Resources/Glossary/Cold email and lead gen
Intent data is a set of signals that a company or person is researching something, such as reading about a topic, comparing vendors or visiting your site. Sales and agency teams use it to time their outreach.
In one line
Signals that a company or person is researching something, such as reading about a topic or visiting your site, used to time sales outreach.
First party intent comes from your own channels: who visited your pricing page, opened your emails or downloaded your guide. Third party intent comes from data providers that track reading activity across publisher networks and flag companies showing a spike in interest on a topic. Your own first party signals are usually the most reliable. Reply data and repeat visits from known contacts are the strongest of these.
Recruiting agencies also use hiring signals, such as a burst of new job postings, a funding round or a new executive, as a form of intent. A company posting ten engineering jobs in a month is more likely to need agency help than one posting none. Intent data is a hint, not proof. Signals are noisy, often at the company level rather than the person, and a spike can come from a student writing a paper as easily as a buyer.
Cold outreach works better when it reaches a company at the moment it has a need. Intent data helps agencies and software sellers focus their limited time on accounts that are active now, instead of working a static list in alphabetical order. Used well, it lifts reply rates and makes messages more relevant.
Alerts fire for an agency owner whenever a company in her ICP posts five or more sales roles in 30 days. Each week she gets about a dozen names. She sends a short note to the head of sales referencing the open roles and offering two vetted candidates. Her reply rate on these signal based emails is far higher than on her general list.
A few of the visitor ID tools in our directory, including our picks. Prices are the published starting price on the date we last checked.
Visits to your pricing page, repeated reads of articles on a topic, comparison searches, new job postings, funding news and leadership changes. Each suggests a company may have a current need.
Generally yes in the US for business data, but privacy laws such as GDPR in Europe and state privacy laws set limits on how personal data is collected and used. Check how your provider sources its data. This is not legal advice.
A hiring signal is one kind of intent signal focused on recruiting needs, such as new job postings. Intent data is broader and covers any sign of research or buying interest.
Written by recruiters at Work Insiders. Part of the recruiting and HR tech glossary. Updated October 2026.
