Outbound Glossary
Intent data
Signals that someone may be researching a purchase. Sold as certainty, usually bought as probability, and often aggregated far from the person.
Intent data infers interest from behaviour: content consumed, searches run, pages visited, topics engaged with. Providers sell it at account level and sometimes at contact level.
Two things to hold onto. The signal is usually about a company and not the person you will write to, so the connection is an assumption. And the same data is sold to your competitors, so by the time it reaches you the account may already have heard from four people. Treat it as a timing hint, not a lead.
The alternative is to observe rather than buy: public events you can date and point at a named company. SONAR™ is built on that second kind of evidence.