Janhavi Nagarhalli

Are you tired of unsolicited, spammy emails in your inbox? Well, all that will (to an extent) end in February 2024 as Google implements new guidelines for bulk email senders to make your inbox safer and spam-free.

Google will require bulk email senders (people who send over 5,000 emails per day to Gmail inboxes) to follow certain best practices requiring strong authentication, easy unsubscription, and lower spam rates.

“It’s clear that email has become an essential part of daily communication. And whether you’re submitting a job application or staying in touch with a loved one, your emails should be safe and secure.” –  Neil Kumaran Group Product Manager, Gmail Security & Trust

Let’s dive into understanding these best practices and what these new policies mean for your cold outreach strategy in 2024.

Summary of Bulk Email Sender Guidelines

Here is a quick gist of Google’s email sender guidelines and the best practices they recommend for bulk email senders: 

1. Requirements for Authentication

Ensure email authentication for each of your sending domains at your domain provider by settling up the following:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): This basic authentication method verifies if an email was sent from an authorized server. Bulk senders need to configure their domain to use SPF.
• DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail): This adds a digital signature to each email, allowing Gmail to verify the email's authenticity and integrity.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance): This builds on SPF and DKIM by providing reporting and enforcement mechanisms. Bulk senders must publish a DMARC policy that states what Gmail should do with emails that fail authentication.

• ARC(Authenticated Received Chain): it shows the previous authentication status of forwarded messages and previously failed authentication. Senders must use ARC authentication if they forward emails regularly.

Google recommends always using the same domain for email authentication and hosting your public website. Senders must have valid forward and reverse DNS records for these sending domains and IP addresses.

2. Requirements for Easy Unsubscription

If you send over 5,000 marketing and sales emails daily, your marketing and subscribed messages must support one-click unsubscribe.

• Unsubscribe links: Every email must contain a clear and readily available unsubscribe link. This link should be placed in a prominent location, such as the footer of the email.
• Preference centers: Bulk senders can offer preference centers where users can manage their subscription preferences and easily unsubscribe from specific email lists.
• Confirmation process: Unsubscribe requests should be confirmed promptly, and users should not receive further emails after opting out.

Google suggests that you only send emails to people who want to get your messages, so they’re less likely to report messages from your domain as spam.

3. Spam Rate Monitoring

You can track your spam rate using Postmaster tools. Ensure it stays below 0.10%, and avoid reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher.

Here are a few tips to avoid having your emails land in your receiver’s spam: 

• Don't mix different types of content in the same message. 
• Don't impersonate other domains or senders without permission. 
• Don't purchase email addresses from other companies.
• Some countries and regions restrict automatic opt-in. Before you opt-in users automatically, check the laws in your region.

Bulk senders who fail to comply with the guidelines may face various consequences, including reduced deliverability rates, warnings, suspension of email-sending privileges, or even legal action. 

How Does This Affect Your Cold Email Strategy?

Even if your sales/marketing team has these parameters in place, Google's refreshed bulk email sender guidelines signal that mass mailing prospects may slowly be on the decline. While this may sound like not-so-good news for your outbound marketing efforts, here's why this may actually be a blessing in disguise.

Email marketing, if implemented correctly, can continue to be one of the best B2B sales channels in your GTM strategy. The key, however, will be to adopt a systematic, intent-based approach as opposed to spray-and-pray tactics.

Let’s say you’re selling software that streamlines candidate assessment, and your buyer personas are hiring managers and CHROs.

If your sales team sends out emails to thousands of CHROs at random — without any insight into whether or not they’re in-market for your product, you’re bound to receive replies, if any, such as: “Sorry, we’re not currently looking to buy” or worse still, “unsubscribe 😠.” 

Not only does this high-volume approach result in little result from lots of effort, but cold outreach may also leave a bad taste in the mouth of prospects who may be looking to buy down the road. 

What’s the alternative to this? Intent-based, account-level outreach, of course! 😎

On average, only 4% of website visitors convert via sign-ups, but what if you could identify, qualify, and target the remaining 96% of anonymous website traffic with outreach based on intent? What if you could carefully research engagement amongst high-intent buyers and send them personalized cold emails highlighting exactly how your tool can meet their requirements?

Our experience working with hundreds of B2B teams finds that this results in far more conversions with far fewer emails.

