In 1996, Bill Gates famously proclaimed, “content is king.” Twenty-five years later, this phrase resonates more than ever. But content alone is not enough. Businesses need the proper context to deliver the right marketing messages to the right people, at the right time.
When B2B marketers can programmatically target in-market prospects with relevant content throughout the buyer’s journey, the result is improved campaign performance and better return on advertising spend. However, the quality of predictive intent data used for targeting accounts and specific members in the buying collective is only as good as the sources it draws from… and not all data is created equal. Currently, some data providers determine intent from a limited number of signals, which doesn’t offer the full picture of whether a business is likely to buy.
Additionally, with a growing trend towards privacy affecting how reliably some data providers will be able to identify prospects, it’s more important than ever for marketers to work with a partner offering the highest-quality, most future-proof data available—with insights derived from a wide range of signals across multiple channels and sources.
The importance of first-party data
We want to make one thing crystal clear: The much-talked-about “death of the third-party cookie” will not affect first-party data, which comes from data providers with direct relationships with buyers visiting their own websites, forums, and applications. Regardless of future changes to the intent ecosystem, first-party data will continue to offer nuanced context into whether a business is in-market to buy.
As the leading global first-party B2B intent provider—with trusted relationships among decision makers and visibility into 17M businesses, 40M verified contacts, and 100M unique devices every day—Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) is extremely well positioned to help B2B marketers with account-based targeting now and in the future.
No other data provider can match our best-in-class first-party, predictive intent data, and no one can top the strength of the connections we have with businesses and technology buyers. We’ve spent decades building popular online platforms and communities by delivering value to and nurturing relationships with millions of registered business users on trusted properties including Spiceworks, Toolbox, Toolbox Marketing, and Toolbox HR. Additionally, through our award-winning suite of IT management applications that tech buyers spend 1.4 billion hours in annually, we uniquely offer unprecedented visibility into behind the firewall user behavior and business technology usage.
More data sources result in better data
Recently, we’ve taken big steps to make a good thing even better. To continue to offer unparalleled value as the premier B2B data provider in the world, and to further improve the quality, scale, and diversity of our data, we brought the capabilities of three established data powerhouses under a single roof.
The September 2019 merger of Spiceworks and Ziff Davis B2B combined one of the largest first-party intent providers with millions of opted-in tech buyers, with the leading first-party tech buyer media company in the world. One year later, the November 2020 acquisition of Aberdeen (which itself previously acquired intent data company, Big Willow) added world-class big data and third-party intent capabilities, making for a future-proof combination that’s unbeatable in the marketplace.
Together, SWZD’s first-party and Aberdeen’s third-party intent data offer actionable insights drawing from an expansive and diverse set of intent signals—from up to 17 sources with many behind the firewall, while competitors just use one or two—across multiple B2B segments including IT, Marketing, HR, Finance, and much more. The wealth of data at our fingertips lets us observe intent signals across an unlimited number of contextual keyword categories, allowing you to customize your keywords and layer these insights onto your campaigns for optimal performance.
As a result, our full-funnel intent data—mapped to your ideal customer profiles and personas—will continue to be invaluable for businesses looking to identify, prioritize, and engage accounts based on actual propensity to buy, now and in the years to come.
Future-proofing data for privacy and regulatory changes
Thanks to the scale and diversity of our rich data sources—combining Aberdeen’s data intelligence capabilities and SWZD’s first-party website and behind-the-firewall data—we’re extremely well prepared for any changes that may affect other providers in the intent data ecosystem.
For example, as individuals rightly worry about data privacy and personally identifiable information (PII) becomes increasingly regulated by GDPR, CCPA, or future legislation, we’d like to reassure clients that these changes will have little to no impact on our ability to serve you because we prepared for them long ago.
In fact, we welcome these consumer protections, because data privacy is paramount for SWZD and is also a central pillar for our parent company, J2 Global. We believe that it’s necessary and in our best interests to build trust with users by safeguarding their personal data so that we can continue to nurture meaningful relationships with business decision makers—which allows us to deliver the best marketing data possible to our clients. Also as part of our commitment, each member of our organization is required to complete training on GDPR, CCPA, and overall data privacy.
In an age where security and privacy are top of mind, we welcome efforts to better protect individuals’ personal information. SWZD already adheres to GDPR and ePrivacy laws worldwide, and has been preparing for forthcoming changes to ensure we’ll continue to respect user privacy while continuing to offer best-in-class intent data that helps marketers reach and engage in-market businesses.
Mark DePalma, CTO, SWZD
The right data to power your account-based marketing campaigns
In summary, we’ve made big additions in recent months to provide our clients with best-in-class B2B intent data. The recent mergers of Spiceworks, Ziff Davis B2B, and Aberdeen have resulted in unbeatable data capabilities formed by combining the strengths of three respected data brands.
As a result of this union and the quality, scale, and diversity of our data, we’re well equipped to deliver value to our clients as the intent data ecosystem evolves.
In other words, we’re the right data provider to work with now and we’re extremely well prepared for the future. If you partner with us, you will be too.
Want to learn more about our best-in-class intent data?