If you have ever managed an email marketing list or a contact database, you know how frustrating it is to have holes – like just an individual’s name and company, but no associated email; or just an email, but no name or location information. You also probably have a fair sense of the fraction of stale and outdated contacts in your database as people change positions or companies. On top of this, you also know it is your job to grow that list or database.
Enter Waltham-based ZoomInfo, any marketer, customer relationship manager (CRM), or contact database manager’s absolute best friend. The company, with the tagline “the world’s most dynamic database of people and companies,” currently collects information on around 5 million businesses and 50 million employees — and just boasted an incredible 250 percent revenue growth in 2010. And with 69 percent of marketers reporting that customer acquisition is their top marketing goal in 2011, it looks as though that growth will continue.
How is ZoomInfo different than other providers like Spoke or Hoover’s? ZoomInfo’s patented technology aggregates parsed contact information in various places across the web as its crawlers continually scrape pages — like news sources, company sites, and financial information — collecting and updating information on an individual person and business basis. The company’s system, which also includes community contributions and a system whereby individuals can claim their own profile information, is being leveraged by startups to Fortune 1000 companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo!, Wal-Mart and Time-Warner.
“Outdated business data slows business operations – marketing, sales, data management and others – to a crawl. We’re seeing more and more deals where multiple departments within organizations evaluate and purchase our services,” said Sam Zales, president, ZoomInfo. “Our sales growth confirms what our customers are telling us: inaccurate data is costly and ZoomInfo can provide continually replenished B2B information that includes hard-to-find mid-managers and SMBs.”
Beyond just collecting contact information, ZoomInfo also pulls in news stories and other information about the companies and people profiled. It reports adding 2,000 new businesses and 25,000 new employees as well as updates information on 15,000 businesses and 250,000 contacts every day.
We used ZoomInfo at the last company I worked at, and it was heaven sent – alongside being reasonably priced. Here is a quick rundown of the products ZoomInfo offers according to their website:
— ZoomInfo™ Pro: the company’s flagship software-as-a-service (SaaS) application — which includes advanced search tools, allowing sales teams to target prospects by more than 20 criteria, as well as email alerts that provide a real-time view of business contact changes.
— Highly segmented contact lists that B2B direct marketers can easily import into their email and related campaign systems.
— Data append services for marketing teams that update and enhance incomplete contact records (ZoomInfo will add current email addresses, phone numbers and other data to existing lists).
— Data integration with popular customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) tools, giving access to the ZoomInfo Database to the client’s entire organization.
Founded in 2000, the company raised $14M from institutional investors like Commonwealth Capital and Venrock. The company is currently hiring, so make sure to check out their job openings.
Does your company leverage ZoomInfo? What do you think of the service?
