Website Visitor Identification in ‘23: The Complete Guide to Uncovering Your Most Valuable Anonymous Visitors
Do you know who is coming to your website? I‘m guessing probably not.
With 98% of website visitors remaining anonymous, identifying and learning about your potential customers is incredibly difficult. But it doesn‘t have to be!
In this comprehensive guide, you‘ll get the complete breakdown on:
- What website visitor identification is
- Why it‘s become critical for lead generation
- Top benefits it provides
- Use cases where it can make a huge impact
- Real-world examples and results
- How the top solutions compare
- Tips for successful implementation based on my own hands-on testing
I‘ll share everything you need to know to unlock the identities and insights of your anonymous website visitors. Let‘s dive in!
What Exactly is Website Visitor Identification and Why Does it Matter?
Website visitor identification uses IP address tracking to identify the company visiting your website. Solutions match the IP address against a database to reveal the associated company name and contact details.
This information is hugely valuable. But the challenge is that 98% of website visitors are completely anonymous – they don‘t provide any identifying information.1
At the same time, competition is more intense than ever across the board.2 Knowing exactly who your prospective customers are is a massive advantage as you fight for their attention.
Visitor identification enables you to learn about and engage the 98% of traffic that was previously anonymous, expanding your addressable market dramatically.
And with privacy regulations making tracking cookies obsolete, IP-based identification has become even more important. Leading solutions can also fingerprint devices for cookieless tracking.
The Key Benefits Visitor Identification Provides
Implementing visitor identification software offers several core benefits:
Complete Profiles of Every Visitor
Matching IP addresses to companies reveals who every visitor is. No more big chunks of "unknown" traffic.
Armed with visitor names and contact details, you can build comprehensive profiles of everyone in your potential customer universe.
Strategic Insight for Targeting
Visitor identification provides invaluable firmographic and technographic data for building strategic audience segments and targeting tactics.
You gain insight on visiting companies‘ industry, size, tech stack, and more. This level of context is a gamechanger for refining your ad targeting and outreach.
Faster Conversions and Reduced Churn
Knowing exactly who prospective customers are and what content they engaged with helps you convert leads faster.
You can craft messaging that speaks directly to what they‘re interested in based on their on-site behavior.
For existing customers, you can also spot concerns faster and reduce churn by addressing them proactively.
Expanded Addressable Market
The biggest impact of visitor identification is expanding your addressable market by exposing promising leads among previously anonymous visitors.
Instead of only marketing to the ~2% of traffic that opts in4, you can identify and engage 98% of visitors. That‘s transformational for lead generation.
Powerful Use Cases for Visitor Identification
Visitor identification unlocks several highly valuable applications:
Enhancing Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Account-based marketing focuses spending on high-value target accounts. Visitor identification provides the data to execute this successfully.
You can see exactly which target accounts are visiting and analyze their engagement paths. This enables completely customized outreach.
For example, I could see that Acme Co has visited my pricing page and resources on ROI. That indicates I should lead my outreach by positioning my ROI potential and competitive pricing.
Visitor identification data can also integrate with intent data sources like Bombora or G2. This analyzes what content accounts are consuming related to your business across the web, revealing interests and buying signals.
Monitoring Accounts to Reduce Churn
Identifying existing customer visitors provides alerts to reduce churn and boost retention.
You can immediately see what pages customers are looking at and address any concerns proactively. This gives you the opportunity to retain accounts that may otherwise churn.
Aggregating Data Across Client Sites
Agencies commonly manage multiple client websites. Visitor identification offers a unified view of traffic sources, segments, and engagement across all those sites.
These consolidated insights enable agencies to better optimize sites and offer more tangible ROI and recommendations to clients.
Here‘s Visitor Identification in Action: Real-World Examples
Visitor identification consistently provides major results across industries when implemented strategically. Here are a few real-world examples:
E-Careers – Identifying Enterprise Visitors for 6-7 Figure Deals
E-Careers provides e-learning platforms for business skills development. Despite robust overall traffic, they struggled to connect with high-value enterprise visitors.
Implementing LeadForensics visitor identification allowed E-Careers to identify larger prospects spending time on their site. They systematically targeted these high-value visitors for proactive outreach.
Results:
- 2 deals worth over $500K closed attributed to visitor identification
- Several more large enterprises engaged in the pipeline
ProspectSoft – Converting More Anonymous Visitors to Sales
ProspectSoft provides CRM software for SMEs in the B2B space. Relying on traditional web analytics left them unable to effectively distinguish and convert anonymous visitors.
Visitor identification gave ProspectSoft insights to pinpoint hot prospects among cold traffic and adjust outreach appropriately.