Factors is an IP-based account intelligence and activation platform that:

• Identifies anonymous accounts visiting your website, viewing your LinkedIn, or interacting with your G2 pages 
• Qualifies high-intent ICP accounts based on firmographics and cross-channel engagement 
• Enriches sales-ready accounts with Apollo-fuelled contact data before activating outreach by integrating with your marketing automation platform. 

Here’s a little about how it works:

First, our account intelligence feature allows you to uncover anonymous traffic with IP-based intelligence & enrichment. 

Next, you can qualify ICP buyers based on their firmographics and score accounts based on their engagement across the website, G2, and LinkedIn intent signals. 

Finally, create a list of accounts ready to buy and send emails with a compelling pitch to win sales-ready accounts over in no time. Want to learn the basics of account scoring? 

▶️Check out our guide: An Introduction To B2B Account Scoring

‍

Wrapping Up

Google has taken a much-needed step to establish these bulk email sender guidelines. Whether you’re executing cold outreach or email marketing campaigns, you must monitor your bulk emails and ensure basic email hygiene to create a secure email ecosystem. 

If you want to ditch the cookie-cutter bulk email strategy and want to restructure your cold outreach efforts by focusing on high-intent buyers, book a demo with us today!

There’s no doubt that paid advertising is one of the best channels for marketing teams to generate and capture demand. Plus, we're seeing the rise of paid social media, with over 66% of B2B marketers acknowledging its impact on improving ROI. By targeting specific audiences and broadcasting your message across various channels, paid advertising can help drive the success of your campaigns.

However, running a few ads at random does not get you conversions. A strong strategy is key to maximizing ROI on expensive ads.

Let's dive in and look at how paid advertising can benefit your B2B company ⬇️

Google ads vs LinkedIn ads: Which one is best for B2B?

While many businesses advertise online, only a few do it well. It's especially tough when you have heaps of options to choose from. So, Google, LinkedIn, Search, Display, or a combination of all of the above? The choice isn't that simple, as each platform has its unique features and capabilities. In some instances, using either of the channels would be enough. For example, you should use Google Ads to target people based on their search queries, location, device, and more. LinkedIn ads can help create targeted ABM campaigns.

However, if you’re running a full-funnel campaign, you must use both Google and LinkedIn ads to their fullest potential.

Let's understand the differences between these platforms, how they work, their pros and cons, and which platform is better for your unique needs.

Google Ads

Google search ads appear when users search for specific keywords related to your business. Here are their pros and cons:

Pros of Search Ads

• Access to a larger audience when bidding on high-volume keywords
• Typically attract in-market leads as they're based on search intent
• Detailed analytics allow you to track clicks, conversions, and ROI effectively

Cons of Search Ads

• Popular keywords in B2B industries can be highly competitive, leading to higher costs per click.
• Demographic targeting is limited compared to social media platforms.
• Primarily text-based, offering less opportunity for visual branding.
• Lesser segmentation opportunities

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn ads target users based on their professional profiles, interests, and behavior. Here are their pros and cons:

Pros of LinkedIn Ads

• Extensive targeting options based on job title, company size, and industry, allowing precise audience segmentation.
• Ideal for B2B marketing.
• Access to high-value prospects and decision-makers
• Account-based marketing opportunities
• Offers various ad formats, like sponsored content, text ads, and InMail, providing flexibility in messaging and creative presentation

Cons of LinkedIn Ads

• Relatively costlier than Google search ads
• Cannot identify high-intent buyers unless they click on the ad
• Greater risk of ad fatigue and decreased engagement over time
• Lack of in-depth reporting and analytics tools

How to use Google ads and LinkedIn ads in tandem for a successful paid advertising strategy

While search ads and LinkedIn ads have distinct pros and cons, integrating them into a cohesive paid advertising strategy allows businesses to use each platform's strengths and increase their reach, engagement, and conversions. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Use search ads to capture users actively searching for solutions, and LinkedIn ads to raise awareness and nurture leads at different stages of the buyer's journey.
• Retarget users who interact with your LinkedIn ads through search ads and vice versa, reinforcing your messaging across platforms.
• Use data from both platforms to inform targeting and messaging strategies, optimizing performance across the board.
• Broaden your advertising channels and reduce reliance on a single platform to mitigate performance variations and adapt to algorithmic shifts.

💡Read: How to Measure LinkedIn True ROI With Factors

How to execute paid advertising across the funnel

When it comes to paid marketing, most people start with Google, which provides a decent number of quality leads by capturing searches that show intent. However, it's essential to create a well-structured funnel that attracts the right audience and converts them quickly. Instead of having countless uninterested users, it's better to have interested ones heading in the right direction. 

