How to use IP address data to add value to sales funnels

Data fuels better buyer journeys. That’s a trend that’s here to stay. It’s no wonder then that future-oriented organizations prioritize accuracy when it comes to 3rd party data partners.

In fact, that’s what Visitor Queue – a company that specializes in quality lead generation and website tracking – was looking for in a data partner. More on this later. But for now, let’s look at the ways IP data fuels optimized sales funnels.

IP address data: What sales and marketing teams need to know

Without the right foundation, IP insights won’t improve the buyer journey. That’s why adding value to sales funnels with IP data starts here: is the data accurate and clean?

By its very nature, IP data changes every day, meaning that IP providers need to regularly update and clean their databases. So here’s an insider tip: before choosing a provider, make sure you understand how often they update their data.

IPinfo, for instance, updates the database every 24 hours. Accuracy, in other words, is a top priority for our team because our users need to be able to develop reliable use cases.

What sales intel can be gathered from IP data?

While IP address data protects the exact identity and location of individual users, it reveals other details that are valuable for sales funnels.

Firmographics for high-value leads

For starters, IPs show what companies are visiting your site. These firmographics give sales and marketing teams an edge over competitors who are trying to connect with the same leads. Account-based marketing teams can then target these leads early in the buyer journey.

Here’s how this works. IPinfo’s IP to Company data reveals firmographics to fuel better buyer journeys:

• Company names
• Domain names
• Company classifiers

Take Company classifiers, for instance. These specify what type of organization is visiting your site: ISPs, businesses, educational institutions, or hosting services.

What can you do with these details? For starters, you can personalize experiences by providing different offers for different types of organizations.

Buyer intent

Additionally, IP data can help to enrich buyer intent data - where customers are in the buying cycle and what steps they might take next.

For instance, say that a lead visits your pricing page. Before investing your sales and marketing resources into this lead, it would help to know more about buyer intent.

• What company does this website visitor work for?
• Does this company match the characteristics of other high-value leads?
• Does this visitor have a high intent to purchase?

In other words, you can leverage otherwise anonymous website traffic to weigh the cost-benefit of pursuing this lead. This is just one of the many ways to use intent data gathered from IP addresses.

Demographic insights

IP address data can also help companies narrow their marketing focus to specific high-value leads.

Here’s just one way IP insights help this scenario. IP to Geolocation data reveals demographics or location insights that are characteristic of your typical high-value customer. Using this information, ABM teams can enrich their lead data with proprietary IP insights (Since this data is derived from in-house sources, competitors don’t have access to this information).

Then when website visitors’ location or demographic data matches other high-value leads, marketing and sales teams can start connecting with these high-value leads earlier in the buyer journey.

Inspiration: How to use IP data to add value at every stage of the buyer journey

While sales funnels can be broken down into a variety of different stages, the reality is that no model is perfect. For the purpose of this article, however, we’re going to focus on four specific phases: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Loyalty.

Awareness

IP data can be used to raise awareness by customizing content for visitors who may not be familiar with your product or services. This includes content forms like these:

• Ebooks: Expert advice and how-tos
• Videos: How-tos or industry advice for hot topics
• Blog articles: Actionable tips for customer pain points

Using IP to Company data, ABMs can separate ISPs and other traffic from high-value leads. Take the IP 123.8.8.8, for instance. It points to China Unicom Henan Province Network - an ISP. Say, however, that you’re targeting Adtech companies. How great would it be if, based on an IP address and other data, your target audience sees instructional or informational video that’s geared toward high-value Adtech leads? Or you could use customized content as an email capture so your sales team can reach out personally to raise more awareness.

We could also talk about all the round-about ways IP data can gradually build awareness, like IP targeting and other forms of geolocation advertising. The whole point is this, though - IP data can help target qualified leads early on in the buyer journey.

Consideration

Nothing sends a customer away from your site faster than unfamiliar languages or currencies. One way to avoid this barrier and help customers continue on their buyer journey is to use geolocation data to select the correct language, prices, currency, and shipping policies for each site visitor.

IP data can also help populate relevant content based on IP to Company information. For instance, if the company domain name points to a high-value lead, you can use this information to customize the content they see on your site.

To illustrate this, let’s consider IPinfo. If we detect a high value lead on the website, we can prioritize the following content:

1. Enterprise offering.
2. More detailed information about our data.
3. How we compare to other providers.

All this to say that IP data can help customize content based on geolocation, taking into consideration the questions, concerns, and geolocation represented by high-value leads.

Decision

As customers weigh their options, there are a few ways to use IP data to make smoother conversions. For instance, pre-filling forms using geolocation insights is one way to make an easier sign-up or checkout experience.

Plus, just like all the other funnel stages, IP information helps companies customize content. In the decision stage, however, customers will benefit from seeing other customers’ success stories as well as tools or resources that help users be successful.

If your marketing team is creating content targeted towards buyers in the Decision phase, IP address data can make it even easier for customers to find the stories and tools they need in order to convert.

Loyalty

Companies are 60-70 percent more likely to sell to an existing customer. Compare this to the 5-20 percent rate of sales made to new customers. Plus, acquiring a new customer can cost around five times as much as retaining a current buyer.

These are just a few of the many reasons that brands may want to consider IP data to improve brand loyalty.

Consider a telecom brand, like O2. Using IP to Carrier data, they can see the mobile network that customers are using while visiting O2’s website. If it’s a current O2 customer, they can personalize site content to encourage more brand loyalty.

On the other hand, if the visitor is a T-mobile user, O2’s site could again personalize the experience. In this instance, a telecom company, like O2, could highlight a video, infographic, or homepage that compares theri coverage to other mobile networks.

In short, there are a variety of ways IP data adds value to sales funnels each step of the way. This article is by no means exhaustive. In fact, if you have other ways you use IP data to add value to sales funnels, we’d love to hear about it! But for now, here’s just one success story a customer shared with us.

Case study: VisitorQueue

In the age of the third-party cookie demise, turning anonymous site visitors into leads may seem like a pipedream. However, we’ve seen companies use IP data to introduce qualified leads into their sales funnel.

For example, VisitorQueue uses IP data to help their customers turn website visitors into leads. They use a unique system of IP address reversal to separate unqualified leads from qualified potential customers.

Initially, they relied on Google Analytics for a significant portion of their data. Then, however, Google changed its data fields, leaving out some important insights that VisitorQueue relied on for lead generation.

That’s when they started searching for a reliable IP data partner. This included a significant vetting process that prioritized data quality. This led to a partnership between IPinfo and VisitorQueue. And now they’re powering quality lead generation better than ever before.

IPinfo is one of the best services out there. Their data is very good and has allowed us to identify more companies for our clients than we could have without them. - Nick Hollinger, Co-Founder & CEO

All this to say, IP data is valuable when it comes to lead generation, Sales Intel, targeted marketing, and optimized sales funnels.

Ready to start using your IP data to add value to your sales funnel? Talk with one of our data experts for more tips!