Cold outreach is dead (but you knew that already). Intent-based marketing is in.

How many times have you blasted a blanket email with CTA-packed body copy and “Last chance! Don’t miss out!” in the subject line? You can tell us. We won’t judge.

But we will tell you (unless you already learned from experiencing abysmal open and reply rates yourself) that cold emails don’t work. In fact, they’ve worked less and less over time. Not only did average open rates dip from 36% in 2023 to 27.7% in 2024 (yikes), but Hunter.io’s study of 11 million emails found that the average reply is even worse - sitting at just 4.1%, it means 95.9% of cold emails go unanswered (double yikes).

Maybe you’re thinking, “surely all industries aren’t the same?” Sure. But while it’s hard to pin down a universal average response rate since it varies by industry, the broad (and widely accepted) average is still just 1-5%. Why is that? Are buyers just sick of us? Are their inboxes too full? Probably all of the above. The point is, cold has gone cold, and it’s dying a slow, measurable death. 

In the meantime, companies with intent-based playbooks welcome totally different results. Okta’s intent-based strategy converted 24x more than traditional outreach approaches, 2.7x lower cost per conversion, and 22% more revenue influence, closing deals in 63% less time. And it’s not just Okta - intent signals are proven across the board to increase business opportunities, deal value, and time to close.

This shift explains the land rush towards platforms like Clay, which hit a $1.3B valuation in 2025 and now serves over 10,000 customers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, Notion, and Rippling. Seems like an easy win, which is why it’s so surprising that while 67% of B2B companies advertise with intent data, Clay-level sophistication is still rare. Compared to the 99% of large corporations using intent-based approaches, mid-market and small businesses need to quickly close the gap before they’re totally outgunned by enterprise competitors who’ve already moved on.

Funnels as pinball machines

Traditional marketing funnels pushed buyers in a straight line through awareness, consideration, and decision stages. That model is gone. Instead of moving cleanly from Point A to Point B, buyers ping back-and-forth between different parts of the decision-making process - sometimes even moving backwards. They might start their journey in a WhatsApp group, Instagram feed, LinkedIn inMail, YouTube tutorial, Reddit AMA, private Slack channel, Discord server, Substack article, or a million other places. According to Landbase, up to 90% of buyers complete their decision-making process before ever contacting a vendor, searching up to 12 different times before visiting your brand’s website, and reviewing 11 pieces of content before contacting you. 

What is intent-based marketing?

Intent-based marketing uses behavioral data to see when businesses are actively researching solutions before they engage with your brand. Instead of blasting generic messages to massive customer lists, intent-based marketing sends relevant outreach according to real-time buying signals (think: “based on what you’d searching, we can help with X” instead of “Hi, you don’t know me, but you might need this”). When it comes to the signals themselves, funding announcements or job changes are almost too obvious. More sophisticated teams track things like tech stack changes, hiring patterns, content consumption on industry publications, competitor research activity, and platform upgrade behaviors.

What’s most different about intent-based marketing is its philosophy. Instead of forcing buyers through predetermined stages, this model acknowledges that people buy when they’re ready - not once you’ve pitched to them. Spotting their intent first goes a lot farther than blasting them with the most emails. Early outreach based on intent instead of volume actually increases conversions by 35-50% - and even better, compared to cold email’s campaign response rate of 1-5%, the rate for prospects showing buying signals respond at 20% or more. 

Where does all this data live? 

The ecosystem of intent data has grown up. Bombora, the leader in third-party intent, tracks buyer behavior across more than 4,000 B2B sites. 6sense conducts AI-powered predictive analysis on buying stages. ZoomInfo’s proprietary intent engine processes intent signals from 100,000+ websites and tracks 20 million job changes each month, boosting intent accuracy by 25-30% over pure third-party sources. G2 Buyer Intent taps into behavior from 90 million annual software buyers and tracks category research, product page visits, competitor comparisons, and more. Clay’s emergence has revolutionized the integration side of intent tracking, aggregating data from 75+ providers with agentic tech to scrape and analyze, and a “waterfall enrichment” which tries multiple data sources sequentially to maximize coverage.

Outbound vs. inbound: two different intent approaches

Of course, intent data works in two ways - for inbound and outbound marketing. An outbound approach identifies targets and automates personalized outreach to those targets. With Clay, you can monitor for specific triggers like tech stack additions, enrich account data from multiple sources, and generate personalized, contextualized outreach emails.

Inbound intent rather focuses on identifying and converting visitors who already show interest - for example, by connecting online browsing behavior to targeted email content.

To stay competitive, you’re best off using both. According to CapitalG’s Clay investment thesis, "You can send an email through Clay, but you can also create a custom landing page through Webflow, send physical mail through Sendoso, or launch an ABM campaign on LinkedIn. Most importantly, you can create a campaign that does all of these things in concert." 

A final reality check

If intent-based marketing is so good, why are mid-market and emerging companies lagging so far behind enterprise on adopting it? Part of that gap comes from misconceptions about complexity and cost - while 70% of businesses say data quality is a key issue and 50% struggle with making data actionable, companies that push through these initial hurdles achieve ROI within six months.

Intent-based marketing isn't a magic bullet. You still need a solid judgement to avoid chasing weak signals. Getting a signal but wasting it with generic outreach defeats the entire purpose. But for the 87% of B2B teams who say intent data will play a bigger role in their strategies moving forward, the competitive advantage is real.