Item: Data.com (discontinued)
Rating: 5
Author: Erik Viager

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Data.com was previously used by the business development and sales team at the agency I work for. It was our number one resource for prospecting and finding contact information for target leads. Aside from contact information, we leveraged Data.com for company information including headquarter address, annual revenue, Dun and Bradstreet numbers, and more.

Pros and Cons

Easy integration with Salesforce.
Good filters for prospecting. You are able to segment by location, title, industry, etc.
Access to an abundant amount of information.
Good for mid-size and large company information

Incorrect contact information. Either from being old or just totally wrong.
Duplicate records, often times with conflicting data.
Not ideal for small business information.

Return on Investment

Promotes lead generation
Increases team efficiency by centralizing lead information
Incorrect data can skew the CRM integrity

Alternatives Considered

Winmo and Datanyze

Data.com is great for filtering and finding specific contact and company information. Unfortunately much of that information is old and outdated. We recently did not renew our subscription with Data.com because we felt it could use improvement. We now use Winmo which provides fairly clean contact information and is built for agencies. Winmo itself is not that great. I am still searching for the ideal prospecting and sales intelligence tool.

Other Software Used

Winmo, NetSuite OpenAir PSA, BlueJeans, Okta, Box, ADP Workforce Now

Likelihood to Recommend

Data.com is good for large-scale account based marketing and outreach campaigns. It provides business development professionals with a large amount of company and lead information. Users can easily filter and manage which leads and companies they want to import into Salesforce and add to their database. It is ideal for prospecting mid to large size businesses. Unfortunately much of the information is outdated and incorrect. I would often experience a high bounce rate on contact information that was directly pulled from Data.com.

Data.com - Tons of info but often outdated.

Overall Satisfaction with Data.com