Intent Data: What It Is and Top Intent Data Providers in 2023
Before the days of digital, a big part of the sales process would be to make calls to companies, hoping the receptionist would put us through to the right person the first time, and crossing fingers that the decision-maker would consider our product next time.
We would make a list of companies to call and, sitting there with our lists, we would make those calls with a lot of guesswork and hopeful thinking.
Fast-forward to 2021… Although the concept is still fairly new, across all industries only 28% of marketers have an intent data strategy in place today, yet 70% of technology vendors use buyer intent data for prospecting. That’s because it significantly increases sales with less effort. For example, Workfront saw a 90% increase in its sales pipeline year on year, and Hotel Engine started scheduling 3X the number of demos. (source)
In this article, we’ll explore what intent data is and how it is collected, and provide a practical field guide for navigating the intent data provider landscape and who to consider in 2021.
What is intent data?
Intent data providers use technology with algorithms that capture the online search behavior of people as individuals or representing companies. This data provides various signals that, when put together, create a lead score of intention to buy.
While digital marketing and sales teams got smart and learned to build campaigns around target personas, they needed to spend large amounts of time and effort nurturing those leads, sometimes all the way from the point of awareness, down through the sales funnel until just a very tiny percentage would actually get as far as making a purchase.
But now intent data provides timing, context, and relevance to engage prospects and thereby increase sales.
Some of the most typical information that intent data provides:
Who they are, what they do, and what company they are from.
What technology they use.
What keywords they are using in searches.
What websites they visit and their journey on those websites.
Why use intent data?
Buyer intent data, still in its early phases, has already shifted the paradigm of the marketing strategy and sales pipeline:
It provides hyper-targeted prospects who are searching for the solutions you offer. Instead of slowly moving prospects through the marketing funnel, it closes the gap a lot faster because you meet them at the point where they are busy conducting their research just before purchasing.
Prospects are more likely to engage with you at the right time because they are searching for the type of services or products you offer.
It increases email open rates.
It provides better content because it’s more relevant and has more impact.
Who uses intent data?
Intent data can be used across departments, from sales to marketing teams and even operations.
Buyer intent data can be used by any industry, but it tends to be used more by B2B companies of higher-end products and services. Currently, it is used the most by software developers.
How do you collect intent data?
Intent data is really any information about a person displaying some kind of intention to buy. The intensity of the intention can vary but the more direct and specific, the better.
Intent data is anything that shows that a person is getting ready to purchase. What do decision-makers do before they make a buying decision? This forms part of intent data.
Here are ideas for monitoring key buying indicators and types of intent data:
Words used in searches
Cookies
Job postings
White paper downloads
Use cases consumption
Funding events
News articles
Blogs
Case studies
Social media activity
Product reviews
Product comparisons
Message boards
You might find it a lot easier utilizing a marketing automation platform that includes intent data search capabilities, or a platform that acts solely as an intent data provider. But choose carefully—the best one for your particular needs should depend on your privacy philosophy, goals, and resources.
Tip! Depending on your offerings and target accounts audience, some of the following providers only offer data from certain locations which may not cover yours.
Top intent data providers
When doing your due diligence, bear in mind that you want to understand how and where the data is collected from and how recent the data source is. The easiest way to test the capabilities of a given dataset is to test it; ask the provider for a sample to see what their data can do for you.
Let’s dive in.
CustomData.ai
CustomData.ai provides companies with intent-driven leads of both opportunities and decision-makers that are first identified by AI, scraped off the internet, and then hand-verified by a human to ensure accuracy and relevancy. All projects are done from scratch and tailor-made for each client.
These verified leads can be integrated directly into your CRM.
The vendor offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Bombora
Bombora uses a co-op ecosystem to provide high quality, consent-based B2B intent data; it measures your prospects’ digital journey across more than 4,000 premium B2B websites so that you can see exactly what your prospects are in the market for.
Unlike many other intent data providers, theirs is not siphoned or scraped; instead it is directly collected with consent so that your business can accurately detect when an organization is actively researching a topic and ready to make a purchase.
Bombora’s data is organized via NLP into an 8,000+, industry-standard, topic taxonomy.
Leads integrate with all the major systems you already use.
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo provides intent data in real time; you can choose to receive intent signals on a weekly or daily basis, or as they happen.
