What are Intent Signals and How to Use Them for Your B2B Sales?

As a B2B SaaS founder, you must be constantly on the lookout for what drives your prospects to make purchasing decisions. If you aren’t yet capitalizing on intent signals, you’re likely missing out on crucial opportunities to connect with potential customers precisely when they’re ready to buy. 

Have you ever noticed a spike in certain activities on your website, like increased downloads of a specific resource or more inquiries about your service’s features? These aren’t random events -they’re intent signals that you can use to understand customer behavior.

In this article, I’ll explore what intent signals are and how you can harness their power to boost your sales process. Whether you’re trying to pinpoint the right time to reach out to a prospect or tailor your messaging to meet their current needs, recognizing and reacting to these signals can be your key to more effective conversions.

What is An Intent Signal?

An intent signal is a crucial data point that shows a prospective customer’s readiness or likelihood to purchase a product or service. Intent signals can be derived from various user actions and behaviors that suggest a higher level of interest or engagement with a brand.

Examples of Intent Signals

Intent signals can serve as vital clues that bring out a potential customer’s level of interest and likelihood to purchase. Here are some of the common examples of intent signals – 

Marketing & Content Engagement – 

• Blog Engagement: Regularly reading your blog or interacting with posts related to specific solutions suggests ongoing interest and a quest for more information.
• Email Responses: High open and click-through rates in emails, especially those linked to product updates or offers, indicate higher interest and engagement.
• Social Media Activity: Interactions on platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter, such as likes, comments, or shares of your content, reflect both engagement and endorsement of your brand.

• Community Involvement: Active participation in forums and discussions around topics relevant to your products indicates a well-informed prospect seeking advanced solutions.

Website Behavior –

• Page Analytics: Monitoring which pages visitors frequent and knowing their duration of stay provides insights into their interest levels. Frequent visits to high-value pages like pricing or detailed service descriptions suggest a decisive engagement. For example, if a prospect frequently visits the pricing page of my company, SalesMix, it would be more informed for my sales team to appraoch this prospect than taking a shot in the dark.

• SalesMix Pricing Page
• Form Submissions: Submitting information through contact forms, especially for quotes, demos, or more detailed information, indicates a readiness to engage further.
• Downloads: When a visitor downloads whitepapers, case studies, or ebooks through your lead magnets, it signals a more profound interest in understanding the products or the problems they address.

  
  Kompass’ Form Submission Option for Ebook Download

• Video Views: Engagement with video content, especially tutorials or deep dives into product features, suggests an intent to understand the product thoroughly.

Search Behavior –

• Targeted Queries: Searches using keywords that are directly related to your products or the problems they solve can indicate active solution-seeking behavior.
• Branded Searches: When potential customers search for your brand or specific product names, it often means they are considering your solutions seriously.
• Search Types: The nature of the searches, whether they’re looking for general information or specific solutions, can tell you much about where they are in the buyer’s journey.

What are Different Types of Intent Signals?

Understanding the different types of intent signals can improve your ability to identify and prioritize leads that are most likely to convert. Some key intent signal types are – 

• Engagement Signals: They include interactions such as website visits, time spent on specific pages, social media activity (likes, shares, comments), and responses to marketing emails. These actions indicate how involved a prospect is with your brand. For instance, frequent visits to a product page or extensive time spent on a resource section might suggest that a prospect is considering your solution seriously.
• Research Signals: When potential customers are in the research phase, they often exhibit behaviors like downloading whitepapers, signing up for webinars, or engaging with interactive tools such as cost calculators. These activities show that they gather information to make an informed decision.
• Hiring Signals: Hiring trends can signal a forthcoming need for specific software or IT services. For example, a company hiring several software engineers or IT specialists might be gearing up for a major tech initiative or digital transformation.
• Technographic Signals: Technographic data is relevant to the technologies that companies use, including CRM systems, marketing tools, or industry-specific applications. If a prospect has recently invested in modern marketing platforms, it could indicate readiness to integrate advanced marketing solutions or data analytics services for your marketing team, suggesting a high intent to enhance their capabilities.
• Company Activity Signals: Significant events within a company, such as mergers, acquisitions, funding rounds, or product launches, can all serve as intent signals. These activities often require new solutions and adjustments, presenting opportunities for vendors who are attentive to these changes. Monitoring press releases, news alerts, and financial reports can help you catch these signals early and tailor your outreach accordingly.

You can also categorize intent signals a bit more broadly based on their exhibitions – 

• Explicit Intent Signals: They direct indications of a prospect’s interest in purchasing or learning more about a product or service. These signals are clear and require little interpretation. For example, filling out a contact form to request a demo, subscribing to a product trial, or directly inquiring about pricing and availability through a sales chat are explicit buying intent signals.
• Implicit Intent Signals: They are more subtle and need to be interpreted within context. They do not directly state an interest in purchasing but suggest it through behaviors that indicate deeper engagement or research. For instance, a prospect who frequently visits a blog about specific solutions or spends significant time on case study pages may not directly state their purchase intent but is exploring the options deeply.

What are The Sources of Intent Data Signals?

Intent data signals come from various sources, each providing unique insights into potential customer behaviors and preferences. These sources can be broadly categorized into first, second, and third-party data sources.

Types of Intent Data

First-Party Intent Data

First-party data is collected directly by the company from its digital assets. This includes interactions on the company’s website, such as page visits, time spent on specific pages, and actions like downloading whitepapers or signing up for webinars. Social media interactions with the brand’s content, responses to email marketing campaigns, and customer feedback or inquiries also fall into this category.

