How Dreamdata can help B2Bs make the most of their intent data
Intent data is emerging as one of the must-haves for modern B2B go-to-market.
With third-party cookies on the way out, the costs of ads increasing, and AI content congesting organic search, B2B customer acquisition is getting harder and more expensive - leading go-to-market teams to look for any advantage that will help them reach their audience in an increasingly overcrowded space.
Intent data offers this advantage by shedding light on buyer behavior across the buying journey. And the explosion of intent data tools is a case in point.
Interpreting buying signals from intent data helps B2Bs target those accounts that are in-market and so use their valuable sales resources on the ‘5%’ of the market who is looking for a solution like theirs.
By collecting and aggregating end-to-end B2B go-to-market data, Dreamdata is perfectly positioned to provide B2B go-to-market teams with multi-source, high-accuracy intent data and all the insights to reveal and action it.
Contents:
What is B2B intent data?
What are the different types of intent data?
The more sources the greater the accuracy
How Dreamdata collects intent data
4 intent data use cases on Dreamdata
Identify high-intent sales opportunities
Track target-account intent signals
Build retargeting audiences
Measure signal strength
What is B2B Intent Data?
B2B intent data refers to the data collected about an account’s online activities that indicate some level of buying intent. This can include anything from reading a review on G2, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading content, reacting, commenting or sharing posts on social media, clicking an ad, or visiting a pricing page.
In B2B, where 67% of the customer journey is claimed to take place before Sales is even contacted, this intent data is especially valuable. It helps B2Bs get behind this 67% threshold to identify which companies are actively researching products similar to theirs.
By analyzing this data, B2B go-to-market teams can identify potential customers or track target accounts’ buying intent to increase sales velocity and improve the chances of closing deals.
Strong vs. weak intent
It goes without saying that not all actions represent the same level of intent; signals differ in the strength of their intent. Some actions, such as demo bookings or free sign-ups explicitly demonstrate intent whereas, say a newsletter sign-up, might not. Other signals, such as page visits or ad clicks fall in a grey zone, where the strength of intent will depend on your particular business.
Different types of intent data
B2B intent data is a broad term covering three principal types:
1st Party Data:
This is data collected directly by your organization through your own digital properties, like your website, social media, or email engagements. It includes actions such as website visits, content downloads, webinar registrations, and email interactions.
Because first-party data is directly collected and owned by your organization, it is highly relevant and specific to your offerings and so a very accurate source of intent signals.
First-party data also provides the most accurate level of enrichment. By introducing identifiers in relevant forms, you will know the Contact, Company, Action and Timestamp of actions.
1st Party Intent Data:
This is data collected on anonymous visitors to your site, where their identity is resolved through reverse IP. Here too you gather highlight relevant actions taking place directly on your digital properties.
However, the data here is limited to Company, Action and Timestamp, meaning no Contact level data.
2nd Party Intent:
This is first-party data gathered from another company, typically social media and review sites, think LinkedIn engagement or G2, that you can access through a direct partnership.
This data hasn’t been aggregated or processed by a third party; instead, it’s shared between two parties for mutual benefit, usually under specific terms and conditions that respect privacy and data usage agreements.
Here we have access to Company and Engagement data, as well as aggregated Timestamps which typically range from 24 hours to 90 days. In this way, 2nd party data still offers valuable intent data on account engagement with your ads, profiles or reviews, which can be actioned by your team (more on this in the use cases below).
3rd Party Intent:
Finally, third-party intent data is data collected by external providers from a variety of sources across the web (not including your own digital properties).
It includes information on content consumption patterns, product research, and other online behaviors related to your industry but again occurring outside your own channels.
Crucially, third-party data providers aggregate this information from multiple sources, giving you insights into potential customers' interests even before they visit your website or engage with your content on social media or review sites.
Third-party intent obviously offers the lowest level of accuracy and to some degree relevancy. The aggregation adds a layer which makes it difficult to determine real intent. You might be interested in this research paper which examines third-party intent data’s effectiveness.
