True Influence InsightBASE Simplifies Use of B2B Intent Data

Intent data is one of hottest topics in marketing today – see, for example, Oracle’s recent purchase of AddThis. But while the promise of intent data is irresistible – “reach prospects with demonstrated interest in your product!” – the reality has been less appealing. Even setting aside issues of accuracy and coverage, there are problems with both advertising and email, the two primary applications for intent data.  Advertising can reach large numbers of people but just a tiny fraction will click on an ad and a tiny fraction of those will provide contact information. Intent-based email lists are obviously contactable but volumes are often quite low.

B2B lead generation vendor True Influence  today announced a new product to help fill these gaps. InsightBASE monitors intent signals – in the form of visits to Web pages with relevant content – and notifies clients when there is surge in activity for companies on a target list. The notifications can be loaded as lists into a marketing automation or CRM system, where they can trigger advertising, sales calls, or other actions. Clients also receive contact names, email addresses, and phone numbers at those companies. The contact data is drawn from True Influence’s master list of 30 million business contacts, which are continuously verified to ensure deliverability. Although the names are not tied directly to Web visits, they are selected by job title and level, so they should be appropriate. Visits are tied to companies based on the user’s Web domain – a typical approach although one that can’t misses many sessions from home offices and mobile devices.

So, what distinguishes InsightBASE from other intent-based products? The main difference is that users get the company and contact lists. This contrasts with many intent-based advertising vendors, who serve ads to qualified audiences but don't tell clients exactly whom they’re reaching.  InsightBASE also differs from predictive marketing vendors who use intent data as inputs to their scoring systems and in some cases also provide lead lists: although predictive models almost surely do a better job of isolating the best prospects than InsightBASE’s simple profiles plus surge tracking, the models add considerable cost and complexity.

True Influence also says its partner network gives it access to more intent data than anyone else.  That's possible but I haven’t done the research to confirm it. Nor is it necessarily important, since activities on some Web sites are less significant than others. The value of data from True Influence, or anyone else, can only be resolved through tests, which will probably give different results for different purposes.

The mechanics of InsightBASE are straightforward. Users set up a campaign by either uploading their own list of target companies or making selections from True Influence’s own database of more than three million Web domains. Selections can use standard filters such as industry, location, number of employees, or domain type (such as .edu or .gov). They can also be based on use of specific technologies, allowing marketers to target competitors’ customers. The next step is to specify keywords to use as indicators of intent. True Influence has its own list of about 5,000 keywords and uses them to do its own classification of Web pages.  It can add new keywords as needed.  Finally, InsightBASE runs a report showing how many of the target companies visited pages with the specified keywords over the past thirty days, and whether their activity increased, decreased, or remained the same compared with previous periods. This gives a good indication of the potential volume of future activity.

Once the campaign begins, users can extract lists of domains that exceeded a specified activity level or had change in activity. They can export the domains, contacts associated with the domains, or both. InsightBASE has standard integrations with Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, and Salesforce.com. Once the lists are loaded into those systems, they can be used for email, advertising, sales calls, or other purposes.

Pricing for InsightBASE is based on the number of domains monitored, starting at $2,500 per month for 2,500 domains with discounts for higher volumes. There are no separate fees for additional campaigns, contact names, or supporting services. True Influence reports that its initial tests showed companies with activity surges responded to promotion emails at four times the rate of non-targeted companies.