Insight Analytics Part 4 - Leap of Faith - From Company Name to Customer

This is the fourth post in a series of blog posts about how we use CANDDi Insights internally within our own business. You can view Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

We all like a ‘sure thing’. And much of the time that’s what CANDDi gives us: named individuals who have shown a clear interest in our product. But every now and then we have to take a leap of faith. This happened recently, and if things go to plan, our response may land us our biggest name customer yet.

Educated Guesswork

Back in April we noticed someone from a very interesting company visiting our website. Not just once, but multiple times. Each visit showed real engagement: time spent and documents downloaded. But they never filled out a form to get some of our protected content.

Frustrating!

So we took a leap of faith. We did some digging on Google and LinkedIn to try to get close to the right person. We used the information from CANDDi to narrow down by location, and searched by job titles and functions until we had a shortlist.

Then we reached out. Highly targeted emails to one or two of the best bets.

We didn’t get it right, but we were close enough: our email was forwarded to the person who had been stalking us anonymously. And the conversation began.

With everything we knew about their browsing activity and the timing of their approach, we could shape the conversation around their needs. Things have progressed quickly as a result.

Individual Data Vital - Even When It’s Anonymous

What’s important here is that this wouldn’t have worked with just IP and location data. What we needed was to track that activity down to a specific individual within a company.

Even though we couldn’t name them up front, it was this specificity that allowed us to tailor the intro mails. When the conversation started it was this detail that meant we already understood their needs.

Here’s what our head of sales, Fred Abrard, has to say.

“I spent my time at Google working with the largest customers. Clearly the Google name is an advantage when it comes to getting through the door. For a startup like us, identifying companies interested in our offering makes it SO much easier to contact the right person and start a conversation. CANDDi gives me the indication they’re interested and also the context of *what* to talk to them about. In the first five seconds of that initial phone call, you can’t underestimate the value of understanding someone’s needs”