The more sources the greater the accuracy
It’s worth emphasizing that having multiple sources of intent data - in particular first and second-party data - significantly enhances the accuracy, depth, and enrichment of the intent insights you can gather about potential B2B customers.
Using multiple data sources allows you to cross-reference information, significantly increasing the reliability of the intent signals. For example, if both your first-party data and second-party data indicate a particular company is researching a solution like yours, the likelihood of genuine interest is higher.
Similarly, relying on a single data source can lead to misinterpretations due to data quality issues or biased insights. So having diverse data sources helps mitigate these risks by filling in gaps and correcting potential inaccuracies.
How Dreamdata collects intent data
Dreamdata utilizes multiple intent data sources to achieve the greatest possible accuracy. These sources include: first-party website tracking, first-party intent (IP-to-company resolution), LinkedIn Ads and G2 intent data as second-party, as well as integrations with all leading first-party intent data platforms.
But Dreamdata doesn’t ‘just’ collect intent data, Dreamdata is a leading B2B Customer Data Platform with integrated analytics and automation that maps the end-to-end B2B customer journey. This means that you can also measure your efforts against pipeline and revenue generated.
And all of this is available on our Dreamdata Free plan.
Let’s take a closer look.
First-party tracking
Dreamdata collects first-party data through consent-based site tracking. This captures site user behaviour through a tracking scrip and identification data through form submissions.
Dreamdata also runs IP-company resolution out-of-the-box.
This data is then enriched with the visitor’s identity once they submit any form with an email address - e.g. content download, newsletter subscription, sign-up, demo request.
This means that once you set up tracking for Dreamdata via Dreamdata’s tracking script, Dreamdata will automatically use the user’s IP address to look up their city, country, and company.
This enables Dreamdata to identify anonymous visitors and link them to the appropriate company and their customer journey. For this, Dreamdata uses one of the leading IP data providers, ipinfo.io. If you’re already using an IP data provider you can also run a hybrid model (combining both IP providers) for increased accuracy.
Account-based
Dreamdata is an account-based platform, so all the data from all stakeholders within the same account will be tracked as a singular customer journey. Check out Dreamdata’s interactive customer journey map →
Apart from this first-party infrastructure, Dreamdata integrates with LinkedIn Ads intent data and G2 as second-party sources.
LinkedIn Ads
As a LinkedIn Marketing partner, Dreamdata integrates with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions APIs including pulling LinkedIn Ads engagement data.
With a billion professional members, LinkedIn plays a vital role in go-to-market strategies for B2Bs across industries, and as such offers a valuable source of intent.
This LinkedIn Ads engagement data reveals the companies that interacted directly (likes, comments, video views) with your ads and the number of impressions they received.
To utilize this feature, you must run paid advertisements on LinkedIn. Our LinkedIn Ads source is available in all plans.
G2
Dreamdata also integrates with G2’s buyer intent data, which is another incredibly valuable source of intent data for B2B go-to-market teams.
G2 provides data on users reading reviews, exploring your categories, and making product comparisons, allowing you to identify the interested companies and tailor your go-to-market activities.
As with LinkedIn, our G2 source is included in all Dreamdata plans, but requires you to have a subscription with G2.
Intent platforms integrations
Dreamdata makes it possible to integrate multiple intent platforms - which, as I already mentioned, gives you higher coverage and improves the data quality.
Each of these providers offers slightly different combinations of intent data sources that might make them valuable to have on top of Dreamdata’s intent data engine. For instance, 6sense captures first, second and third-party intent data.
At the moment, Dreamdata supports the following platforms:
6sense
Albacross
Clearbit
Dealfront / Leadfeeder
Demandbase
RollWorks
Snitcher
Triblio
ZoomInfo
CRM [bonus]
For the B2B marketer, pipeline data is equally valuable when it comes to tracking signals from those accounts that have already come down the funnel.
