DiscoverOrg President Discusses ZoomInfo Acquisition And The Quest To Corner The B2B Contacts Market

B2B contact and lead generation provider DiscoverOrg on Monday said it would acquire its competitor ZoomInfo and create a combined platform serving marketing and sales professionals over the next year.

Financial terms of the deal between DiscoverOrg, which is based in Vancouver, Wash. and Waltham, Mass.-based ZoomInfo were not disclosed. The two firms said ZoomInfo CEO Derek Schoettle, who joined the firm last year, will stay on in advisory capacity during the transition, while DiscoverOrg co-founder Henry Schuck will be CEO of the merged entity, which will serve a combined 15,000 customers and 120,000 active users worldwide.

The acquisition of ZoomInfo reflects the ongoing race to become one of the premier providers of contact information and data to power account-based marketing (ABM) and other sophisticated B2B campaigns. According to G2Crowd, other DiscoverOrg competitors besides ZoomInfo include startups such as InsideView, as well as more traditional incumbents such as LinkedIn with its Sales Navigator tool.

DiscoverOrg said customers of both organizations will receive a “light” integration later this month to begin easing the way for a future combined software and database toolset.

“The initial integration will make it easier for mutual customers to access both separate platforms,” DiscoverOrg president Katie Bullard told B2B News Network via e-mail. “Less than five per cent of our customer base is overlapping. The acquisition will increase the overall size of DiscoverOrg’s addressable market.”

Prior to the DiscoverOrg acquisition, ZoomInfo had been attempting to gain greater traction among B2B professionals by launching a data-as-a-service suite that would integrate with Salesforce’s CRM, Sales Cloud. Last fall, the company made a purchase of its own with Datanyze in order to add technographic capabilities to its products and services.

While ZoomInfo is known for the sheer number of contacts it manages, DiscoverOrg has emphasized its capabilities to cleanse data and make it more actionable for B2B firms. In October, however, DiscoverOrg re-launched its database and boasted a 400 per cent increase in coverage.

Bullard suggested that the key decision-makers involved in acquiring such tools are not necessarily as clear-cut between CMOs, chief revenue officers and the like.

“Both companies have seen our use cases grow considerably and expect that to continue,” she said. “B2B professionals across a spectrum of roles recognize the power of great data and insights – from sales teams to marketing teams to recruiting teams and customer success.”

Bullard also said that ZoomInfo has “a strong brand, and we expect the brand will continue to be a key part of the overall DiscoverOrg portfolio” following the acquisition.