productivity and close more deals,” said Camplejohn. “That’s why Sales Navigator is now centered around alerts — making it easier for salespeople to identify important changes and prioritize the best next steps to take.”
The new LinkedIn Sales Navigator Coach encourages reps to explore Sales Navigator. It is located on the redesigned home page.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator has been rolling out its Q2 release to customers over the past few weeks. The new functionality includes a redesigned home page, improved keyword searching, custom list enhancements, and additional Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) connectors.
The homepage emphasizes alerts and the new Sales Navigator Coach. The Coach is a training tool with a gamification feature – a progress meter which shows your level of product mastery, from Beginner to Expert. Reps are shown three recommended actions. They can either try a recommended action or watch a short training video.
All of the Coach features, with the exception of PointDrive, may be executed from a mobile device.
“This is just the beginning for Sales Navigator Coach, and we can’t wait to bring more personalized education to all our Sales Navigator customers. We’re also excited to bring Sales Navigator Coach to usage reporting later this year.”
Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn.
Several features on the homepage have been moved. The SSI (Social Selling Index) tool is available via a drop down and the newsfeed has been replaced with an alert feed.
Note: This is part one of my profile of the Q2 2019 release. Tomorrow I will be covering enhanced alert functionality.
The Drift SNAP partnership provides LinkedIn intelligence to sales reps as they chat with prospects on the Drift platform.
As part of their Q1 2019 release, LinkedIn rolled out a set of new SNAP (Sales Navigator Application Platform) partners including Altify, Drift, G2 Crowd, and Mixmax.
The Drift partnership allows sales reps to “continue website conversations” after a prospect drops off of a Drift chat: “sometimes people leave your conversation abruptly – it happens. But as an SDR, that’s a potential meeting walking out the door. So what do you do? Well now you can send a connection request or follow up message with InMail right from within Drift.”
The Drift
integration also displays contact and company intelligence including shared
connections while a sales rep is chatting with a prospect visiting her website
(see image on right).
“Gone are
the days of toggling back and forth between LinkedIn and your ongoing sales
conversation,” said Drift Product Marketer Daniel Murphy. “Say goodbye to
awkward lags in conversations. Prospects will never again have to wait for a
response while SDRs search LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Salesforce to determine
if they’re a good fit. Now they can research a prospect’s company, see
mutual connections, and grab other insights and conversation starters – all in
real-time.”
G2 Crowd
gathers intent data from 24 million technology searchers. Intent data is
collected from G2 profile and category views along with competitor comparisons.
Sales reps are notified when followed accounts are researching on G2
based on contact connections, sales preferences, search histories, and profile
interactions.
“People don’t buy today as a result of cold calls and emails. The power is in the hands of the buyers doing more research than ever before. As sales teams, we need to focus on accepting the modern buyer journey and connecting to the right buyers at the right time. We’ve always been aligned with LinkedIn on this vision, and this integration helps us make it a reality.”
G2 Chief Revenue Officer Matt Gorniak
The Mixmax
SNAP integration supports InMail and Connection requests and profile views from
Gmail.
Altify’s
org-chart software now displays insights and helps users identify key buyers
across an organization.
Sales Navigator insights and functionality are displayed alongside Altify’s Relationship Maps.
LinkedIn
also noted that it will be available within the Salesforce Winter 2019 release.
Salesforce admins can install the application from the Lightning Setup
Console instead of the AppExchange.
One problem that
has long dogged sales intelligence vendors is ongoing training and product
exploration. To encourage exploration, Sales Navigator added a coaching
feature to extend product knowledge. Sales Navigator Coach is a new
dashboard that “suggests actions for customers to take and links to short
learning videos.” Actions are associated with core workflows. The
videos run thirty to forty seconds.
The new Sales Navigator Coach provides short videos and tips on key features.
