Salesforce launched Data.com in 2011, in partnership with D&B, but has since decided to gradually sunset the platform. Data.com offered a store of company and customer data for use in sales and prospecting.
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HG Insights Platform
Score 4.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
The HG Insights platform provides a view into global industries, markets, and companies allowing users to identify the most valuable opportunities and build strategies to maximize revenue and accelerate growth.
Data.com is a good prospecting and data information tool for any agency or company doing outbound prospecting. Data.com requires you to also have Salesforce CRM, so this tool is really only suited for those companies that can afford Salesforce. Because of this, Data.com seems like a better fit for companies with at least 30 or more employees (total in the company) and at least 5 Salesforce users. Data.com is not a good fit for small businesses.
The HG Insights Platform has helped us with GTM planning as we segment accounts amongst our verticals. There are verticals with specific tech stacks that we would like to prioritize, and HG Insights allows us to do that. The account scoring allows us to prioritize outreach efforts. We are able to use the technographics to weigh scoring and assign those accounts out accordingly.
Even though it has a lot of features, sometimes it gets overwhelming for a newbie. So I would really appreciate it if the user interface gets more friendly.
There are some digital advertising channels that Data.com struggles to connect. Also, within some channels like LinkedIn, it would be great if data.com could get more granular on ad type, ad targeting level (speaking from a marketing perspective).
It has limited visualization capabilities where there is a lot of scope for improvement.
Very intuitive to use and I've never had any confusion with features. Anyone can create an account and use the platform simply by adding a contact or company into the database to earn points. It's a great option if you don't have budget for lists or pay services. It is easy to use and anyone can benefit from it.
It’s very easy to use, and the team is very responsive and friendly to work with. The information is unique and usable and can complement some of the data we get from call recordings. The integration with Salesforce is easy to implement and offers good insights into our database.
Whenever I've had a question their support has responded pretty quickly and gives me exactly what I am looking for. I have not had any technical issues so I can't speak to issues there, but as far as general questions from a free user they have impressed me with how quickly they get back to me and the thoroughness of their answers.
The accuracy of Data.com versus SalesIntel is second to none. Data.com integrates with our current Salesforce platform, which takes out a lot of the manual manipulation of lists that we used to have to do when we had other platforms. This is particularly helpful because time is money.
We have evaluated all of these vendors and some are used in tangent with the HG Insights Platform. We found that for technographic data in particular HG gave the best coverage, but a few of these do help "fill the gaps" when occasion calls. We also use multiple intent engines to help verify trends rather than being reliant on one platform. Other vendors also offer contact data as well which is integral for our outbound marketing campaigns which HG does not cover. Overall HG does perhaps stack up better than some of these however, it is only one source of data and using multiple is necessary to give a reliable result.
As a freelancer, I've made thousands of dollars building sales lists, for what began as a $50 trial.
Cross referencing with LinkedIn helps to explain to clients the job title progression a person has had, which can add to your credibility and strengthen your report content.
Data.com hasn't had a negative return for me. Every dollar and minute of effort I have used it was worth it.
I don't massively get involved in financial matters, but the propensity models we use internally to help run our campaigns are certainly a big factor when our sales people approach our clients.
Every campaign sold now comes with a flat data fee for us to run and use a propensity model for the activity we complete on behalf of our clients.
Whilst the client will never see the raw data behind the model (of which HG does play a part along with our other data sources) they are briefed on the methodology and reasoning behind them.
