Absolutely necessary tool for Sales and Marketing staff
What do you like best about the product?
the availability of contact information
useful tools for personalizing the approach and additional information about companies
15min sessions and the latest AI tool
search is pretty user friendly and it provides a lot of information in one row, which is not the case with Sales Navigator
enhance list option is also very useful, it would be nice to have an option, when uploading a list of companies to be enhanced to have an option of adding contacts to it from our defined Buying group, so we can see which companies fit that criteria right away.
I also have a very positive experience with customer service team, they answered very fast and provided answers we needed.
What do you dislike about the product?
the verticals - I'd like more specific sub-verticals for electronics hardware
also the classification of industries/verticals can be sometimes completely misleading. When filtering the companies, it would be nice to have more information about their solutions/products in the description field
It happens from time to time to find a company that is marked as inactive but in fact, it is not. I tried to provide feedback every time that happened. Also the number of employees/contacts sometimes is significantly less than in Sales Navigator, so it can be misleading sometimes. Still, those situations are not frequent.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Finding key decision makers, understanding company latest market situation, contact information as well
Offers the ability to customize the filters, like targeting specific job levels (executive, manager, etc.) and real-time updates
What is our primary use case?
I use it to acquire data. For example, I have a product I'm selling and need to identify my target audience. ZoomInfo is similar to LinkedIn Sales Navigator or other products in that way.
I purchase data with proper consent, as per compliance regulations like the TransUnion Act in the UK or GDPR. We can directly import this compliant data into our marketing cloud or any database and then use it for outreach and communications about our product.
For example, if I have an HR product, my target audience might be all HR professionals in the world or just in North America. I can apply filters in ZoomInfo's interface to identify users already in my database and find new leads. I can then purchase credits to access their information and start communicating with them.
What is most valuable?
The filters are very good. We can completely customize the filters, like targeting specific job levels (executive, manager, etc.). Also, the real-time updates are valuable. They refresh their data every week, which is important because people change companies, old data expires, and emails become invalid.
ZoomInfo's data refreshment helps overcome those issues. Overall, it's very user-friendly in terms of filtering and data accuracy.
What needs improvement?
There are many areas for improvement. For example, unlike 6sense, ZoomInfo lacks features like lead scoring, that focuses solely on data. Sometimes, it is really difficult to identify the right data.
In my experience, around 30% to 40% of the records extracted are bounces or invalid, making it cost-ineffective. I spend a lot of money purchasing data from ZoomInfo, but end up with low quality and a high bounce rate, yet they still charge for those bounces.
ZoomInfo could improve data validation by introducing features like integrating with bounce-checking tools, removing invalid records, and ensuring better quality for customers. This may affect pricing and revenue, but it would benefit customers. A data cleanup feature within the admin tool would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for four years and two months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I don't see any bugs in ZoomInfo. It's dependent on the setup. In one of the projects I handled, it was our mistake. We downloaded data using our credits but applied the wrong filters because we didn't have an expert initially. We lost some credits due to this, but we learned a lot over two to three months. We realized that initially, we applied the wrong filters and got the wrong data, losing 50% of our credits.
However, after a few downloads, we understood how to do it correctly. From those learnings, there is no breakdown from ZoomInfo. It's essential to have a person who knows how to utilize the tool properly.
So, it is a little difficult to learn to use ZoomInfo for the first time. Not that much difficult compared to their competitors, but it is not that user friendly. The combinations of filters and identifying the features are not user friendly.
Initially, we always had to depend on support before losing our credits. So, starting from today, if you want to use ZoomInfo, you need an expert or you'll end up depending on support or losing credits. It's not rocket science, but a little difficult compared to other tools.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There are around 40 end users in my organization.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted customer support and service several times. For every login, ZoomInfo gives a thousand or two thousand credits. So, we'll take ten logins. If we need additional logins, any additional downloads, or any sample data, we reach out to them for support. They give us some point of contacts when we purchase the tool. We first reach out to them, and if they don't respond properly, we directly reach out to ZoomInfo support and see how they can assist us.
There is still room for improvement because they are not proactive. There are proactiveness and delays. It takes a lot of time to get responses from them.
Mostly, these kinds of tools focus on sales. Once the sales are done, the service is slow. We cannot escalate to a higher level because they say they have so many tickets and are going by order. Delay is the main reason I cut it down to eight. Otherwise, the service is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The main thing my company chose ZoomInfor is compliance. We have a lot of partners, but compliance is the main issue, where the UK market is the most restrictive. We don't want to end up losing our tool or paying fines if they complain about receiving emails. There are a lot of tools, but compliance is the big issue.
And the data that's available in ZoomInfo is more than their competitors. LinkedIn Sales Navigator also has good data, but it depends on pricing and data availability. We use LinkedIn to manually capture data, but it's not the same. They don't provide it. We manually go to them and grab their data, so that is different.
ZoomInfo has GDPR-compliant data where you can directly communicate with the audience. So that's why we are good with the compliance process.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is not a big deal as long as you have a clear goal and know your target.
My experience with the initial setup:
If you have a properly defined goal, you can go with any of the available options. For example, you need to determine how many leads you want in Q1 and Q2, your budget, and what tools you need. Once you onboard ZoomInfo, you also need to budget for credits. Everything needs to be planned properly, so onboarding isn't a big deal.
First, define your goal clearly. Then, you can talk to ZoomInfo and see what they offer. They can give you some raw data, which is how I onboarded. I asked ZoomInfo for a sample of 100 or 200 records so I could manually check the quality on LinkedIn.