On the platform, you can define and build a custom keyword universe relevant to your business. ZoomInfo captures and analyzes web traffic from various intent data sources and then, using NLP, determines specific topic content consumption and maps this online activity at IP addresses to companies. When the company performs an above-average amount of online research, an intent signal is raised for the topics subscribed to that company.
Terminus
Terminus provides a multiple B2B marketing automation platform for sales and marketing teams to generate sales that is based on intent data from Bombora (see above). Use the platform for:
Retargeting
Display advertising
LinkedIn sponsored content
Email signature marketing
Web personalization
Account based chat
The platform enables you to:
Target the right people through firmographic, intent, engagement, psychographic, and relationship data.
Engage with those targets across every channel and automatically alert your sales team to engagements, and deliver better predictions that accelerate opportunities.
Measure and improve by analyzing the numbers.
Datarade
Datarade connects businesses to the right contact people from verified providers. Instead of doing your own research about which data provider to use, simply conduct a free search on this platform that lists more than 2,000 worldwide providers with 210 different categories.
Tell them what you need, and receive a shortlist of the most suitable providers so that you can compare what each offers to make the best choice.
You can also browse all the categories on the site if you’re not sure where to start. This service is free of charge, but if you should select one of the providers on their list, they receive a small commission.
Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder provides the leads (whether they are companies or people) that visit your website and shows you how they found your website and what they were interested in on your site.
The tool identifies website visitors, reveals behavior, and eliminates all useless data so that you only get quality leads.
This is how it works:
First, install the Leadfeeder Tracker script on your website.
Leadfeeder then identifies companies that have visited your website.
The information is enriched with employee contact details so you can contact them directly via CRM or email.
Integrates with all major marketing software.
Visitor Queue
Visitor Queue provides the data of all those who visit your website, who probably would have never returned and would have been a permanently lost opportunity.
This service gives you the name, contact details, and user data of the companies that visit so that you can get in touch with key decision-makers (it also provides their role and department), of the businesses that came knocking.
Simply add the tracking script to your website header and start collecting data.
Integrates with all relevant platforms your business already uses.
IntentData.io
IntentData provides contact-level buyer intent data from across the internet (third party intent data) to give you specific company leads that include contact information and detailed context on what action was taken, as well as where, and which people in the company might be involved. Details provided include real prospect data such as name, email address, phone, social handles, rich firmographic detail, the specific actions they took, and so on.
This is different from many of the other intent data vendors that only provide account-level behavioral intent data that often involves guesswork and targeting the wrong people at the wrong time—the kind of data which only tells you that “a person” at “such and such company” may have taken some action that may or may not be relevant to your offerings. They may even take a guess and send through a couple of names you can use for targeting but which may miss the mark entirely, and cost you an opportunity.
IntentData removes the guesswork and instead provides contact-level data, ensuring quality leads.
Leadcamp
Give your leads to Leadcamp, and it will analyze them on multiple channels and tell you where to focus. For example, the software will show you on which channels the lead is most engaged so you can target them there.
AI will also make recommendations and spot opportunities you can take.
Data is sent straight to the marketing tools of your choice, such as your CRM.
G2
G2 is an interesting one. G2.com is a site where you can go to choose software based on more than 1,415,000 reviews of online tools.
Sell.g2.com, by the same company, is where you can create your own software profile and, amongst other marketing related products and services, discover other companies who are searching for the type of solutions you offer. The data is based on buyer intent data from G2, where people are looking for reviews of software they are interested in buying.
It’s free to get started by setting up your profile and then capturing leads, and the plans grow as your business grows.
6sense
6sense is an account based marketing (ABM) engagement platform for the entire go-to-market team and ABM campaigns.
It merges sales, marketing, and operations teams by identifying the best accounts and contacts and the best time to get in touch with the topics they care about most.
The platform offers intent, insights, and AI-driven predictive capabilities so that your company can create personalized and meaningful experiences at every stage of the customer journey, be that the cross-sell, or the upsell, or renewal.
It automatically connects 1st and 3rd party intent activity across devices, channels, and anonymous users searching for the type of solutions you provide.
Grata
The Grata search engine allows you to capture hard-to-find companies and look-alike organizations that your competitors miss, and identify executives and directly integrate their verified email addresses to your CRM.
Search full websites to determine strategic fit and locate companies based on what they do, how they’re positioned, and who they target.
