98%+ of visitors to B2B websites don't convert (i.e. fill out a form or identify themselves/raise their hand in some other way). It's critical to for B2B SaaS companies to understand how to identify B2B website visitors for sales follow up.
I'm implementing this for SaaSBoost.io so will take you through the evaluation and implementation process and also report on results to save some of those otherwise anonymous visitors. I'm expecting to get back a list of company names to then add to cold email outreach sequences (after using Snovio/LinkedIN to gather and target the right titles and their contact info). Later these may be added to ABM and retargeting programs.
Can't We Just Use Google Analytics?
Unfortunately Google Analytics isn't too much of a help in identifying anonymous website visitors. Luckily there is a segment of software sales tools to solve this specific problem of uncovering the company behind a web visit. They have various approaches to match IP addresses of otherwise anonymous web users to identify a company name for B2B SaaS companies and startups to follow up on. It is a tricky problem especially with ISP and VPN traffic so we will never get close 100% match rates (looks like 30% is the top end here). This category can be referred to as 'Visitor ID', 'IP to Company Resolution', or even more broadly as part of web analytics or sales intelligence tools.
Criteria for Evaluating Visitor ID software:
- Looking for a lightweight, simple to implement tool (should just be javascript tag to head or footer, or via integration) that to identify company names.
- Freemium pricing - would be nice to get 10 or so free leads a week at no cost (similar to Bombora's B2B Intent data freemium offering which emails a weekly alert of top 10 companies doing research around your keyword). That's not much to work with, but it gives a chance to understand and operationalize the data and test some approaches that might be able to scale. If it's working and website traffic increases, then happy to pay.
- Daily/Weekly email reports. Right now volume will be low so will do the lead follow up manually to try to test and get some results to start. Not too concerned about integrations and contact enrichment at this point.
The Visitor ID software market:
There are 98 vendors listed in G2 in this category, 11 listed as SMB and 6 with pricing.
Visitor ID Vendors Considered and the Best Visitor ID Software Option:
A top rated vendor that is top of mind for me for some reason or other. Free trial only, no listed pricing (talk to a rep/get back a custom quote = too expensive/time consuming). Pass.
There is a 14 day free trial and then pricing starts at $24/month. There's no freemium offer though so will keep looking.
Highly rated and does look promising - maybe. You get a 14 day free trial of the Premium version ('from' $55/mo for up to 100 leads, scales up on volume from there). Premiums includes integrations and contact enrichment. After the trial ends and it is auto downgraded to Light. According to the pricing page, Leadfeeder Light version is free for up to 100 contacts and includes 'data retention' of up to 3 days. Does that mean I have to log into their platform to pull the data out every 3 days (or I guess automate that with a script)? It's not clear on the pricing page but hopefully not - want this at least emailed to me. Worth a test.
Freemium = Startup Friendly
Implementation:
I already have Google Tag Manager set up on my site so I choose that setup option for adding the Leadfeeder Tracker script. Followed a few simple steps to add to GTM. It didn't work right away...looks like it may take time for Google to propagate the changes. Will wait a day...
Nope. The pixel isn't being detected. Several articles on Leadfeeder's site on troubleshooting this, alternative approaches, etc. No interest in going down this rabbit hole. Would have preferred to track this as a Google tag but will try the 'recommended option' of adding the script to the header or footer. I use Webflow for CMS so this is easy to add.
Boom! That part was easy and worked immediately. Although strike one for the time suck of failed GTM instructions/implementation. Signed up for daily and weekly email notifications. Now we wait for these hot tasty 'leads'!
Results:
So far Leadfeeder seems to be working pretty well. Stay tuned for more updates.
