When it comes to intent data providers, the information you receive can deliver an incredible ROI and lead to a huge improvement in your closing rates. But with so many vendors in the market, each with different solutions, making the best choice for your company can be a challenge. So how do you go about […]
When it comes to intent data providers, the information you receive can deliver an incredible ROI and lead to a huge improvement in your closing rates. But with so many vendors in the market, each with different solutions, making the best choice for your company can be a challenge. So how do you go about purchasing intent data the smart way?
Intent data, in a nutshell
Intent data is derived from intent signals, which are based on internet activity including searches that prospects conduct when they are (hopefully) looking for a new product. (For intent data, “prospects” refers to organizations at a certain location and not individual employees, because the signals are based on a company’s IP address.)
Once you identify companies with a high intent level, you can use a B2B database to attach potential contact details to the intent signals, and then categorize and prioritize them through an intent classification method. Once that’s done, an intent-based marketing strategy can help nurture buying signals and get prospects ready for sales outreach as part of an intent-based targeting process.
However, not all intent data is equal. So, when shopping for a search intent data vendor, you should know how to find the data that works best for you and isn’t just riding the hype. We’ve narrowed down the 5 most important aspects to consider before purchasing intent data.
1. Quality
“Quality” is a broad term that covers several characteristics of the actual data. Quality includes:
Freshness
It’s vital to use search data that is updated regularly. If the information is half a year old, then there’s a good chance that the prospect has made a purchase already, or is down to a few finalists, meaning that your outreach might be too late for consideration. However, the platform should also allow you to look at the data over time so that you can identify patterns.
Topics
There are many different topics for which you can track intent. A high-quality vendor will supply a wide range of choices that allow you to look for intent related to something very specific. This is particularly valuable if you have a niche and/or new product that requires a prospect to use certain search terms.
Geographical area
Many intent data providers focus on the US, often because privacy regulations are not as stiff there. Others will deliver EU contacts but don’t strictly comply with tough European data rules (see below).
2. Enriched data capabilities
Search intent data is only one part of a very large puzzle. Because it only provides you with the company name of the searcher, you’ll need a lot more information to get in touch with the person who has decision-making power.
Data enrichment companies can give you these pieces by adding lots of information to an intent data report. This can include (depending on the vendor):
- Employee names and their job titles
- Direct phone numbers/emails
- A profile of the company including revenue, number of employees, and technologies being used (technographics)
Anytime you’re looking at an intent data provider, consider if you can use them to enrich your data as well.
3. Compliance
Institutions around the globe have created privacy regulations and standards that protect personal information, including laws like GDPR and CCPA and recommended security standards like SOC2. These data privacy regulations are an issue for any company that collects information about people – which you are doing the moment you get someone’s contact information in order to sell something to them. If you aren’t in compliance with laws like GDPR or CCPA, you can get into serious legal trouble, even if you purchased the data from a third party. That’s why the safest move is to only work with vendors that you know comply with the latest regulations in data privacy.
4. Integrations
Any intent data service will need to integrate with your systems where you store prospect and customer information, in order to connect that valuable data with your workflows. You should choose a provider that not only fits your database setup today but can also accommodate future systems–and that means lots of integration options.
5. Platform functions
Having quality intent data is great, but then what? If you are dealing with hundreds of contacts, keeping everything in order can become overwhelming. To resolve this issue, make sure that your intent data supplier works within an effective sales intelligence tool that also offers prospecting. This greatly simplifies the ways you can search for relevant contacts at companies that show high intent. Functions should include a dashboard with a clean interface and the ability to export records to databases that your organization currently uses.
Why Lusha is the best Intent Data Solution?
As a leading sales intelligence platform, Lusha meets (and exceeds) the above factors. Let’s take a closer look at Lusha’s technology and approach to intent data to illustrate why Lusha is the choice for more than a million salespeople.
Quality
Lusha partners with Bombora to provide industry-leading intent data. This data is collected through a consent-based data cooperativebased on technologies such as machine learning, identity mapping, and usage analysis to enable highly relevant and specific contact lists. But what’s more is that Lusha makes the most out of these connections through conistent updates. If a company in Lusha’s database has recently started looking into something relevant to your product, you’ll find out about it. Plus, Lusha sources 12,000 intent topics so that you can identify very specific kinds of intent.
Data Enrichment
Lusha provides a full suite of sales intelligence functions including data enrichment that, when combined with intent data, can power up your prospecting efforts. It supports a wide range of enrichment categories that create a full picture of prospects.
Compliance
Lusha is a compliance leader. It’s fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA, meets SOC2 standards, and is ISO 27701 certified by a third party. It also partners with Bombora for intent data, which bases its data supply on B2B companies that consent to its collection methods.
Integrations
Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, Zoho, and Zapier are just a few of Lusha’s native integrations. And if you use a tool that’s not listed under Lusha’s integrations, then you can connect with Lusha using an API.
Platform
The Lusha platform features a filter-based prospecting tool that generates up to 1,000 contacts with every search while organizing all of that data through an intuitive dashboard. With one click, you can save qualified prospects or export lists.
Key takeaways
- Intent data provides details about the online product searches that a company does; this can indicate that they are shopping for the type of product that you are selling.
- Before buying intent data, you should take a look at a vendor’s data quality, enrichment services, compliance level, integrations, and general platform functions.
- Lusha leads the market with direct, up-to-date intent data that is supported by other features like enrichment, compliance, a wide range of integrations, and a powerful platform.
