Web Visitor Identification: A Valuable New Tool for Active Buyer Recognition

For years, B2B and life science marketers have bemoaned the fact they can’t get the names or companies of individuals visiting their websites. The good news: the advent of web visitor identification has taken a big step in solving the problem.

This new marketing tool can determine the company or person visiting your website using data collected from browsers, IP-to-company mapping, devices, networks, and behavior patterns. With this data, it matches anonymous sessions to real organizations and individuals ¬ and then sends you alerts.

Web visitor identification helps recognize prospects with active buying intent. These tools typically provide:

• A continuous stream of fully validated and deliverable email addresses from incoming website visitors
• Information for each visitor that includes demographics, firmographics, and behavioral data such as pages visited and campaign sources
• Data that plugs directly into email, CRM, or marketing automation (MA) platforms for future lead management and use

The information web visitor identification provides typically falls into two categories: known visitor identification and company/account identification. Each category collects data from its own set of signals.

Web visitor identification tools enhance and activate first-party data – an essential factor in a privacy-first environment. The technology helps turn anonymous traffic into precise, high-performing marketing campaigns. Raw website activity is transformed into rich, first-party contact profiles that can be managed in your CRM or MA system.

Note: web visitor identification comes with limitations that affect performance.

• It will only identify web visitors that accept your site’s first-party cookies.
• It cannot identify remote workers.
• Mobile networks and VPNs are often unidentifiable.

As a result, company level match rates are 30% to 60% of visitor flow. Person-level match rates are 10% to 20%.