And for this, you need to pull CRM data.
CRM data adds the necessary down-funnel conversion and stage data that are crucial to setting up highly personalized (re)targeting campaigns.
Once you have all your intent data and CRM data joined and cleaned in your data warehouse, you will have the most comprehensive view of the B2B customer journey possible. You will have also built first-party audience data that will allow you to accurately target and retarget.
4 intent data use cases on Dreamdata
From this combination of data sources, Dreamdata is able to provide B2B go-to-market teams with high-accuracy intent data and all the insights to reveal and action it.
Here are some relevant use cases around this.
1. Identifying high-intent sales opportunities (not in your CRM)
Using the Reveal report, Dreamdata users can find all the accounts showing buying intent, and sort them by a range of options, such as, which are the most active accounts? Are they sending multiple buying signals from across platforms? Have they visited the pricing page?
You can then filter per your ICP criteria, e.g. company size, industry, etc.
Once you’ve integrated your CRM to Dreamdata you can also customise the Reveal report to filter by those not already on your CRM, or those that have not yet been assigned an account owner.
This allows you to instantly compile a list of in-market opportunities showing intent and not already on you radar.
The Reveal report is available on Dreamdata Free.
2. Track target-account intent signals
But some accounts are very much on your radar. You will likely have a target account list you’re running ABM campaigns on.
With Dreamdata you’re able to monitor engagement from those target accounts and assess their intent.
Here we’re very much in 95%-5% rule and signal-based selling territory, i.e. the in-market target accounts.
Dreamdata’s CRM property filter, allows you to select any ABM account list you may have on your CRM. This might also be lists of closed-lost or churned accounts which you want to monitor.
Using the Reveal reports, you will then be able to monitor whether any plays you’re making as part of your ABM campaign is having an impact on your target accounts.
For instance, say you’ve sent out personalised gifts to target accounts, have they come onto your site? Or have you sent tailored ads on LinkedIn? Are the accounts engaging with these ads? Are they then engaging with other ads or comparing you on G2?
3. Build retargeting audiences (in the wake of third-party cookie deprecation)
With third-party cookies on the way out, you can use your first-party audience data from Dreamdata to build targeting and retargeting audiences and so overcome the third-party cookie gap.
In fact, it is more than just overcoming it, with Dreamdata you can filter and build audiences based on your ICP and so focus on accounts who are a fit instead of any and every account who visits your website.
With Dreamdata you’re able to build and automatically send first-party audience data to your point solutions. For instance, LinkedIn’s Matched Audience can be used for your account target list, say for ABM plays, and Google’s Lookalike segments trains the campaign manager to build lookalike audiences.
4. Measure signal strength
As I mentioned in ‘What is B2B intent data’ above, not all intent signals are created equal. Some signals demonstrate greater buying intent than others.
With Dreamdata you can track and measure the impact intent signals have on deals, helping you better understand which signals signify true buying intent.
Analyzing intent data from across sources can uncover patterns that lead to higher sales productivity, closed-won revenue, and sales velocity.
Conversely, it also highlights unproductive signals that result in wasted marketing and sales efforts.
You can do this in two ways. You can track performance through our Performance reports or you could do it more qualitatively through our Journeys reports.
Conclusion
Against the backdrop of rising ad costs and declining organic search visibility, high-quality intent data is emerging as a must-have for pinpointing potential customers and optimizing go-to-market strategies.
By harnessing the power of high-accuracy, multi-source intent data, Dreamdata paints a 360° picture of the B2B buyer journey and hands B2B go-to-market teams the ability to pinpoint in-market accounts with genuine buying interest.
Through its comprehensive integration of first and second-party data, alongside robust analytics and automation, Dreamdata offers a key advantage. This enables businesses to effectively target high-intent opportunities, track and measure intent signals, and optimize go-to-market strategies, ultimately driving sales productivity and boosting revenue.