Finally, GDPR opt-outs are being added to PointDrive presentations. PointDrive recipients will be able to revoke viewer tracking permission, effectively anonymizing their viewing data from sales reps.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator rolled out Custom Account and Lead Lists in Q4 and added List Sharing in Q1 2019.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator began rolling out its Q1 release two weeks ago. New features include custom list sharing, Sales Navigator Coach, list building exclusion filters, new Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) integrations, and an expanded set of technologies selects.
LinkedIn
Sales Solutions VP of Product Management Doug Camplejohn was most excited about
custom list sharing, noting that that “selling is a team sport.”
Team members
can share lists with other users on their contracts, share comments, and sort
by “Last Updated” date so sales reps can stay apprised of updated leads and
accounts. Sales Navigator notifies users when lists are being shared with
them. However, lists reside only in LinkedIn and are not downloadable.
“Now we’re taking lists up a notch by adding the ability for you to share these custom lists between your team members and have comments shared as well. Sales Development Reps can collaborate with Account Executives on their team and share progress on breaking into new accounts. Relationship Managers and Customer Success Representatives can collaborate around the health of their named accounts throughout the customer lifecycle. And Marketing can easily share lists from events with the teams following up on new leads. The possibilities are endless.”
Doug Camplejohn, VP of Product Management, LinkedIn Sales Solutions
LinkedIn has
long described Sales Navigator as a system of engagement that worked with
systems of record (CRM) and communication (email, social). Much of the
initial focus was on lead messaging and SNAP connectors, but the firm is now
placing a greater focus on teamwork. Shared lead lists are “the first
step in a broader strategy to enable collaboration across your selling teams,”
wrote the firm.
Lead lists were released in Q4 and quickly employed by users. 250,000 custom lists were created within the first six weeks of availability. A quarter of active users created custom lists post-launch.
Users can
also save Leads and Accounts to custom Lists from partner applications via
their broad set of SNAP partners.
LinkedIn
stated that “sharing increases visibility of and fosters collaboration for your
pipeline.” Custom lists help teams organize and plan for key leads and
accounts within lists: “Sharing allows them to collaborate with others as they
research, contact, and advance relationships with those Leads and Accounts.”
Users can
track team outreach to prospects, share leads with managers to discuss
strategy, segment by source, and customize follow-on activities.
Other screening enhancements include the expansion of technology selects to 30,000 technologies and the addition of seven categories of exclusion criteria for leads: company, geography, seniority level, title, function, industry and school. Account exclusions are provided for geography and industry. Camplejohn noted that exclusion filters were one of the top user requests.
Part II covers SNAP partners, SFDC Lightning Setup Console integration, and the new Sales Navigator Coach
At last month’s Growth Acceleration Summit, ZoomInfo previewed a lead scoring feature which will be available later this year. Users will build models for ideal customers and the associated scores will be displayed across the product including in lists, profiles, and enriched web leads. The goal is to “customize ZoomInfo to each and every one of you,” said CMO Hila Nir at her Product Roadmap presentation. Customization also includes routing and territory management. ZoomInfo will continue to offer tools which foster sales and marketing alignment and look to “take noise out of sales and marketing organizations.”
The company hinted at email templating and territory dashboards, but did not provide details on these future product concepts beyond conference screenshots. Email templating is most commonly found in Sales Engagement services such as Outreach, SalesLoft, and ConnectLeader.
Zoominfo Scoring Models will be available later this year (or early 2019). This is a mockup shown at their user conference.
While Zoominfo has not released financials, Garlick indicated that the firm had a strong 2017 marked by “really fast revenue growth.” The firm also added over 100 staff and 2,000 customers in the past year. He attributed the firm’s success to hard work, teamwork, sweat, and tears.
ZoomInfo pricing is a hybrid between number of seats and number of records licensed. While the firm used to be transparent about its pricing, they stopped posting such details a few years ago.
Priority Engine account profiles combine TechTarget intent signals with HG Data platform insights and DiscoverOrg executives
Technology media and intent purchasing firm TechTarget announced a set of enhancements to its Priority Engine service “that vastly improve ABM performance, increase sales productivity and maximize demand generation success for enterprise B2B technology organizations.” Amongst the enhancements are improvements to the user experience, a new Salesforce widget, persistent URLs, list assignments, user roles, and improved topic filtering.
