ZoomInfo Blog

ZoomInfo is extremely excited to jump-start February with our first tradeshow appearance of the year at Marketing Sherpa’s E-mail Summit in Las Vegas.  And of course, it’s only normal for us to give away awesome prizes for stopping by our booth.  Fill out a survey or take a demo and you’re automatically a winner of one of five Vegas-style prizes including a Kindle, $25 AMEX Gift Cards, 1,000 Free Contacts, E-mail Address Validation up to 2,500 contacts and 2 tickets to Cirque LOVE with dinner at Kokomos.  Everyone’s a winner in Vegas baby!

Not attending next week’s show? Find us at our second stop in Hollywood, FL on Feb 22-24 for DMA’s E-mail Evolution Conference at the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa.  We’ll be showing off our award-winning Pro solution and offering fun giveaways including $100 iTunes Gift Cards, Kindles, $25 AMEX Gift Cards and thousands of free contacts straight from the ZoomInfo database.

Want to schedule a meet up with one of our data experts?  Fill out this form

We hope to see you soon!  Viva Las Vegas!

First and foremost, we begin by sending a bold ‘THANK YOU’ to our ZoomInfo team, clients, supporters, and online followers!   In honor of both our outstanding year and recent announcement of being a CODiE Award Finalist, we decided to kick off our holiday festivities popping bottles and toasting to all our supporters.  Cheers, this one’s for you!

Inspired with this support, we decided to return the favor by donating coats, clothes, toys, and more to several charities including Coats for Kids and The Official U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots Foundation.  Please join us in this effort!

Continuing on high spirits, we’re currently preparing for our end of year events, including both our annual company pot luck and New Year’s Party!   Anticipating the assortment of homemade dishes, we’ve been prepared to eat since Thanksgiving! Well, who wouldn’t when spoiled with amazing bakers like Kelly G., who we believe to be an Account Representative during the day and a baker during the night!  Have you seen her Halloween cake! Sweet, isn’t it? Okay! Okay! Enough with our holiday celebrations and on to our industry events!

Last week our Director of Sales, Mark Ruthfield held an engaging speaking session at AA-ISP’s Boston Conference attendees, spreading his wealth of sales knowledge and company updates to other sales leaders.  One of the events he mentioned was our upcoming Sales Dream Team Recruiting Event, welcoming potential entry level candidates for our sales and marketing team.  If you know anyone suited for that event, give them the gift of opportunity and send them our way!

No, the excitement doesn’t stop there! Continuing this eventful month, our marketing team has coordinated not one but TWO webinars in just one week!  Our first webinar, “Pro Day,” uncovered several tips and tricks for generating new leads with ZoomInfo Pro.  ‘Tis the season of giving all right!   All attendees left with a FREE 24-hour exclusive pass to our tool topped off with a BONUS invitation to today’s webinar featuring Recruiting Guru, Chris Murdock, who will be directly responding to questions from recruiting professionals of all industries.  No worries though, with luck and support for reading our blog, you have just been invited!

Again, we love our supporters and we appreciate the continuous belief in our services!  To wrap things up, we’ve included the most recent picture of our ZoomInfo team, taken just a couple days ago!

Don’t forget to Follow Us for live announcements, Like Us for access to event photos, and Join us on LinkedIn!  We hope you enjoy the rest of the week and be sure to revisit our blog!

-Catherine Heng

Hands raised if you want new leads!  I repeat, hands raised if you want new leads!! I’m guessing those hands raised belong to your sales department? Oh marketing, do you feel that pressure or jeez, that stink?  We’ve all sensed that at one point in time or another but cheer up, You Are Not Alone!

Zooming to the rescue, we are here to lend you a hand, giving you our FANTASTIC FOUR secrets to generating new B2B leads!

1. Connections: It’s not about what you know but WHO you know!   Business flourishes at a fast pace most effectively through referrals and viral marketing, all part of a heavy cost saving strategy for winning new business.   Manage those connections through social media (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) to increase your lead generation initiatives in a fast, free, and fun way!  Do I smell a New Year’s Resolution? Free the social butterfly in you and make connections, connection, and let’s not forget, more connections!
2. E-mail Marketing: Saving your company’s time and money, B2B e-mail marketing is the new direct mail.  With the rising popularity in this effort, our clients are leveraging ZoomInfo’s data services (e-mail validation,  marketing lists, and data append services) to successfully execute targeted e-mail marketing campaigns, filling their bucket of leads.  Has your company checked out ZoomInfo’s B2B database?  Do it.  I dare you!
3. Content: If your products are as good as you claim than you’d be an expert in your industry.  This trust and credibility can be easily established through content marketing using blogs, newsletters, webinars, whitepapers, and e-books!  Utilizing this tactic, companies such as  Zappos, Hubspot, and Forrester have been able to convert their large audience of readers (connections: tip #1) into new leads.
4. Search Engine Optimization: True to the fact that I am extremely gullible, I believe your products are as good as you say, though that would mean I  recognize your products.  Used to generate new leads and increase brand recognition, Search Engine Optimization Marketing along with banner ads are both popular strategies to pocket new leads.  Now that’s a “win-win” situation!