Here's where LinkedIn retargeting helps you reach a high-intent audience from Google and target them on LinkedIn.

1.  Pick the right advertising channels 

Consider where your ideal customers spend their time online and choose platforms with the potential to reach them. Before selecting the right platform, consider your budget and advertising goals for your paid advertising efforts. By thoughtfully selecting the right mix of channels, you can create a cohesive and effective B2B advertising strategy tailored to your unique business needs.

2. Get a high-quality and high-intent audience.

When reaching an audience on LinkedIn, you have two options. You can either target a new audience or retarget an existing one. If you choose the former, you'll reach out to a completely cold audience that may not be familiar with you or your brand, making it more challenging to capture their attention. However, suppose you choose to retarget your Google ads traffic. In that case, you'll reach out to an audience that has already shown interest in your brand by searching for relevant keywords on Google, clicking on your search or display ad, and visiting your website. This audience is more likely to have high intent and be receptive to your message.

Ideally, you should invest in both options if your budget allows it. However, if you have to choose between the two, it makes more sense to retarget a warm audience that has already shown interest in your product or service.

💡Also read: Build Better LinkedIn Retargeting Audiences with Factors

3. Optimize ad spend

Many clients want to establish a presence on LinkedIn but find advertising on the platform expensive. LinkedIn's cost per click (CPC) and lead (CPL) are relatively high compared to other platforms. However, the quality of leads on LinkedIn is worth the extra cost.

If you have already advertised on other channels, you can use LinkedIn to enhance your conversion rates. Different channels can add relevant leads to your LinkedIn campaigns, which can be part of your mid-funnel strategy. Proper retargeting of high-intent traffic via LinkedIn ads can lead to increased conversions.

4. Convert more by staying on top of their mind

According to the marketing rule of 7, "a prospect needs to "hear" the advertiser's message at least seven times before they'll take action to buy that product or service."

A customer's journey towards making a purchase is not always straightforward. They may come across your business through a LinkedIn Ad, search for your business on Google, visit your website, leave, and stumble upon you again on LinkedIn. They may revisit your website before deciding to reach out or make a purchase. Retargeting helps push website traffic towards purchase.

💡Also read: How to Measure the Impact of Paid Marketing Using Factors

Paid advertising best practices

Paid ad campaigns are dynamic, and the right strategies can significantly impact your brand's success. To improve your efforts at online paid advertising, consider the following best practices:

1. Establish realistic goals

Having measurable goals allows you to track your progress and stay on schedule. Define your KPIs to measure lead generation, sales conversion, or brand awareness success. This will help you make informed decisions and optimize your ad spend.

2. Create compelling paid campaigns 

Your ad creatives must grab the attention of your target audience. Keep them engaging, informative, and visually appealing. Avoid using jargon or complex language. Instead, focus on the value of your product and how it can solve a problem for your audience. Create a strong value proposition that highlights your unique benefits. Stand out from competitors and guide prospects to take action with a persuasive CTA.

Source: LinkedIn

3. Personalize your campaigns

Retargeting is a great way to personalize your marketing funnel for each campaign and tailor your message to the audience of that campaign. 

For example, you have a search ad campaign targeting your competitors' branded keywords, which generates much interest. You can use LinkedIn and launch a retargeting campaign based on how you compare against them and what you offer that they don't. Running retargeting ads helps you identify what drives people to click and then adjust your LinkedIn ads to push them toward your offerings.

💡Factors helps you identify accounts that view your LinkedIn ads and visit your website through a search ad. You can use this information to personalize your cold outreach and focus on accounts with higher intent. 

4. Measure and analyze

Track key metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, CPA, and ROAS to make data-driven decisions. By setting campaign goals such as a target cost per lead or target conversion rate, you can track performance and analyze audience data like CTR and impressions to improve your marketing. 

Rev up your paid advertising game with Factors

While search and LinkedIn ads have unique features and capacities, integrating them into a cohesive paid advertising strategy allows businesses to use each platform's strengths and increase their reach, engagement, and conversions. Companies can optimize performance across the board by using data from both platforms to inform targeting and messaging strategies.

Thanks to Factors, you can gain a comprehensive view of buyer journeys, understand how your target accounts interact with your ads and determine whether your ad strategy is increasing revenue. Speak to our team today to optimize your paid advertising strategy in 2024.

