Buyer Intent Data, also commonly referred to as Digital Footprints, is the perfect tool to hunt down those elusive prospects and fill your sales pipeline. Merlin Intel has made it easy to get started on this journey! This menu item from the main Merlin Intel Dashboard, Who’s Shopping? is easy to use and a must-have in your sales prospecting toolkit.
Who’s Shopping Dashboard #
The Who’s Shopping? Dashboard found within the main Merlin Intel Dashboard is located directly under the Who to Contact? option on the left-hand side of the screen. From here, you will see links to Leads, Campaigns, My Customer Profile, Keyword Summary, and Prebuilt Campaign. So, let’s go ahead and dive in to learn more!
Main Dashboard Page #
This page was designed to give you an overview, or high-level glance, of who is shopping for your product or service based on your custom settings. To get started on our walk-through, go to your main dashboard page, click on Who’s Shopping?, then click on Dashboard. From this point forward, as we discuss the different menu items, they will always be located under the Who’s Shopping? submenu.
Before we dive into the data on this page, I would like to point out that the very top window box with a drop-down menu for Campaign is significant in that you want to be sure you are viewing the campaign you think you are! Therefore, when viewing the data listed on this screen, you will want to begin by selecting the campaign and date range and then clicking on the Update Dashboardbutton. If you don’t click this button, the data will not update.
This main page starts with your four boxes across the top of the window: Average Score, Total Leads, Competitors, and Accounts at Risk.
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Average Score #
This number tells you the average score of the digital footprint for the keyword(s) selected for the campaign you are viewing. For example, in the box shown above, you will see an Average Score of 1. This tells me that for the Total Leads, which was 41, the average score of those leads was a 1, or that they met the criteria of our Intent Signals 1 time per lead on average for the time frame selected.
Drill Down the Number #
By clicking on the Leads Menu item under Dashboard, you will pull up a complete listing of the leads for this campaign. You can view the company breakdown and the score per company from the main screen – this defaults to 5 entries but can be expanded by clicking on the dropdown menu under Companies Showing The Most Interest. You can also select which campaign you are viewing, and filter out the results by date, by company data, or by location.
Real-World Example: We have set up a campaign that will follow the keywords b2b marketing and b2b sales. ABC company was picked up researching the term b2b sales on 2/7/2022. Another company, New Sales, researched the term b2b sales and also b2b marketing on 2/8/2022. The score for ABC company is 1 and the score for New Sales is 2.
Total Leads #
This number is the total of unique leads for that campaign. For our example, we have 41 Unique Leads Total. This does not mean a total of 41 footprints; this is a total of 41 unique leads each of which can have scored 1 or above for meeting the researching criteria listed for this campaign.
Drill Down the Number #
Once again, by clicking on the Leads Menu item under Dashboard, you will pull up a complete listing of the leads for this campaign. This list will provide you with the data available: Logos, Company Names, Locations, Employees, Revenue, Industry, Keywords researched, and their total score. By clicking on the Company Name you can focus on the Company Details.
Towards the bottom half of the screen under Available Contacts, you will be able to filter, export, save, and/or download those contacts. Next to that, you will see Intent Signals. Clicking on this will bring up the intent signals (Digital Footprints) your campaign picked up.
Competitors #
This number shows how many digital footprints were left behind by engaging with a competitor. This means that of the leads that we picked up, these leads also engaged on some level with a listed competitor. How do we know who your competitors are? You tell us by going to the Configuration section of the dashboard, and My Competitors. – replace with, You tell us by adding your competitor domains into your Custom Who’s Shopping? Campaign!
Accounts at Risk #
This number is used when you have uploaded your customers and your competitors in order to monitor your current customers for Risk Level. You will see numbers listed here when one of your listed customers is picked up researching keywords or competitors that you have listed for one of your campaigns. This is intended to be an early warning signal that something is amiss with your customer and they are researching solutions to services or products you currently provide for them.
Leads #
The Leads section has been touched on a few times above, but let’s go over it one more time. When you click on this menu item, it will open to a search box at the top of the screen and a listing of Companies Showing The Most Interest section below. To view the results of the campaigns that you have created, select that campaign from the Campaign drop-down box, input the date range that you are interested in, then drill down further by adding filters from within the Company and Location drop-down boxes. We recommend that you start your search with little to no filters, then drill down as you go. Over filtering can limit your results and cause you to miss out on important leads!
