The 2016 CRM Market Rising Stars: Infer Adds Predictive Intelligence to Close More Deals

Infer helps sales and marketing reps scour customer databases and the Web for highly qualified leads. Founded in 2010 by three former Google engineers, the company leverages its knowledge of search for its predictive lead scoring and analytics platform. The past year has seen Infer add data science, predictive capabilities, and artificial intelligence (A.I.) to its products.

Infer’s Predictive Ad Targeting Platform helps firms identify promising prospects and target them more effectively; it combines Infer Predictive Scoring with Infer Profile Management and internal and external signals to create tailored audiences that automate workflows, strategies, and ad campaigns.

Next up was Infer Profile Management (formerly named Prospect Management), a predictive prospect management platform that develops ideal customer profiles and expansion opportunities, using A.I. to recommend and trigger actions to move prospects through the pipeline. It can uncover attributes like contact title, company size, role in the buying process, recent marketing activity, or current stage in the customer life cycle. The product can initiate workflows, and on-the-fly predictive simulations measure the impact of each prospect group.

Then came Infer Glance, a sales and account intelligence application that captures prospect data and analytics from Infer’s predictive models. Infer analyzes thousands of internal and external data signals to produce predictive account, contact, and lead scores. It then summarizes the scores and the top signals behind each.

Infer also updated its Profile Management Platform with self-service tools and custom recommendations. A new feature groups businesses and makes profile recommendations based on the kinds of products they sell, their business models, and their customers.

Also new to the platform is a connector with Salesforce.com, which enables marketers to combine prospect data with Infer’s library of external signals to create customer profiles. Users have access to Infer’s full suite of integrations with systems such as Marketo and Google Analytics, among others.

Other key moves: Infer’s Predictive Behavior Scoring was brought to Eloqua (acquired by Oracle), helping companies prioritize the deals most likely to close quickly and optimize campaigns and pipeline velocity; and Infer integrated its prospect management and scoring tools with InsightSquared’s sales analytics dashboards.

“A cornerstone of our strategy is to infuse predictive intelligence into best-of-breed tools so they can unlock even more value for marketers,” said Vik Singh, cofounder and CEO of Infer, in a statement. 

---

[Editor's note: The above copy has been updated from its original form to show that Infer Predictive Scoring is a distinct product from Infer Profile Management.]

Related Articles

CaliberMind Releases Buyer Intelligence Software for Account-Based Marketers

The technology applies machine learning and human language analysis to outline "psychographic" customer profiles.