The current state of B2B LinkedIn advertising

LinkedIn is the place for B2B marketers to engage with key accounts and decision-makers. Unlike traditional social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn has a large user base of professional users who include precise details of job title, seniority, and department. 

Simply put, LinkedIn is the perfect place to run ABM campaigns that educate the market about the problem you solve and how you solve it best. Whether you’re a small startup looking to promote your product to a new market segment or an enterprise aiming to build brand awareness, LinkedIn is the key. 

And while there’s no doubt that LinkedIn ads can help you attract high-qualified leads, there could be a few reasons why your leadership team might be skeptical of LinkedIn as a marketing channel:

1. LinkedIn ads are expensive: As of 2024, the average CPC of LinkedIn ads ranges from $4 to $6, which is relatively pricier for SMBs looking to add LinkedIn to their marketing strategy. The CPMs could also be higher, depending on how niche your audience is. 

2. Hard to measure ROI: LinkedIn only tracks ad clicks and impressions, which doesn’t give a complete view of how your ads impact pipeline. One such example includes demo ads, where marketers typically face low conversion rates, mainly because users are less likely to sign up for a demo call while scrolling through social media. 

3. Limited control over how you show your ads: LinkedIn campaign manager allows you to upload a target account list for your ABM campaigns. However, if you want to show your ads to specific accounts showing higher intent and aren’t present in your CRM, it’s an uphill battle of scouring your tech stack and integrating data to ensure your ads are displayed to the right accounts. 

So, does this mean LinkedIn ads aren’t worth it? No, quite the opposite. ❌

Ignoring the channel altogether is a major risk, as you’ll miss out on many high-value deals. While other platforms, such as Google ads, help convert 5% of the in-market buyers, you’ll still lose out on 95% of the opportunities by not directly engaging with key stakeholders.

Source: LinkedIn

How to do LinkedIn ads the right way?

If you want to make the most bang for your buck, invest in a solution that gives you a complete view of how LinkedIn impacts your revenue and helps you optimize your spend. 

At Factors, we currently offer LinkedIn attribution, which allows you to track how LinkedIn influences pipeline, but now we've decided to take it up a notch!

Presenting: AdPilot

AdPilot finally answers every B2B marketer's long-standing question: “Are we doing LinkedIn ads right?” We’ve built out an exciting set of features that can help you generate 2x ROI from your ad campaigns: 

Audience Builder

Manually building lists across Apollo and Zoominfo is tiring, and you also tend to miss out on accounts with high buying intent. Not to mention, your data is spread out across multiple tools. With our new Audience sync feature, you can sync all your data across multiple platforms to create accurate audiences on LinkedIn and target the right accounts without the extra effort. 

Smart Reach

Naturally, your audience list will include companies of varying sizes, and some are bigger than others. We audited 100+ LinkedIn ad accounts and found that 80% of your ad impressions are taken up by the top 10% of the accounts. Why miss out on potential revenue with this lopsided distribution of impressions?

With Smart Reach, you have all the power. You can control how ads are shown to your audiences so that every account on your list has the chance to view your ads and make the right buying decisions. 

💡Learn more about our research here: Resolving LinkedIn’s Frequency Capping Paradox

Campaign Automation

Advertising is all about pitching your product to the right people, be it online or offline. Instead of displaying your ads to prospects who aren’t currently looking for a solution, use intent-based impression control and allocate your ad budget accordingly to target high-intent and in-market buyers. 

LinkedIn True ROI

Do you remember the last time you clicked on a LinkedIn ad and booked a demo straight away? Neither can we because social media channels like LinkedIn never show the complete picture of how prospects make their buying decisions. So, how do you prove LinkedIn’s true ROI to leadership?
Since every ad click doesn’t equal revenue, Factors offers view-through attribution. This gives you a granular view of how target accounts view your ads and interact with your website, giving you an accurate idea of how LinkedIn affects revenue generation.  

💡You can learn more here: Measuring LinkedIn True ROI: Click vs View-through Attribution

LinkedIn CAPI

When you’re A/B testing your ads and finally find success, you naturally want to repeat the process and continue getting positive results. 

As a LinkedIn Marketing Partner, we could always pull LinkedIn data into factors for better reporting, but with the new LinkedIn CAPI integration, you can send conversion data back to LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Now, you no longer need to rely on guesswork to scale and optimize your ad campaigns. 

