Likelihood to Recommend Demand Science did deliver the quantity of leads without issue. The data for a few was not accurate (bounced when following up). But they agreed to make good by providing substitute leads to meet the quota. Towards the end of my project, they lost a few folks, and so the end of my campaign got a little rough as they were taking over some assignments midway. But we ultimately completed the SOW. I will say that the leads did not perform well in our email cadence - none converted. However, this was a test of the concept for us. Content syndication had a lower cost per qualified lead than some other tactics, so we tested it. Your results may vary, based on your follow-up and your market.
Read full review This is a free service, so it should be compared to free and low cost alerting (e.g. Google Alerts) and PE/VC funding profile (e.g. Crunchbase) services. Owler is well suited for competitive intelligence professionals, named account reps, and marketing professionals tracking company news (web mined company mentions and press releases) and social media (blogs, Video, YouTube). The alerts are high precision and tag for three key events (M&A, Funding, Exec Changes). It is the alerting and social media tools which are the key strength of the service. The company claims two million profiles, but only has 60,000 with full address information. Content includes competitors, user polls, and funding / M&A data. Owler should be viewed as a free complement to other online company research tools, but it lacks the depth to replace subscription services . Missing content includes long business descriptions; financials and discrete sizing data; family tree linkage, and executive profiles (only the CEO is covered) While they offer list building functionality, it is quite thin and non-downloadable. As such, I would not recommend Owler for sales and marketing prospecting at this point. A unique feature is a set of company polls about the direction of the company and CEO performance. Unfortunately, the response rates are often too low to be statistically meaningful.
Read full review Pros The initial pitch and contact from Mason used "show me you know me" well, which we felt was a good sign of company culture and approach to database marketing. Delivery of leads was ahead of schedule. They set expectations, and then delivered what they said they would. The leads matched our criteria as agreed. Regular check ins and catch ups, and patience when thing were taking a bit of time to get sorted here. Read full review Owler enables the user to quickly find the data and information that he or she needs. I appreciate the customizable dashboard where you can set alerts and track companies you select. The latest news regarding the funding rounds of startup companies is especially helpful. The top competitors to companies provided by Owler often give me a great point of reference for my competitive analysis. Read full review Cons We would like to see more proactive communication on what's working and what's not without requiring a meeting - regular reporting cadence to assess asset quality A dashboard view might be nice as well, again, so we can look at an asset and see how it's performing (or if it isn't) without having to wait on a rep to pull a report or schedule a walkthrough Read full review The information provided is useful but at times the variation with other websites and tools is substantial which makes it difficult to rely solely on owler Information only about bigger companies is available not for smaller and research on smaller ones are important as there are not many tools that do that There are few companies that appear as defunct or do not exist but in the actual market there is a lot going on with them and being in market intelligence industry owler needs to capture that It would be great if they provide revenue or growth of the in the past three years or so. As it would save our time and efforts to some extent They need to maintain the database in aperiodic manner with precise information Read full review Likelihood to Renew Our executives decided to not renew because we were not seeing the ROI they were looking for. However, our executives did not make the best decisions on the data Demand Science provided.
Read full review Not really an applicable question as this is a free service, but if they charged $100 / year (GageIn's price) I would still license the service.
Read full review Usability The leads were pretty straight forward. However, their appointment setting did not integrate well into our system and many of the meetings didn't occur. I had to chase a lot of prospects and many times Demand Science didn't provide direct dials.
Read full review Owler's interface and user experience are streamlined and clean. It's easy to pick up on what the data visualizations are showing and other information provided in the dashboard
Read full review Reliability and Availability I have yet to see the platform down or running slowly, but there have been multiple instances recently (Q2 2015) when the user links to a news story and Owler gives an Oops message. Users simply click on the story a second time and the story is displayed. This is a nuisance bug. I also have a sense that the system is not processing alerts as quickly as before, but I haven't tracked this closely, so I could be wrong about it.
Read full review Performance The news precision, which is the most important feature for me, is very accurate. They have editors review the news to ensure it is properly tagged by company and event type.
Read full review Support Rating Our rep is always available and quickly responds to any question we have. I haven't worked with other partners who are as proactive and excited to help us as our DemandScience rep is. He reaches out with new ideas and suggestions frequently. They are happy to make any changes needed to the campaigns and make those changes quickly and efficiently. They work well with our execution agency, but are also happy to meet with us directly to provide insights and support.
Read full review Problems have been closed quickly and professionally.
Read full review Implementation Rating They did extremely well. However, our executives did a poor job in defining our ICP so we didn't get the maximum benefit out of it.
Read full review Focus on setting up companies that have limited news coverage first. Public companies are well covered and it is easy to track them. Furthermore, the surfeit of news around public companies can crowd out smaller companies with less news. It is smaller companies where you are most likely to see a benefit in their tracking of news, blogs, press releases, and videos.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I've not used another content syndication company, and I probably won't after the lack of results we've had. I have used direct email organizations, and they are stronger but also more expensive, so you have to weigh your priorities. I could see if you were selling a specific product or software and how this could be beneficial, but I'd steer away from it for services.
Read full review I believe
Lead411 and Owler go hand in hand, rather than one over the other. I believe
Lead411 's contact generation is far stronger based on the cost, but Owler allows you to broaden your horizon for prospecting whereas
Lead411 is more of a user-driven search rather than an platform-driven search.
Read full review Return on Investment We have been able to grow our lead numbers with high quality leads at a reasonable cost We have been able to generate just the leads we want to support our Business Development team We have been able to get our content in front of our specific TAL Read full review The personalisation of emails has definitely helped us to earn a higher reply rate, with the knock-on that this will be helping with future deals. Keeps us very relevant in our conversations with contacts. They are often impressed by the research and knowledge we have on their company and how we have aligned ourselves to help. Again, small differences at the start of calls but this will be helping with the number of opportunities created. Reduces SDR prospecting time. Quick and easy to get updates allowing them to process a great number of accounts on a daily basis. Read full review ScreenShots