IP lookup is the first layer of data many sales teams consider when seeking to match anonymous web activity to target accounts. This activity may be happening on the seller’s website, a competitor’s website, or one of the millions of third-party B2B sites that exist on the internet today.
While this method is useful in identifying account activity, it’s really just the first clue in understanding who your buyers are. Historically, identifying accounts via IP addresses was relatively simple, but as remote and hybrid work becomes the new norm, this approach isn’t enough.
How IP Lookup Works
The process of IP lookup is pretty straightforward. Special technologies identify an IP address (the number assigned to a specific computer network) of someone browsing online and matches it to an account based on its location. For decades, these IP addresses have often linked back to corporate office addresses.
But times have changed … and so have the locations of those IP addresses. Today, employees aren’t always working at their desks in the office; in fact, more often than not, they’re working elsewhere.
Coffee shops, airports and planes, hotel rooms, public transportation, and even living room sofas have become more common work settings over the last two years.
Match Rates Require More Than IP Lookup
Due to these complexities, IP lookups don’t produce the high match rates of yesteryear. Match rates are an important part of account-based marketing. They represent how a platform associates millions of rows of anonymous intent data with real accounts.
This enables marketers and sellers to identify which accounts to pursue, where to target ads, and how to personalize content and experiences for future customers.
You could take the “close enough” IP lookup approach and hope for the best, but doing so would probably waste precious time and resources marketing to accounts that aren’t ready to engage and create an inferior experience for accounts that want to buy a product like yours.
To more precisely match web activity to accounts and achieve an optimal match rate, it’s important to also consider mobile advertising IDs and cookies. (The days of internet cookies are numbered, however; watch for a blog post from us on this topic shortly.)
How 6sense Achieves High Match Rates
6sense was designed to track anonymous buyer activity on an individual level, not just by corporate IP addresses. Our Company Graph takes a combination of IP addresses, cookies, and advertising IDs to triangulate a data connection and match anonymous buying signals to an account.
These buying signals may be on a customer’s website or across the 6sense network, and can be matched regardless of whether the account already exists in a customer’s CRM or MAP.
As people move around and work in different locations, their IP address changes. 6sense’s Company Graph is constantly learning and improving as it looks at more account data and signals, seeking patterns to map home IP addresses and other IP addresses (hello, anonymous prospect’s favorite coffee shop!) to certain companies.
We also match specific devices to accounts so you can distinguish between the activity of anonymous prospects and the activity of the kids who share the same home WiFi network.
Our unique method has helped us to achieve an 85% match accuracy and placed us as a leader in multiple Forrester New Wave reports as well as Gartner’s Magic Quadrant™ for Account-Based Marketing Platforms report.
Find More Potential Customers
While 6sense can track accounts based on lists you provide, we can also use our matching technology to find opportunities that may be off your team’s radar. We work with our users to develop ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and leverage our algorithms to identify companies that match those ICPs.
We can then automatically add them to target lists to expand reach and sales opportunities even further.
Go Beyond IP Lookup and Boost Your Match Rate
IP lookup is a solid start in matching anonymous activity to accounts, but it’s not always accurate – especially with the high rate of remote work today.
Personalizing content and experiences based on bad account data does more harm than good. Utilize a method that offers the highest likelihood of success with more opportunities, more accurate targeting, and more future customers in your pipeline.
To learn more, book a demo today.