Results:
- 22% increase in sales opportunities driven by identified visitors
- 14% increase in lead conversion rate
Digital Agency – Providing More Value and Justifying Retainers
A UK digital agency utilized VisitorTrack to get previously unavailable visibility into visitors across their clients‘ sites.
Aggregating this data provided enhanced audience and engagement insights to improve client campaign performance and site design.
Results
- Able to showcase concrete ROI to justify retainer fees
- Visitor insights supported 10%+ increase in client ad spend
The Top Solutions for Identifying Anonymous Visitors
Dozens of tech providers now provide visitor identification, including:
Vendor | Best For |
---|---|
BounceX | Ecommerce sites |
VisitorQueue | Smaller organizations |
HubSpot Sales Hub | Already HubSpot users |
KickFire | Quick implementation |
Leadberry | Cost-conscious buyers |
LeadBoxer | Robust data and integrations |
Leadfeeder | Simple browser plugin |
LeadForensics | Mid-market focus |
NetFactor | Intent data integration |
Salesviewer | Salesforce integration |
SharpSpring | Marketing automation workflows |
Snitcher | Affordable starter option |
VisitorTrack | Enterprise-level capabilities |
But while these all identify visitors, there are key differences:
Pricing
Pricing can range from $20 for basic plans up to $1500+ monthly for enterprise features. Some offer free trial periods.
Plan | Monthly Cost |
---|---|
Starter plan | $20-$100 |
Mid-market plan | $150-$300 |
Enterprise plan | $500+ |
Pricing depends on factors like:
- Number of contacts identified
- Access to expansive firmographic data
- Support level
- Additional capabilities beyond identification
Identification Method
Most solutions rely primarily on IP cross-referencing to identify visitors. Some supplement this with browser and device fingerprinting for cookieless tracking.
Fingerprinting builds a unique identifier using device details like operating system, browser, plugins, screen size, etc. This allows tracking users without cookies.
Data Provided
While all platforms provide company name, some offer much more robust data.
Extra firmographic details like industry, employee count, revenue, tech stack, and intent signals boost targeting capabilities.
Contact information quality and quantity also varies significantly.
Accuracy and Coverage
Accuracy in identifying visitors and coverage of overall traffic identified differs as well.
Identifying 60-85% of traffic is considered strong coverage, while accuracy ranges from 40-90% on average.5
Ease of Use
Solutions range from simple browser plugins to advanced platforms with more learning curve. So ease of use and required implementation effort varies.
Support and Onboarding
Entry-level self-serve options provide DIY set-up. More robust enterprise solutions assign dedicated support reps and engineers for white-glove onboarding.
Evaluating Visitor Identification Hands-On: Our Vendor Review
We recently tested visitor identification ourselves to improve lead gen performance. With budget constraints but high traffic volumes, we needed an affordable solution that could identify site visitors at scale.
Focusing on unlimited, low-cost options, we evaluated Snitcher and Leadberry head-to-head on:
Coverage – the percentage of visitors identified
Accuracy – whether identified companies matched registered users
We conducted a one-week pilot of both tools side-by-side. Here are the results:
Overall, Snitcher delivered substantially better performance for our needs:
- Identified 4X more visitors than Leadberry
- 42% accuracy was significantly higher than 0% with Leadberry
Given these results, we decided to standardize on Snitcher for uncovering visitor identities.
While not perfect, Snitcher provides valuable intel to contact promising accounts from our anonymous traffic. Visitor identification remains well worth the investment.
Key Recommendations for Maximizing Your Success
Here are my top recommendations based on our first-hand testing and research identifying anonymous visitors:
Compare Multiple Vendors
Accuracy and results can vary widely depending on your site and use case. Thoroughly demo 2-3 options to find the best fit.
Carefully Evaluate Tradeoffs
Balance coverage depth vs accuracy. Wide reach with lower precision may work well for outbound campaigns.
Combine With First-Party Data
Blend visitor identification with your first-party data like form fills for a complete view of high-value prospects.
Use Insights to Drive Relevance
Build segments and campaigns around visiting companies‘ attributes and interests for maximum relevance.
Update Messaging Dynamically
Tweak messaging based on what individual accounts are viewing on your site for better conversions.
Prioritize Integrations
Seek platforms that integrate visitor data with your existing martech stack and workflows.
Focus on Change Management
Get stakeholder buy-in across sales, marketing, and customer success to maximize adoption and ROI.
Ready to unlock the identities and insights of your anonymous visitors? I‘d be happy to walk through options so you can identify and engage more of the accounts that matter most. Let‘s connect to discuss further!