Intent Data

Intent data is research behaviour captured at scale. When employees at a company visit review sites, read comparison articles, search specific terms, or download category-related content, that activity generates intent signals that third-party platforms aggregate and sell to B2B sellers.

The most common sources:

• G2, Capterra, Trustpilot: Review site profiles that indicate which companies are actively evaluating your category
• Bombora: Aggregates B2B content consumption across thousands of publisher sites to score topic intent
• 6sense, Demandbase: Predict which accounts are in an active buying cycle using a combination of first and third-party data

How intent data improves outbound

Without intent data, outbound sequences go out to a static list, regardless of whether those accounts are in-market. With intent data, you can prioritise the 10–15% of your ICP that is actively researching your category right now — and de-prioritise the 85% that isn’t. This dramatically improves reply rates and meeting quality.

Intent data is most valuable at scale — for campaigns targeting hundreds or thousands of accounts, surfacing which ones to call first is a meaningful efficiency gain.

Limitations

Intent data is probabilistic, not certain. A company researching “cold email software” might be evaluating competitive tools, writing a comparison blog post, or doing market research. Treat it as a signal to prioritise, not a confirmed buying signal to act on.

Related concepts

Intent data feeds into ABM account scoring and prioritisation. It pairs with technographic data (what software they use) and firmographic data (size, industry) to build a complete picture of account readiness.