Join the waitlist today

No marketer likes to see their ad budget wasted on unqualified leads. Quit letting siloed data and inaccurate audience lists get in the way of your ad performance. With AdPilot, you can use data-driven insights to effectively target the right accounts and boost your LinkedIn ROI in no time. Speak to our team today to learn how AdPilot can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy.

When you run an ad campaign on LinkedIn, you expect all the accounts in your audience list to view your ad, right? However, our research reveals a shocking truth: 80% of your ads are shown to only the top 10% of the accounts 🤯

The best way to avoid losing pipeline due to such uneven ad distribution is to use a tool that allows you to control how your ads are shown to your prospects and evenly distribute impressions across your target account list.  

In this article, we’ll explain how our newest feature, “Smart Reach,” can put an end to your impression distribution worries ⬇️

The Challenge

“Control is an illusion”  – a quote that most B2B marketers relate to when they launch their ad campaigns and leave it all to the algorithms to show their ads to the right people and accounts. A couple of accounts may have viewed your ad too many times, whereas many may not have seen the ad enough. 

Here’s an example to help you understand how impression frequency works on LinkedIn:

Suppose you have a target account list of 500 accounts, including SMBs and large companies, with the top 10 accounts being enterprises with 1000+ employees. Since enterprise companies have more employees that match your ICP, LinkedIn will more likely show your ads to larger companies, neglecting the rest of your account list. 

This causes a handful of issues like:

• Ad fatigue and underexposure to your ads: Since your ads aren’t evenly distributed across your account list, some prospects would face ad fatigue, whereas others may not have seen them enough.

• Losing out on potential deals: If a sufficient number of ads are not shown to the majority of your accounts, you risk missing out on high-value deals and costing your company significant opportunities.

• Wasted ad spend: If 10% of your accounts consume 80% of the impressions, there is much room for improvement in marketing efficiency.

A lack of frequency capping becomes a major problem, especially when launching brand awareness campaigns, where your main objective is to maximize reach. 

You could maneuver this issue by creating smaller audiences across different campaigns. However, the smaller the audience size for a campaign, the higher the CPMs - which again results in wasted ad spend. Not to mention, it would get increasingly tedious to manage multiple smaller campaigns. 

💡Check out our research in detail here: LinkedIn Frequency Capping: Impact Measurement

So how do you possibly win in this lose-lose situation? 2 words: Smart Reach.

“LinkedIn budgets can scale very quickly — and if you’re unsure you’re reaching the right people, you’re essentially setting your money on fire. With Smart Reach, we’ve been able to reach the largest spread of accounts visiting our website without putting too much undue weightage on larger accounts.” – Abhishek Iyer, Director of Marketing at Descope.

Introducing: Smart Reach 

Our newest feature allows you to manage the frequency with which your ads are displayed to each account, ensuring maximum reach, lower CPMs, and impact. Plus, with intent-based impression control, you can ensure that your ads are only shown to relevant and high-intent accounts. 

Here’s an example of how Descope uses Smart Reach  to improve its ad distribution:

We analyzed Descope’s LinkedIn ad metrics to examine how Smart Reach affects campaign reach and ad spend. Our research revealed that without setting a frequency cap, the ads reached 8214 accounts, and the top 25 target accounts consumed 35% of ad impressions. This led to an ad spend of approximately $4700. 

We set up a cap of 2000 impressions at an account level across all campaign groups to analyze whether there would be an impact on reach. After a month, we noticed the following improvements:

• Impressions consumed by the top 25 companies have decreased by 17% within a month.
• Descope was able to redistribute around 158,841 impressions that were earlier consumed by the top 25 companies.
• Ad spend was reduced by 22% ($1,000 less!), with CPM going down from $7 to $4
• The reach was reduced by only 6% 

This proves that Smart Reach not only saves your ad spend but also ensures that your reach remains intact. 

3 key benefits of Smart Reach 

Better reach per dollar spent 

Imagine investing a good chunk of your budget on LinkedIn ads, only to realize your ads don’t reach all the accounts in your audience list. Well, with Factors, you don’t have to imagine. Smart Reach allows you to redistribute impressions to reach more accounts per dollar spent, helping you make the most of your ad spend.

Intent-based ad distribution 

Saying that all prospects are equal sounds good in theory, but in reality, that’s not the case. Ideally, sales-ready accounts should receive more ads than others. However, after analyzing 100+ LinkedIn ad accounts, we’ve found that most ads are distributed to large companies. With Factors, you can configure Smart Reach rules so that the high-intent accounts who visit the pricing page, engage with G2 pages, open emails, etc., receive ads more frequently than others. 