When you are finished outlining your criteria, click the search button, and the results will be displayed below. You can then click on companies of interest to pull up the specific company details and their score from these results. As you scroll down the screen, you will also see the available contact names, titles, locations, and if a phone number and email address are available. To view those specific details on a contact, simply click on them. You can also export and save to your account. Once saved, you can view all your saved contacts and export them as needed under the “Saved Contacts” menu.
It is important to note that you will be prompted to do so when clicking on their name if you have not already downloaded this contact. Downloading a contact will deduct 1 credit from your account. If you do not wish to use a credit, say No to this prompt. The number of credits available to your account will depend on the purchased package.
Contact Details #
When you do purchase a contact, it will open the Contact Details box. This box displays the contact’s name, email address, office address, phone number, education, the skill set they have listed, job function, and gender. These will be populated according to the information available. You will also see two boxes next to their email address – a number and “pending”. The number is the Historical Email Confidence score and is based on how confident we are that this email is valid. The Pending box is the Realtime Email Confidence score that will be populated within 5 – 10 minutes of download and is based on the latest results of our accuracy tests.
Campaigns #
This section of the Who’s Shopping? menu is where you will go to set up your intent campaigns. Each account is allotted 1 Custom campaign and 3 Prebuilt campaigns.
Adding Your Prebuilt Campaign #
- Click on the Green Add Campaign button listed at the top left of the screen.
- Choose Prebuilt Campaign and click Next.
- A list of campaigns will be displayed with their industry-specific keywords listed to the right. Choose the prebuilt that is the best fit for your industry and click next.
- Here your campaign name and description is listed. You may edit or change these as best fits your needs and then click Next.
- The next screen will display the triggers preset for this campaign. You may view these triggers but not edit them. Click Next.
- This moves you to the Filter section. We recommend that you keep these as broad as possible and drill down on your searches instead. When you over filter a campaign at this stage, it can dramatically reduce your results. Filter as needed and then click Next.
- The final screen is for configuring your Notifications. You can have this campaign email Daily, Weekly, and/or Monthly reports by checking the box next to the email requested and adding the email addresses.
- Finish!
A successfully added campaign will have a few green boxes pop up at the right top of the screen to show that you are ready to go!
Adding Your Custom Campaign #
- Click on the Green Add Campaign button listed at the top left of the screen.
- Choose Custom Campaign and click Next.
- Now you will need to Name your campaign and put in a Description. You will also have the choice to decide how many crawlers to assign to this campaign. You are allotted one crawler per Custom Campaign – each additional crawler is extra. Click Next.
- The next window allows you to assign keywords to this campaign. Type in the keyword and then click the green add button. Below that box is the Engaged with Competitors section. Here is where you can add in your competitor’s URL such as abc.com and click add. Finally, you may also define specific categories for your campaign. For these triggers selected on this page, you can choose up to 50 total.
- This moves you to the Filter section. We recommend that you keep these as broad as possible and drill down on your searches instead. When you over filter a campaign at this stage, it can dramatically reduce your results. Filter as needed and then click Next.
- The final screen is for configuring your Notifications. You can have this campaign email Daily, Weekly, and/or Monthly reports by checking the box next to the email requested and adding the email addresses.
- Finish!
Keyword Summary #
From this menu section, a summary of the Custom Campaigns you have created based on the Campaign and date range selected will be displayed. This table will show the keywords for the chosen campaign, the number of companies researching those terms by keyword, the footprints identified for each keyword, and the utilization. This information will paint a quick picture of the keywords being tracked as a part of the Custom Campaign you created.
Conclusion #
So as you can see, Buyer Intent Data is a powerful tool that can quickly move your sales in the right direction. Companies that access the information collected from online intent data can move much faster through the sales cycle. With a powerful tool like Merlin Intel providing access to both first-party intent data collected internally and 3rd party intent data collected from online digital footprints, you can be first in the door!
The places we visit online can be a strong signal of buyer intent. Having access to that information is a powerful tool.