B2B purchase intent scoring involves collecting a prospect’s activities and converting this data into a purchase intent score. 

Marketing and sales teams can collect this data through digital avenues (such as website interactions), email interactions, and non-digital interactions, such as the results of a cold call. 

B2B purchase intent scoring helps marketing and sales teams identify and prioritize which accounts to target with their limited resources. 

How to use purchase intent data

Using account-based intent scoring in a marketing and sales strategy helps teams decide how to best nurture prospects during their purchase journeys. This data also provides insights into which marketing and sales content performs best. 

Purchase intent data can help marketers gain intelligence into which accounts show interest in topics surrounding a particular set of products and services. 

Intent scoring is a time-sensitive data point, so it is crucial to know precisely when an account shows interest. 

When the data reveals that a prospect is showing purchase intent, sales teams, specifically sales development representatives (SDRs), need to start their inbound sales process with prospects that show purchase intent and fit the definition of the target market. 

Furthermore, intent scoring data can be broken up into two groups: internal intent data and external intent data.

Internal purchase intent data

Internal purchase intent data (first-party data) originates when a company captures activity on its touch points with marketing automation tools. 

For example, companies can collect information on their marketing website, marketing emails, cold calling, etc. Many companies, including Convey Digital, assist marketing and sales teams in collecting internal purchase intent data.

External purchase intent data

Marketing and sales teams collect external purchase intent data (third-party data) from sources outside their properties. This external intent data can offer insights into what leads are reading and searching on the internet. 

For example, publisher networks collect data on what visitors read, download, or search on their web properties. Bombora and The Big Willow are companies that assist in leveraging external intent data in sales and marketing strategies. 

Companies often use external purchase intent data to deliver personalized messaging to execute more targeted and timely advertising campaigns.