Conversely, accounts that have already booked a demo or expressed negative interest in a sales email should be shown fewer ads. Factors empowers intent-based ad distribution to ensure an appropriate ad frequency for each account based on intent levels.

Avoid over and underexposure

Just like Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, there should never be too much or too little of anything, whether porridge or LinkedIn ads. Your high-intent prospects shouldn’t have to deal with seeing the same ad over and over again, but they should also see your ads enough times to consider your product for their needs. Smart Reach ensures that your impression distribution is just right – automatically showing the right frequency of ads to the right accounts. 

“Within a month of setting up our frequency capping rules with Factors, we’ve saved 216,448 ad impressions and reached the largest spread of accounts per dollar spent. We’re excited to scale this up in the future.”—Abhishek Iyer, Director of Marketing at Descope.

Join the waitlist today

Every marketer launches their campaigns, hoping their ads reach all the relevant accounts at the right time. With Smart Reach, you can make it happen. Factors AdPilot offers a comprehensive range of features that ensures you make the most of your ad spend while increasing revenue via LinkedIn ads. Contact our sales team to learn how you can use AdPilot to take your LinkedIn game to the next level.

When you think of an ABM platform, Demandbase naturally comes to mind. Demandbase (also known as Demandbase One) has been around since 2007 and has served 10,000+ customers after its launch. 

But is it the right fit for your business? Get your answer as you scroll through our article and learn about the 5 Demandbase alternatives currently in the market ⬇️

Why look for a Demandbase alternative?

Demandbase offers a range of features such as:

• Account Identification: Identify high-potential accounts visiting your website or showing buying intent signals online.
• Account Targeting: Tailor marketing campaigns to specific accounts based on firmographics, technographics, and buying behaviors. (e.g., industry, technology used, website activity)
• Multiple Journeys: Create and manage personalized marketing journeys for different account segments based on product lines, business units, or other factors.
• Campaign Influence Metrics: Track and measure the impact of marketing campaigns on account progression within the sales funnel.

However, according to reviews across sites like G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius, users have stated that the setup process is tricky and the UI is outdated:

If you’re an SMB looking for an ABM platform, let’s examine what you must consider when making the purchase.

4 Factors to consider when looking for a Demandbase alternative

Cost-effective: Users have found that Demandbase's pricing is steep compared to other products that offer similar features. Find a tool that provides the best bang for your buck.

Easy to use: Choose a tool with an intuitive user interface that doesn’t have a deep learning curve. This will save you time and help you make the most of the tool.

Intent signals from relevant sources: Remember, there is such a thing as “too many signals.”  make sure you have the right data from channels that most contribute to revenue impact.

LinkedIn ads ROI: If you’re running LinkedIn ads, you must ensure you’re making the most of your ad budget. 

Top 5 Demandbase alternatives

Want to find the right tool and boost your marketing ROI? We’ve done the heavy lifting and compiled a list of the six best Demandbase alternatives you can consider:

1. Factors.ai

Factors is a marketing attribution platform that helps marketers streamline their GTM efforts and optimize their marketing spend. We offer multiple features like:

• Factors can pull intent signals from LinkedIn and G2, which gives greater visibility into high-intent accounts considering your solution. Plus, you can unify all your account-level data from multiple sources.
• Our account and engagement scoring features allow you to assign a value to every interaction an ICP account has with your website. You can now prioritize accounts with high scores to close deals faster. 
• Our segment insights feature lets you understand how different user segments resonate with your product. 
• Factors can also help you personalize your cold outreach based on intent data, thereby taking your sales strategy to the next level.
• Use Factors to create custom workflow automations to simplify your business processes across multiple CRMs
• Our new AdPilot feature can improve the way you run LinkedIn ads and help you get 2x ROI from your ad campaigns

Why Factors is a good alternative to Demandbase

• Demandbase doesn’t have many features that showcase the impact of paid marketing compared to Factors.
• Our IP database includes 4.6 billion companies, whereas Demandbase has 3.6 billion.
• You cannot conduct segment-wise analysis on Demandbase
• LinkedIn AdPilot gives a complete overview of how LinkedIn plays a role in generating revenue, a feature currently missing in Demandbase

Limitations

• Factors doesn’t offer deanonymization at a contact level

Pricing

💡Learn more about our pricing here

2. Albacross

Albacross is a well-established B2B marketing data platform that leverages advanced intent data to identify and capitalize on hidden opportunities from website traffic.