I had a team that manually checked the data using tools like SMARTE or ZoomInfo ONE. We gave them our target audience, such as VP-level or finance leaders, and asked for a sample to assess the quality. I could then verify the sample data manually to see if it was 70% or 80% accurate compared to our competitors. If it met our standards, we would purchase credits, apply filters, clean the data, and start using it.
Deployment model:
I just use credentials to log in and purchase credits to access the data. It's not deployed on the cloud for us.
There is a project in the pipeline to fully integrate ZoomInfo data into our Salesforce cloud, with two-way syncing of directors. Currently, we manually log in to ZoomInfo, but in the future, our plan is to completely sync ZoomInfo data with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
This will eliminate manual tasks, and any new leads or data acquired by ZoomInfo will automatically reflect in Salesforce.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is moderate. It's not highly-priced, nor is it low-priced.
What other advice do I have?
I always suggest checking out competitors. Analyze four or five tools and check the data they have. Some providers do live extraction of data; they start extracting when we send the request. But ZoomInfo already has the data; we directly use the tool to purchase it. So, there are different approaches.
But if you go with ZoomInfo, just compare with the competitors about pricing and the data they have for your audience. And if everything looks good with ZoomInfo, go ahead. It's good for executing campaigns in different marketing automation tools, and it has compliance approvals. The data should have consent from the audience. That is also a major thing to consider. ZoomInfo, I would suggest. But before going ahead with ZoomInfo, understand your requirements, then match it with competitors and make a decision.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. The major positives are TAM size data. The data is reliable in ZoomInfo. Second, the consent they're giving, the GDPR compliance. They have everything. Some other providers don't even have a support team. At least ZoomInfo responds, albeit lately. But there are some teams that don't have any support at all.
So, ZoomInfo has a proper setup, but the only minuses are the delay in support and the somewhat moderate pricing. The pluses are the data size and compliance approvals, and another minus is the user-friendliness of the tool. It's not as user friendly compared to other tools.
My experience with ZoomInfo Sales
What do you like best about the product?
The most helpful feature of ZoomInfo sales is it's huge database of contacts and companies. Secondly, it's integration with various CRM platforms like Salesforce, making it easy to transfer and organise data directly in CRM.
What do you dislike about the product?
One limitation that I and my team experienced with ZoomInfo sales is it's restriction with bulk lead tranfer. Most of the time the platform didn't allow us to transfer more than 100 leads at once.
Another thing that I dislike is the presence of duplicate leads. There were multiple instances of duplicate leads for the same contact.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
In my outbound sales role, ZoomInfo sales helped me by providing contact details I needed for potebtial leads. It also helped me in identifying the high buyer intent companies, which made it easier for me to target right prospects and increase the chances of sales conversion.
Ideal for contact information and expandability.
What do you like best about the product?
Extensive contact database sets Zoominfo apart as a market leader in this aspect. While it's user-friendly for individual contributors (ICs), many representatives integrate it with other systems, considering its web browser interface limitations.
What do you dislike about the product?
Somewhat buggy - experiencing more app performance or service issues than expected from a company of their size. Simplifying some of their integration setups would be helpful. Also, their account management team is often difficult to reach based on my experience.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Assisting us in locating contact information for potential clients.
It has the information I am looking for. Though not 100% but atleast 60% right.
What do you like best about the product?
The emails & the contact details are accurate as long as the executive is old in the organization.
What do you dislike about the product?
The accuracy of the data about the resources who have switched recently.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It gets me the email ID, for a person, I want to send mail.
Sales tool for outreach
What do you like best about the product?
The tool allows me to see the organisation structure and provides me with the contact details of the decisionmakers for easy outreach. The tool also allows me to create a list of leads from different industries and regions.
What do you dislike about the product?
More often than not the updated profiles of the prospects don't reflect in the software
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
1) Zoominfo allows me to see the buyer intent of the account
2) The tool also allows me to see the decisionmakers within the organisation
3) The tool allows me to carry out easy outreach by providing me with all the contact details
Happy client
What do you like best about the product?
It is very easy to navigate in the plattform. In one word I would describe it as user-friendly. Moreover, I find the pop-up windows with further details such as company's website, turnover etc extremely useful because it saves time as there is no need to search seperately for these details.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes there are too many things and options that can be overwhelming.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Via zoominfo a Sales person can save time as the plattform provides all the vital info someone needs for a company such as buying committee, intent, turnover etc. In my opinion, Zoominfo combines everything that other similar plattforms do not.
ZoomInfo is the perfect force multiplier!
What do you like best about the product?
Easily the industry leader in clean, accurate, and vital data that can compress information gathering and other pipeline generation duties to a fraction of the time.
What do you dislike about the product?
The tiering model that breaks down already broken down features for a higher price. Buying a higher tier for Intent just to need another tier for "Daily/Streaming Intent" felt wrong.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
ZoomInfo has always bridged the information gap, solving the issue of being able to get the right things in front of the right people.
Useful tool
What do you like best about the product?
It's a useful tool to understand more about leads and companies.
What do you dislike about the product?
The information is not always up to date.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Findinf leads
Account Executive
What do you like best about the product?
Integration into linkedin and other sites to capture lead details.
What do you dislike about the product?
Lacks contact & database details for APAC region.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use ZoomInfo primarily for lead capture and lead intelligence. Helps me to identify my target accounts by their ICP. Integration with salesforce also makes it easier for efficiency.
