SalesTechStar Interview with Mark Connon, CEO of Bombora

What are the core challenges around implementing intent data to boost sales and marketing goals? Mark Connon, CEO of data company Bombora presents a few observations and related best practices in this SalesTechStar Q&A:

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Hi Mark, give us an overview of your journey in B2B Tech.

I joined Bombora in May 2023 as President and took over as CEO from our founder, Erik Matlick, just about a year later. My entire career (spanning leadership positions at Experian, Tapad, Verizon, AOL, and dating back to dot com era companies) has been dedicated to harnessing data to drive superior customer outcomes. For a “data guy”, Bombora, with its unique, central position in the B2B ecosystem, represents a rare opportunity. The Bombora B2B Data Cooperative, built over the last 10 years is a truly unreplicable asset. Our one-of-a-kind data set has unlimited potential to change and accelerate the trajectories of leading brands, agencies and publishers. We see it with our customers every day. I simply couldn’t let this opportunity pass by.

Tell us more about Bombora and the shape of your business.

More than 10 years ago we created the B2B Intent data category with our Company Surge® Intent data solution. We have been pioneering B2B data solutions ever since. Today, despite many players entering the category with claims of comparability, our Intent data is widely considered “the gold standard” against which others measure performance.

The essential core of our B2B data is our one-of-a-kind premium Data Cooperative made up of leading B2B publishers, brand websites and premium data providers that all consent to contribute B2B research and consumption activities. Our Data Co-op can not be recreated. More importantly, this Data Co-op allows Bombora to deliver durable, future-proofed, verifiable Intent data that industry leaders can rely on to fuel their businesses. Our offering is not limited to Intent. From the Data Co-op we have developed high performing, at scale Identity, first- and third-party B2B Digital Audiences and Campaign Measurement solutions. Our full suite of solutions allows us to help companies identify, understand and engage their prospects and customers throughout the buyer and user experience, across the activation platforms of their choice.

When it comes to Intent Data and how sales and marketers use it to drive goals, what top challenges and myths do you see teams struggle with?

One big myth is that all Intent data is created equal. As I mentioned, since we created the B2B Intent data category more than 10 years ago, many “alternatives” have entered the space. While the category name may be the same there are critically important differences in the source of the data (e.g., walled garden site, bid stream or Data Co-op) with implications for both the usability of the insights and the durability of the solution. We advocate to all prospects and customers that they invest to really understand how various Intent data solutions are derived and how well each one can serve their use case goals and long-term strategic needs.

One big challenge sales and marketers face is data security and privacy concerns. Increasingly, first-party data is a precious source of competitive advantage. Many Intent data providers and platforms must ingest a company’s first-party data (e.g., closed won or PII) in order to build their Intent models. This can cause real concerns about preserving the security of the first-party asset. Likewise, from a privacy perspective, the manner in which data is collected to support the many use cases for Intent data should be scrutinized given the ever evolving regulatory environment.

Bombora is unique here; we respect these concerns. We are one of the only, if not the only, Intent data providers that does not need to ingest any of a customer’s first-party data in order to provide a robust data feed that will drive differentiated outcomes in areas like sales prioritization, churn reduction or digital targeting, and our customers can be assured that our privacy practices can withstand the test of time.

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What should sales and marketing leaders align on to ensure they use intent insights and data in a more optimized manner to build unique customer experiences?

One key to ensuring the full potential of Intent data is tight alignment on the use cases you are using it to drive, the outcomes you seek to achieve, and the methodology you will use to measure these outcomes. The potential applications of Intent data are vast: account scoring, sales prioritization, churn reduction, content and event personalization to name just a few. All of these individual use cases will contribute to building unique customer experiences but at the beginning of the Intent data journey they must be tackled in an intentional and sequenced way. The average Bombora customer is using our Intent data for 6 distinct use cases by the end of 12 months, but all of them started with tackling one use case, demonstrating the impact of the data and building champions who naturally drive expansion from data science, sales, marketing and brand agencies, etc.

Another important key is accessibility of the Intent data and insights. We all know that the customer experience is made up of many touch points across channels, platforms and human teams. For Intent-driven outcomes to be realized holistically across these touchpoints, the Intent data needs to flow easily into the models, tools and teams that deliver these touchpoints. The data should not be locked in a single silo, tool or team.

What integration and data unification pointers should sales and marketing heads keep in mind as they sift through varied salestech and martech systems to build audience and prospect lists and campaigns?

As you well know the landscape is jammed with Account Based Marketing, martech, sales tech, rev tech and adtech tools. The average Enterprise company has many different tools in its commercial tech stack and is struggling to realize the return on this investment. We believe the key to unifying the commercial experience, in concept, design and ultimately in execution through these tools, is a unifying, trusted data set.

For this reason, we remain committed to being a B2B data company not a platform or tool company. Platforms and tools are strategically designed to lock data in the tool to drive usage. In contrast, data companies drive usage through ubiquity. To this end, we continually invest against our strategic imperative that our data can be used anywhere, anytime, any way a customer wants it. Bombora data seamlessly integrates into more than 100 tools and platforms and is compatible with all the leading ABM, martech, adtech, sales tech, rev tech, and CRM platforms. Sophisticated organizations with multi-source data lakes can ingest Bombora data and use it within proprietary models. Bombora data is designed to be the unifying enabler to a company’s commercial strategy.

Some thoughts on how AI is redefining the intent data space and how it will impact the way sales and marketers function?

At Bombora AI models, in the form of machine learning and natural language processing techniques, have been a critical enabler of our differentiation since our early days. We have continuously trained and optimized our models  for precision and relevance. For example, our models allow Bombora’s Company Surge®  Intent data solution to go beyond simple keyword identification (the realm of most Intent providers) to capture the true relevance and depth of digital research and consumption. Our patented composite approach to Identity resolution allows us to deliver accuracy and a comprehensive B2B profile of attributes beyond the industry standard of IP-to-domain mapping. As an example, in the past couple of years, we have used AI to drive our Work-From-Home identity models to keep pace with evolving hybrid work environments.

Today we are seeing Marketing and Sales leaders testing gen-AI based Sales and Marketing tools with the promise of personalization at scale, reduced workload, and accelerated speed to market. Fundamental to unlocking the potential of gen-AI is high quality, trusted data on which these models can be trained. Misleading data can corrupt gen-AI models. Unconsented data or data from unreliable sources should cause users to question the long-term durability and viability of their effort to train their gen-AI Sales and Marketing tools.

Here is where Bombora comes in. Our Intent data is derived from Data Co-op, through a proprietary tag placed on every single member site. This collection methodology ensures both durability (our collection practices are consent-driven and we don’t rely on third-party cookies) and quality (meaning insights that drive repeatable outcomes). As the leading B2B data provider in the market, we encourage our customers to think as much about the data set training a tool as the tool itself.

How are you seeing the salestech and martech segments evolve today – some projections about the future of salestech and martech?

We are starting to see the traditional silos between Marketing and Sales motions break down and the closed doors between BUs in large enterprises open up. Our leading edge customers are deploying our B2B data broadly as a unifying force across segments of their customer experience from audience activation through advertising to sales outreach prioritization and personalization at the right time. As we move closer towards truly end – to – end GTM motions, the utility and return on the investment in sophisticated data skyrockets.

As this reality starts to come into view we are starting to see Sales and Marketing leaders looking for more flexible solutions that allow them to combine data sets freely and securely and move it seamlessly across motions, models and touch points.

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