The direct nature of this data makes it highly reliable and relevant to the customer journey, allowing you to deeply understand your audience’s behaviors on your owned platforms.

Second-Party Intent Data

Second-party data refers to intent data that you get directly from a partner organization. This might include data shared between non-competing businesses in a partnership agreement.

For example, your SaaS company might partner with a consultancy firm to gain insights from client interactions related to technology needs. It can provide a fresh perspective on what solutions are currently being sought in the market. This type of data is beneficial as it comes from a trusted source that is actively researching and can add depth to the company’s understanding of industry-specific needs.

Third-Party Intent Data

Third-party intent data is sourced from external providers who collect and aggregate data across various touchpoints that are not owned by the company itself. It can include intent signals gathered from across the web, such as IP-based data tracking which identifies companies showing interest in related topics, or engagement data from industry publications and forums.

Although a third-party intent data provider can offer expansive coverage and access to a broader set of potential customers, it typically requires validation to ensure its accuracy and relevance.

Why do Intent Signals Matter?

Intent signals are important for businesses across all industries, but they are particularly important in the digital age when buyer journeys are complex and personalized. 

These signals give you a glimpse into a potential customer’s current interests and purchasing readiness and let you tailor their approaches accordingly. If you can identify and analyze these signals, you will know which leads to prioritize, how to allocate your marketing and sales resources more efficiently, and how to enhance the customer experience and buying journey with timely and relevant solutions.

B2B SaaS companies can use intent signals to understand who might be interested in their product and when they will most likely be receptive to a sales pitch. This timing aspect is crucial, as it allows your company’s marketer to engage with prospects when they are most open to considering new solutions. 

For instance, a prospect who recently viewed several product demo videos or spent significant time on comparison pages is likely at a critical decision-making point. Recognizing this, you can strategically reach out with additional information and personalized offers or even propose a live demo, increasing the chances of booking a demo session.

Leveraging data about a prospect’s various intent signals of the B2B marketing campaigns, you can predict which prospects are just browsing versus those seriously considering a purchase. This ability to segment the audience based on buying readiness allows for more focused and effective sales strategies. For example, sending targeted cold emails that address a prospect’s specific concerns or interests can move them further along the sales funnel from mere interest to actual commitment.

How to Use Intent Signals for Improving B2B Sales?

Leveraging intent signals can be a game-changer for sales teams looking to improve efficiency and effectiveness. When used correctly, intent signals can provide actionable insights that can transform your sales process from a scattergun approach to a targeted strategy.

You can integrate and analyze the data collected from various intent signal sources with CRM and such automation tools. It helps you compile and evaluate customer interactions across multiple channels, such as website visits, email engagements, and social media activities.

The analysis of these interactions will show you the patterns that signify a prospect’s readiness to buy or a specific need that might be aligned with your service. For example, a spike in visits to your service’s pricing page can indicate a readiness to purchase. If the sales team can ensure a timely follow-up, the prospect will have the instant eureka feeling of knowing the solution to their problem and will likely subscribe to one of your plans.

Tailoring outreach and messaging according to the identified signals will help your sales team engage prospects with highly relevant communications. This means adjusting the pitch or cold email you send to address a prospect’s specific interests and needs based on the concrete evidence of the digital footprints they have left.

For instance, if a prospect has downloaded a whitepaper on a particular solution, the follow-up emails should reference points from that material, demonstrating a clear understanding and relevance to the prospect’s interests.

Responding promptly to these signals can significantly impact the success of sales efforts. The immediate follow-up to something the users have done can capitalize on their current interest, potentially catching them at the peak of their decision-making process. As a result, a data-driven approach based on intent signals helps you exceed your customers’ evolving expectations to get them onboard.

SalesMix: A Convenient Way to Go From Intent Signals to Acquiring Customers

SalesMix is an advanced cold email platform that can take your data based on intent signals and transform it into actionable outreach opportunities. This ability to effectively harness intent data makes SalesMix a powerful tool for B2B SaaS companies aiming to enhance customer acquisition strategies.

Once intent data is gathered and analyzed by your existing systems or third-party services, SalesMix steps in to streamline the next stages of your marketing efforts. It seamlessly integrates this data to ensure that all relevant insights about potential customers are available to tailor and optimize the outreach process.

By importing intent signals directly into campaign workflows, SalesMix ensures that your communications are timely and highly relevant.  Once intent signals are identified, SalesMix automates the outreach process, sending personalized emails that resonate with each prospect’s individual needs and current interests.

Prospect List in SalesMix

SalesMix’s sophisticated automation tools enable scheduled follow-ups based on custom intervals, ensuring regular contact with prospects. This systematic engagement is designed to nurture leads through the sales funnel to increase conversion chances. 

Sequence follow-up emails in SalesMix

The platform also supports personalizing emails using data from CSV files. This allows for the inclusion of specific details like the recipient’s name or company, making each communication feel more tailored and direct.

By combining precise timing with deep personalization and continuous engagement, SalesMix provides a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to improve their cold email campaigns. It’s not just about sending emails; it’s about sending the right email at the right time for converting intent into actual, tangible sales.

Scheduling Cold Emails in SalesMix

Conclusion

It’s clear that these insights are more than just data points; they are beacons toward more informed and effective engagement strategies for your sales and marketing teams. The ability to accurately interpret and act on these signals is paramount in aligning your offerings with your prospects’ specific needs and timings. It is about fostering meaningful connections that convert prospects into loyal customers.

Looking ahead, the strategic use of intent signals should be an integral part of your sales and marketing efforts. You should be trying to create a dynamic ecosystem where every interaction with a potential customer is informed, intentional, and impactful.