Conduct market analysis, assign scoring, and turn search into strategy.
Pathmonk
If you’d like to improve your website because you don’t believe it’s performing optimally, Pathmonk furnishes you with the data to understand what’s missing and how to improve it by analyzing user journey on your website and then providing improvement suggestions and growth opportunities.
Benefits to using the platform include:
Get your visitors' attention before they click away to another site.
Intent rich moments can be used to shape visitors' decisions while on your site.
Pathmonk Pro can multiply your website revenue by three times.
LeadSift
With LeadSift, you get daily unlimited leads by defining your search parameters and the tool then mines the internet to unearth the people and companies either talking to your competitors or who have an intent to buy. As such, you will know when decision-makers are in the right place to be reached.
LeadSift uses both contact and account intent (while its competitors tend to use one or the other), custom search terms, public web scraping, and are legally compliant (GDPR) while at it.
Integrates with your current software.
Demandbase
The Demandbase Engagement Platform is powered by a combination of AI, proprietary data, and integrations with the systems you already use, to provide the right foundation to improve your ABX results.
The platform gives you:
Predictive B2B analytics to find accounts that are looking for the solutions you provide.
Account data platform with audiences for insights across your stacks.
Sales leads for reps so they can prioritize their day, and know when’s best to reach out.
Ongoing improvement with account based analytics including engagement and journeys.
Ultimately the platform helps you to understand intent to build your foundation, align all teams, and take action that results in more leads.
LeadCandy
A simple lead platform, LeadCandy allows you to search for people and get their full contact information and common LinkedIn connections in one place to easily personalize your outreach efforts. 95% of all emails are verified, but you only pay for correct emails.
This platform can’t really be considered an intent data provider, but we’ve thrown it in because it’s the only really simple lead platform where you can also view common connections.
True Influence
Reach the right audience, engage the right accounts, and activate engagement across every channel with actionable intent data from True Influence, a platform with:
Identity Graph Triangulation to identify contacts and buying groups to get a single view of the customer by linking and identifying IP, device, and email identification signals in the prospect data stream to show what B2B topics and content they are consuming.
True Influence Relevance Engine® which uses advanced analytics to analyze web search behaviors.
TripleCheck® which guarantees the accuracy of content information.
Buyer Discovery by Gartner
Tapping into Gartner’s more than 9 million monthly B2B software buyers, Buyer Discovery offers buyer intent data that reveals the companies that are looking for software like yours.
Gartner’s Buyer Discovery uses intent data from three of the most popular software review sites— Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice—so you can easily find companies ripe for the picking.
What you get:
Account-level identities and firmographic data for all companies that are in your software categories.
A daily list of buyer activity data that can either be exported or synced into the tool you use.
Intent scores for product awareness, engagement, and purchase intent.
DemandJump
Instead of spending hours looking for intent insights and conducting keyword research in different tools and then using another tool to compile content, DemandJump removes hours of work by providing one place to propel SEO content marketing efforts.
The platform cuts out hours of time by generating content outlines and supplying keywords that should be included based on the main keyword.
It also includes ideas that address the questions your audience is asking around that particular topic, providing:
The keywords your audience uses for searches.
Insights around the words your key competitors are using.
Quick one-click content outlines based on the main keyword.
Consumer insights display what questions your customers are asking, what they search for on their journey, and the videos and websites they visit. You can also view competitor insights.
Get analytics on your ad and website content.
Leadiro
Leadiro enables you to search from more than 21 million locations, 884,000 companies, and 6,000 topics to find your next B2B buyer, and those who are ready to buy.
Leadiro provides the following data:
Contact data giving you names, titles, LinkedIn profiles, validated email addresses, postal addresses, and direct dials.
Company data that provides company names, industry, countries, stakeholder information, employee count, and more.
Data to offer insights into what technology your customers are using.
Buyer intent data about the people and companies who are ready to buy solutions like yours.
ABM data identifying key prospects.
Slintel
Slintel helps you to find new customers by providing the following intent data for marketing teams and sales teams:
Qualified accounts and all relevant information.
Buyer journeys and keyword insights that provide an understanding of buyer behavior and pain points.
Make use of the Slintel pitch technology on the same platform, so that your process is seamless and easy.
Pitch your competitor’s clients, view what technology they use, and build outreach campaigns with data that adds meaning.