Priority Engine combines executive intelligence with purchaser specific demand signals spanning 10,000 IT Topics across its technology research sites. The service marries HG Data technology intent intelligence with DiscoverOrg contacts, Owler firmographics, and TechTarget intent data and prospects. Priority Engine assists sales and marketing professionals by “expanding access to total buying teams at active accounts and showcasing rich purchase details such as installed technologies, vendor shortlists and specific, relevant topical interests.”
Priority Engine is GDPR compliant across its 18 million professional profiles who have opted into TechTarget partner marketing programs. Furthermore, because TechTarget has opted-in user profiles, it is able to provide intent data at the individual level. This contrasts with other intent networks which gather anonymous intent information at the company level.
User Experience enhancements include a left-side navigation menu and search bar. The navigation bar provides account list management, export functionality, and export monitoring. The search bar provides a type-ahead company list to expedite account searching.
Account profiles contain Owler headquarters information along with a business description, logo, sizing data, and social media links. Also displayed in the business summary are an account interest gauge, Buying Team counts, Vendor Interests based upon downloaded vendor content, and Top Interests. The account Interest gauge evaluates site readership (number of readers, type of content, scope of vendor interest) to determine whether the prospect is Evaluating Vendors, Ramping Up, or Not Active in the segment.
TechTarget also offers a set of intent signals based upon readership patterns: Widespread, Sustained, Late Stage, Stakeholder, and Cross-Vendor. According to the firm, “the more blue dots that are lit up, the more focus sales should commit to the account.”
TechTarget Priority Engine Intent Signals
At the top of each Account Profile are the licensed segments. Sales reps can click on any of the segments and the profile is filtered for the segment across TechTarget Buying Teams, DiscoverOrg Contacts, HG Data products, and the business summary. TechTarget offers 300 technology market segments with over 200 available for North America.
Priority Engine users are now assigned to one of three roles: Administrators, List Builders, and Read-Only. Administrators have full system functionality along with account management responsibilities. Both Administrators and List Builders can build and assign account lists to other users. Only Administrators can export records. Priority Engine suggests that Administrators are usually marketers and that List Builders are typically Sales Managers. View only users would be inside sales reps that would be working account lists but not building them.
Account List Building was redesigned with reorganized and expanded filters displayed on a single page. Filters have been separated into common and advanced screens with common filters spanning firmographic, technographic, and intent variables. Advanced filters include Last Touch, Purchase Signals, and HQ location. Within any filter, users may select Includes Any (OR), Include All (AND), and Exclude (NOT) Boolean logic.
Users can also rank results by market segment. Most Priority Engine subscribers have between one and five licensed segments. Except for the largest technology firms that operate in many segments, the firm contends that focusing on key segments provides better results than including adjacent technology segments.
Previously defined lists are available for both suppression or sub-list targeting.
TechTarget Priority Engine List Building
Lists are ranked according to intent signal strength for a market segment. Clicking on a different segment results in a different set of priorities.
The new Ranked Accounts list view includes the navigation bar along with company logos, the top areas of interest, and the company most influencing the account over the past 90 days (based upon TechTarget content viewing patterns). Clicking on any account takes the user to the account profile.
The persistent URL provides a direct link between sales and marketing platforms to the Priority Engine Dashboard. “The sales-to-marketing handoff can be one of the most challenging aspects of implementing modern marketing strategies, especially ABM. To properly inform and empower salespeople, you must be able to pass along valuable account-level insights with each lead — and few systems or workflows support this,” said Michael Cotoia, CEO, TechTarget. “Priority Engine addresses this challenge by providing a persistent and portable account link that can be embedded within any existing sales or marketing systems.”
Please continue to Part II which discusses the Priority Engine Salesforce connector, product repackaging, and market momentum.
