Social Media Use Exceeds Email Among B2B Sales Professionals

InsideView Utilization Data Confirms Shift in Online Behavior for B2B Users


SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - September 17, 2010) -  InsideView recently found that its customers now access its business and social intelligence application more frequently than they do email. As of July 2010, InsideView users were accessing the application an average of 89 times per day while only checking email an average 11 times and reading an average of 73 emails per day. These usage statistics indicate that the online behaviors of B2B sales and marketing professionals are evolving in a similar fashion to those of Internet consumers at large. Nielsen's June 2010 NetView survey had found that American consumers now spent nearly a quarter of their total online time on social networks and blogs (a 43 percent increase over 2009), while spending less than ten percent on email (a 28 percent drop). 

Growing Use and Favorable Opinions Among B2B Users
As overall InsideView utilization increases, a growing portion of that activity is spent accessing social networks and social media content. Use of the InsideView Buzz tab, which aggregates social media mentions across blogs and Twitter, grew 43 percent faster than overall utilization in the last twelve months. Similarly, LinkedIn and Facebook usage within InsideView grew 74 percent and 133 percent, respectively. User opinions of social media data quality have also grown more favorable. More than 81 percent of survey respondents had a favorable opinion of Google and LinkedIn data, while just over 60 percent had a favorable opinion of Facebook data (a more than forty percent increase from a year ago). This increased focus on social media may come at the expense of traditional business data providers such as Hoover's and OneSource, which have seen utilization and engagement stagnate. User opinions also worsened, with fewer than 30 percent of survey respondents having a favorable opinion of these traditional providers.

Customer Engagement Opportunities Abound, Productivity Concerns Remain 
Timely and relevant insights about customers, along with new channels for driving customer engagement, have proven to be major boons for sales and marketing professionals adopting B2B social media. It's important to acknowledge that social media has fundamentally changed the buying process. Gaining the attention and trust of this new breed of savvy, socially enabled buyer (a.k.a. Customer 2.0) practically requires businesses to maintain an active social media presence. All that said, many companies remain cautious about social media's potential impact on productivity. As recently as October 2009, a Robert Half Technology survey found that more than half of corporations had blocked social networks completely. While most decry such measures as Draconian, the sheer amount of time spent on Facebook and other social networking sites gives pause to even the staunchest advocates of enterprise social media. 

Relevance and Context Key to Ensuring B2B Productivity
As with any source of information, social media has the potential to overwhelm as much as it does to inform. The key to deriving actionable intelligence from social media is to ensure that only relevant, timely insights are surfaced and that these are delivered in the appropriate context. Since 2005 InsideView has leveraged emerging social media, alongside traditional business and contact data, with a singular goal -- increasing sales productivity. Along the way, InsideView has vetted dozens of new social media and social networking sites to determine if and how best to integrate the data for the benefit of B2B sales and marketing teams. In addition to harnessing only the most relevant information from social media, InsideView focuses on presenting it within the right context or workflow. Native mash-up integrations with the leading CRM providers ensure that social media insights are woven into existing sales and marketing processes.

"It's exciting to see the extent to which B2B sales and marketing professionals have embraced social media. We continue to work closely with our customers to deliver the right social media insights within the right context so that employees are better informed and ultimately more productive," said Marc Perramond, director of product management at InsideView. "These latest findings reinforce the growing importance of social media in the enterprise and the positive impact it can have on business productivity."

InsideView's free business and social intelligence application delivers relevant, actionable insights from the leading business data and social media sources like Capital IQ, Thomson Reuters, Jigsaw, NetProspex, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. To start using InsideView for free today, visit www.insideview.com.

About InsideView
InsideView enables social selling by bringing intelligence gained from social media and traditional editorial sources to the enterprise to increase sales productivity and velocity. InsideView's award-winning sales intelligence solution continuously aggregates and analyzes relevant executive and corporate data from thousands of content sources to uncover new sales opportunities. InsideView delivers this intelligence natively within CRMs and mobile devices for optimum usability. The San Francisco-headquartered company was founded in 2005 and is venture-backed by Emergence Capital Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Greenhouse Capital Partners. InsideView's products are used by more than 45,000 sales professionals worldwide, including Adobe, BMC, Cap Gemini, EMC and SuccessFactors. InsideView's CRM partners include salesforce.com, Microsoft, NetSuite, SugarCRM and Oracle. For more information, visit www.insideview.com.

Contact Information:

Media Contact:
Emilie Cole
LaunchSquad
415.625.8555
insideview [at] launchsquad [dot] com