How are these tips connected?  By leveraging landing pages, you’ll transform viewers into leads with limited to no cost.  Now marketing, do you still feel that pressure or jeez, that stink? Well, getting rid of both requires taking action!  Speak with us today to determine how our products can support your future lead generation initiatives.

Best of Luck!

-Catherine Heng

While the United States unemployment rate has plumped to an eye-opening rate of about 9.1%, ZoomInfo is welcoming new talent in all departments including engineering, sales, and marketing.  Yeah folks, you got it! We’re opening our glass doors to potential Zoomers which, who knows, could be YOU!

What’s all the hype with ZoomInfo?  Luckily for you, I’ve worked my way to veteran status, being able to give you a live testimonial of what’s hot at ZoomInfo.  Ouch, it burns!  With so many reasons to work at ZoomInfo, here are my FANTASTIC FOUR!

• People:  Why wouldn’t you want to work with a diverse and exceptionally talented crowd of individuals?  With about 65 employees, we learn together, work together, and even share our special occasion with one another; births to weddings and plane rides to holidays.  Aww, it’s a Kodak moment!
• Events:   With new volunteers every quarter, all Zoomers have the opportunity to plan company festivities.  Hosting over a dozen company events this year, we’ve attended two Boston sports games (Bruins and Red Sox), a golf tournament, a bowling extravaganza, and how remarkable, a couple of themed company meetings!  You know the saying, “Work hard, play hard?”  Well, we do too!
• Product:  Who isn’t aware of our award winning ZoomInfo Professional Solution, Data Services, and our FREE Community Edition? Thanks to our Engineering Team, our patent technology has a unique method of aggregating data, constantly keeps our database fresh and up-to-date.   Written with confidence and spoken truthfully, we love the quality of our data and we are POSITIVE you will too.
• Culture:  As vibrant as our snazzy new clocks and our orange and blue painted office, our culture is invigorating, exciting, and hip!  From Engineer’s Tech Fest to Sale’s Phone Blitz, we are constantly implementing new and fun ways to work together.   You can buy data and you can buy tools. Culture though, it’s priceless!

Feel free to ZOOM-IN!

Check out Careers at ZoomInfo for all posted career positions.  Already taken?  No sweat!  Follow us for future updates on new opportunities and open houses.  Curious? E-mail our Human Resources Manager, Jennie Cohen, or our Sales and Marketing Associate, Me!

Have a happy holiday and we hope to hear from you soon!

- Catherine Heng

Welcome our guest blogger, Justin Champion, who is a Marketing Consultant with Search Mojo, a dedicated search engine marketing agency. He works with new prospects to determine the best fitting search marketing solution to achieve their goals. He also is a regular blogging contributor to Search Mojo’s blog, Search Marketing Sage.

4 Tips to Improving Your New Business Prospecting Efforts

Prospecting for new business is not an easy task. Many get weighed down by the thought of having to call someone they do not know, who is not expecting their call. Ugh! However, for those of you who are new to the game or looking to reevaluate your approach, here are four tips to make your lead-generation process more effective.

1. Set a simple goal for the initial call

Do not just walk in expecting to wine and dine them. In order to gain confidence with a prospect, you are going to need trust. This is not something you are going to establish in the first two minutes. The goal here should be identifying the decision maker and setting an appointment. You are not calling to sell them something. You’re calling to set up a time to discuss their needs and appropriate solutions.

If they are not willing to schedule an appointment with you, then they are probably not going to buy from you either.

2. Slow and steady wins the race

HimynameisJustinandIworkwithSearchMojo… What? Don’t get your whole speech out in one breath. Make sure to slow your pace and pronounce your words in a clear and calm manner. If your approach sounds rushed, then you are not setting a comfortable setting for a conversation. The last thing you want to do is repeat yourself more than once—not very professional.

3. Know your prospect

Before you call, make sure you know:

• Name of company
• Industry
• Point of contact (use ZoomInfo Pro!)
• Why you’re calling

The more you know about their industry—pain points, terminology, etc—the better. Now, I am not saying that you have to perform in depth research on each prospect, but it will help to work a vertical market and get comfortable with the industry. Plus, what does it hurt to take a look at their site before calling? The worst that can happen is you’ll know more about their specific business offerings.

4. Make sure to follow up

Over 90% of the time you will not reach the individual you want to talk to. This is also where knowing what to say comes in handy—get ready to make your first impression with a memorable voicemail.

However, a voicemail or leaving a message with the operator is not going to cut it. If you really want to make a difference you have to follow up. I do not recommend pestering them, calling every day, but do not expect them to call you back because they will forget about you.

All-in-all, prospecting can be a rewarding experience with the right preparation and attitude. The goal is not to get frustrated and focus in for the long haul. Not everyone is going to want your services, but there are people interested. It is your job to find them.

ZoomInfo relies on technology to create the world’s best directory of business and employee profiles, so we are always looking for new technologies and ways to exploit existing technologies to further that objective. As the Architect at ZoomInfo, I do my best to keep up with new technologies – but there’s only so many hours in a day, and I certainly don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. (Far from it!)

