Marketers Discussing Success with Intent Signals After Unsuccessful ZoomInfo Experience
Any marketers having success using intent signals? We had a subscription to ZoomInfo and it proved unsuccessful.
Any marketers having success using intent signals? We had a subscription to ZoomInfo and it proved unsuccessful.
Got this feedback from every source I read in the past few weeks, except from intent signals vendors.
There's actually a RevGenius webinar tomorrow that tackles this. I saw on Lusha's LI that they are going to address signals like a job change, a hiring surge, funding investments, ect. on it.
Actually liked Unify for this
the goal is to be very specific on what intent signals that you would need rather than the tool
rickw just trying to understand, what kind of intents are you most interested in. is it some one in your TAM showing interest with your competitors or bunch of signals in one place scored for you?
intent signals are clues that a company—or sometimes a specific person—is actively researching something related to what you sell. The most basic intent signals are events like winning a grant or getting funding. Companies like ZoomInfo and now Hubspot allow you to perform marketing/sales actions based on those intent signals
rickw mainly that you can’t really rely on “buying intents” from platforms. Understanding how they track “buying intent” gives an idea of why. For example, they track that someone at a company is searching on the internet for “CRM”. Does it mean that the company is looking to buy a CRM or that one or two employees from their massive 5k headcounts did a random CRM search on a Wednesday morning? Winning a grant or getting funded is an event, not a buying intent. It’s not “because I got funded” that I am actively looking for a solution. But “when someone got funded, 70% of similar companies are buying X, Y, and Z solutions”. Buying intents are extremely hard to get. Events and probability of looking for a solution are easier, but they’re still probabilities.
So it's safe to say that you don't think they really add much value?
So far, I have not had success with them, and I have not met anyone who has either. I am struggling to say a definitive “they don’t add value” because I might be using them wrong 😄 To answer your initial question: “Any marketers having success using intent signals?” -> Not that I know of 😄
the 3rd party intent data problem is basically a lemons market at this point. every vendor says their signals are proprietary but most are tracking the same content syndication networks. the more useful play we've found is building your own intent layer from 1st party behavior — what someone actually does on your site or in your product tells you way more than "someone at Company X googled CRM"
We found that intent signals by themselves weren't enough. That's why we're building DataviCloud LEO to combine multiple buying signals (intent, hiring, technology changes, engagement, etc.) to improve lead prioritization and reduce false positives.
I've had better results treating signals as reasons to investigate, not reasons to send. Pick one signal tied to a real change in how the account would buy, compare signaled accounts with a matched unsignaled group, and keep it only if it improves meetings or pipeline ~ not clicks. Funding alone is usually too broad; funding plus a role hire, tech change, or first-party behavior is much more useful. What outcome were you expecting ZoomInfo intent to improve?
rickw one of the signals that work really well, if you're motion is on Linkedin, is if you can track which ICP prospects your competitors sales teams are engaging These are companies that are evaluating tools like yours