• Website Visitors: Turn website traffic into companies and capture accounts in the buying window
• IP Enrich API: Apply real-time buyer intelligence across your technology stack
• Account-Based Marketing: Target key accounts with customized ads on 90% of ad space globally
• Buying Signals: You can combine Bombora’s powerful intent signals with Albacross to uncover the buyer journey

Why Albacross is a good alternative to Demandbase

Albacross has contact enrichment within the same platform, so there would be no requirement to integrate with multiple enrichment tools

💡Also read: Top 10 Albacross Alternatives

Limitations

• Albacross doesn't allow custom engagement scoring 
• The platform doesn’t include LinkedIn view-through attribution

Pricing

3. Rollworks

RollWorks is an Account-Based Platform with ABM and advertising solutions that allow marketers to deeply understand their buyers and attribute revenue to marketing initiatives such as display ads, social ads, and triggered emails. 

Why Rollworks is a good alternative to Demandbase

Users have reported that it is a far more feasible solution than Demandbase, with a cost of $975 per month. 

Limitations

Customers have mentioned that running LinkedIn ad campaigns with Rollworks can get tedious, and they face issues when showing ads to the right accounts 

Pricing 

Rollworks doesn’t mention its pricing on its website. They have separate plans for Account-based marketing and Account-based advertising. 

4. Recotap

Recotap is an AI-driven Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platform that helps B2B Marketers run targeted ABM campaigns at scale. They break their offering into 3 categories:

• Data Hub: Account level, Contact level, Technographics, or Intent data. You'll find it all here
• Engagement Hub: Engage your accounts across multiple channels with personalized content
• Insights Hub: Let our AI crunch data from ads, emails, CRM, website visits & more to provide the right insights

Why Recotap is a good alternative to Demandbase

• Recotap is a better platform for brands aiming to leverage LinkedIn for ABM 
• It is a cost-effective solution 

Limitations

• Limited reporting options 
• It doesn’t integrate with G2 

Pricing 

Recotap doesn’t have its pricing on its website, but they offer 3 pricing tiers (Starter, Growth, Enterprise) 

5. Common Room

Why Common Room  is a good alternative to Demandbase

• Common Room focuses heavily on community management and engagement, a feature currently unavailable in Demandbase
• If you prioritize a seamless and intuitive user experience, Common Room might offer a more straightforward approach compared to Demandbase
• Common Room offers flexible pricing plans that might be more suitable for smaller businesses or startups compared to Demandbase

Limitations

• Common Room cannot derive intent signals from G2 
• It’s a relatively newer product, so many features are still under development
• Engagement scoring feature isn’t as advanced as other tools on this list

Pricing

Choose the best Demandbase alternative

Streamlining sales and marketing alignment is a cakewalk when you have the right ABM platform. You must invest in a solution that helps you make the most of your marketing effort without burning a hole in your pockets.Sign up for a free trial today to understand how Factors allows you to leverage intent signals and accurately measure the impact of your marketing campaigns.

Prospecting is never easy. The constant struggle to filter through contact data manually and find the right emails for outreach sequences makes every sales rep’s head spin. Now, it’s contact enrichment tools to the rescue!

Clay is a powerful data enrichment tool that allows you to scale your lead lists and personalize your outbound motion. But is Clay the right fit for you?
Read ahead to learn more about Clay and five other Clay alternatives you can evaluate to find the perfect contact enrichment tool for your needs ⬇️ 

About Clay: Pros, Cons, and Pricing

Clay is a data automation platform that helps you build enriched prospect lists. With over 75 enrichment tools and a built-in AI agent, it's easily the most powerful enrichment tool for sales teams of all sizes. The only downside is that it gets expensive if you don't use the credits efficiently.

Here’s a breakdown of Clay’s pricing:

What should you look for in a Clay alternative?

Cost-effectiveness: As mentioned above, Clay credits can become expensive and drive up your company's costs. You must find a solution that offers the most bang for your buck.

Intent signals: Along with contact enrichment, it is crucial to ensure your emails resonate with your target prospects. When you layer in signal-based selling, you can drive consideration quicker.

Learning Curve: While Clay has a user-friendly interface, mastering all its features can take some time. You must ensure you invest in a tool that is easy to use for all sales team members.

5 Clay alternatives you must consider

Now that you know what you should look for before investing in a contact enrichment tool, here are 8 Clay alternatives to review: 

Apollo.io

Apollo.io is a data intelligence and sales engagement platform with a vast B2B contact database of over 275M professional contacts. 