From time to time, the ZoomInfo Engineering Team takes a break for a couple of days from normal project work (such as A Need To Scale: The Cassandra Project) to explore new ideas in a lively brainstorming session we call IdeaFest. Recently, I sponsored TechFest with this stated theme: “Demonstrate how new tools will allow you or ZoomInfo to do new tricks for the business or be more productive.” I provided a few examples and told everyone to be creative, which was pretty much all the ground rules!

About a week before TechFest, a whiteboard in the Engineering area was commandeered so team members could publicly announce the technology they planned to explore and new trick or productivity enhancement they thought it would enable. This got the conversation started and built excitement for the two-day TechFest.

On the morning of Day 1, all team members described their plans.  The resulting discussion enhanced the ideas and provided a mechanism for some team members to join forces.

Because we use Hadoop map-reduce and HDFS a lot, there were a number of people looking to investigate related technologies such as Mahout for machine learning and data mining; Cloudera’s distribution of Hadoop and related tools such as Scoop, Flume; and Hive for a scalable, query-able data warehouse. They created a company competitor classifier, a virtual Cloudera Hadoop cluster, and demonstrated potential ways we could use Scoop and Hive for ZoomInfo business on that cluster.

We use Cassandra for some of our large data stores, so engineers in both QA and development took the opportunity to investigate tools to query and export data in Cassandra to ease testing and debugging on those projects.  They looked at off-the-shelf tools and wrote a prototype to iterate over rows and extract key data.

Since we use SOLR as our search platform and have data in Cassandra, one engineer checked out Solandra, which integrates SOLR searching with Cassandra data. He learned that it has potential to provide SOLR searches updated immediately upon writes to Cassandra.

Some others investigated tools to increase productivity such as JRebel for web development debugging, Javeleon for NetBeans development, and Review Board for web-based code reviews.

Another wrote a prototype with Apache CXF to investigate its potential for a new API.

At the end of each day, all team members gave a demo or presented what they had done. To be fair, there were some other technologies that did not pan out – but that’s okay! By going through this exercise, we were able to determine that those technologies were not a good fit for now. Some technologies were deemed quite ready to proceed with at this time, so we’ll keep an eye on them as they mature. A handful of prototypes proved successful enough to be assigned to backlogs in specific projects for further investigation. Meanwhile, a couple of the productivity tools are already being worked into our development environment.

After TechFest, we returned to project work with some new tools to increase productivity, along with improved morale from exploring things that had been on our to-do lists. The Engineering Team is now highly motivated to leverage some of the identified technologies to do new tricks for the business.  Check back for future blog posts to see how we did that!

-Leo Laferriere, Web Architect

From the Golden State to the heart of New England, ZoomInfo has landed at multiple cities this year promoting both our award-winning data services and sales intelligence tool, ZoomInfo Pro.  Sponsoring more than 20 shows this year, we began the first half of the year with a BIG BANG, giving away thousands of dollars worth of JetBlue gift cards at shows hosted by vendors such as Selling Power, MarketingProfs, SiriusDecisions; just to name a few!

To kick off the second half of the year, we touched down in the San Francisco clouds at DreamForce; becoming a tad bit more creative with our give away, raffling off more than 20 kindles and $500 worth of other gift cards.  Oh, the fun doesn’t stop there!  We continued our journey back at Beantown, with our very own dressed up branded cocktails at our WILD after party for the Direct Marketing Association Conference, launching our brand new email validation service.  Oh! The places we’ve gone!

How could anyone forget our week of back-to-back conferences at Selling Power’s Sales and Marketing 2.0 and Eloqua Experience Conference? We started the week with a FANTASTIC presentation from our very own Director of Business Development, Don Wynns, and ended the week  giving a lucky individual a Royal Caribbean cruise for two JUST for mingling with us.  Yes, it was that easy!

Besides promoting our products, acquiring more knowledge in the industry, and giving away exquisite prizes, one of the most rewarding parts of our trade show journey is networking with different professionals.  Yes, we said it, which simply means the networking does NOT stop here!  Find us at AA-ISP’s Boston Conference on December 1, 2011 at the Westin Waltham to join the speaking session with our Director of Sales, Mark Ruthfield.

Can’t get enough?  Get in touch with our Events Manager, Michelle Pappas, or our Marketing Associate, yours truly, to schedule a time to meet!

Don’t forget to check out our trade show journey through pictures in our  Facebook Page, including candid captures of everyone who left an obvious impression on us, which may include YOU! Like Us, Follow Us, and continue to read our blog for live updates on Oh! The places we’ll go!

- Catherine Heng

To celebrate the launch of our brand-new product offering and the fact that we’re just that cool, ZoomInfo is hosting an after party for attendees of DMA 2011. The ZoomInfo DMA After Party will take place at 8:00PM on Monday October 3rd, 2011 at Legal Test Kitchen – right around the corner from the conference! Come for great food, complementary drinks and high-powered networking at the event that’s sure to be talked about the next day. And, as if you need another reason to come, we also will be giving away a Royal Caribbean cruise! Space is limited, so direct all inquiries to michelle.pappas@zoominfo.com as soon as possible. We look forward to seeing you there!