Why Apollo.io is a good Clay Alternative

• Apollo has comprehensive CRM capabilities, which aren't currently present in Clay. 
• Apollo also has advanced reporting features and detailed filtering options that allow users to build better-targeted lists.

Limitations 

• Users have reported that the Chrome extension sometimes doesn’t provide accurate phone numbers.
• The platform can be tricky to use since it has a vast range of features and multiple use cases.

Pricing

Cognism

Cognism is a sales intelligence platform specializing in machine learning to accelerate sales and recruitment leads. Their key features include international coverage and unrestricted access to people and company-level data.

Why Cognism is a good alternative to Clay

• Cognism is designed specifically for B2B sales, offering high-quality data that is essential for prospecting and lead generation. For businesses focused primarily on B2B outreach, Cognism offers a more targeted solution.
• Cognism’s emphasis on providing accurate data and maintaining compliance with GDPR and CCPA makes it a strong choice for businesses that prioritize data integrity and legal compliance.
• Cognism’s user-friendly interface and focused feature set make it easier for sales teams to deploy and use compared to Clay's potentially more complex setup.

Limitations 

• Clay’s ability to create custom workflows and automate a wide range of processes makes it a more versatile tool. It can be used across departments, not just for sales.
• While Cognism excels in providing sales data, Clay’s strength lies in enriching data from various sources, giving businesses a more holistic view.
• Clay’s strong integration capabilities allow businesses to create a more cohesive and efficient tech stack, which is particularly beneficial for companies looking to streamline multiple business processes.

Pricing

Cognism currently doesn’t offer pricing details on their website. However we did some digging and wrote it in our article here: Cognism Pricing, Alternatives & More | 2024

Instantly

Why Instantly is a good alternative to Clay

• Instantly is designed specifically for email outreach and lead generation, making it more effective and streamlined for this purpose.
• Instantly may offer a more affordable solution for businesses primarily needing email automation compared to Clay.com's broader, more complex feature set.
• Instantly’s specific tools to improve email deliverability, such as spam testing and email warm-up, can directly enhance the effectiveness of email campaigns

Limitations 

• Instantly’s lead management features are lacklustre when compared to Clay
• Instantly.ai’s performance speed has been flagged as a concern. Many users have experienced delays and sluggishness in executing tasks and accessing functionalities.
• Integrating Instantly.ai with other systems and applications has posed challenges for users. This has caused compatibility issues and disruptions in workflow integration.

Pricing

LeadIQ

LeadIQ is a prospecting and sales intelligence tool that simplifies the process of capturing, enriching, and engaging with leads. It is designed to help sales teams find contact information quickly and efficiently and use that data for outreach.

Why LeadIQ is a good alternative to Clay

• LeadIQ offers a more user-friendly experience for teams that must ramp up quickly without diving into complex workflows. 
• LeadIQ excels in capturing and enriching prospect data in real time directly from LinkedIn and other sources.

Limitations 

• Users have stated that the Chrome extension doesn’t work effectively on LinkedIn
• Multiple G2 reviews mention that the UX feels a bit cluttered

Pricing

Lusha

Lusha is a sales prospecting tool that has earned its reputation for simplicity and reliability. It’s particularly known for its extensive database of contact information, providing users with accurate direct dials and email addresses. 

Why Lusha is a good alternative to Clay

• Lusha offers a user-friendly interface for teams seeking a simple sales prospecting tool.
• The browser extension integrates directly with LinkedIn, instantly capturing prospect details.
• Best suited for smaller teams or those new to sales prospecting who need an efficient and simple solution.

Limitations 

• ​​Lusha's database, although extensive, may not cover all industries or geographic areas comprehensively.
• The solution has limited filter choices
• Sometimes it auto-populates the wrong information in the incorrect field, leading to multiple inaccuracies.

Pricing

Factors + Clay: A new era of outbound sales

What’s the one thing that can take your sales strategy to the next level? Two words: Intent data. When you combine Clay’s enrichment solution with Factors’ intent signals, you get a complete view of in-market accounts, thereby allowing you to refine your outreach strategy.

Check out our Factors x Clay playbook to understand how to make the most of both platforms and supercharge your outbound motion. 

Choose the best Clay alternative today

With so many tools in the market, finding the right contact enrichment tool can be tricky. You must ensure that you choose the right sales prospecting tool that offers accurate information and can be adopted by everyone on the sales team.