System and method for capturing information for conversion into actionable sales leads

• US 9,721,266 B2
• Filed: 04/13/2012
• Issued: 08/01/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 11/12/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Leadspace Ltd. (American Express Company)
• Original Assignee: ReachForce, Inc. (American Express Company)
• Inventors: Riazzi, Bob, Hubacker, Ken, Solnek, Bob, England, Justin, Nolte, Jerome
• Primary Examiner(s): Rotaru, Octavian
• Application Number:
  US13/447,039
• Publication Number:
  US 20120232955A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,936 Days
• Field of Search: 705 729, 705 732, 705 733
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0204 Market segmentation

Abstract

The present invention relates to business-to-business marketing organizations who participate in lead-generation activities via their company website. More particularly, the invention provides a target lead-generation system and method that targets the right businesses using real-time predictive and behavioral analytics and website traffic data and connects businesses to potential customers and suppliers to drive business revenue. Even more particularly, the invention provides a system and method for real-time searching and matching of data input into website registration forms by website visitors, provides for real-time cleansing and appending of attribute rich company demographic and firmographic data to the website form and to the marketing database. The resulting information is then available for use by other systems such as marketing automation systems and CRM systems.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for discovering, validating and outputting contact information using reversed internet protocol mapping and heuristic artificial intelligence, the computer implemented method comprising:

embedding, by a computer system, a tracking code fragment into a website;

automatically detecting, by the computer system, from the tracking code fragment, internet protocol addresses of visitors accessing the website;

reverse mapping, by the computer system, the internet protocol addresses of the visitors accessing the website to identify target companies to which the internet protocol addresses belong;

matching, by a weighted, multi-stage matching algorithm, executed by the computer system, each of the target companies with firmographic records stored in a master database;

aggregating, by the computer system, the firmographic records into cluster patterns;

sorting, filtering and pruning, by the computer system, the target companies based on the firmographic records;

detecting, by a proximity heuristic statistical distribution learning model, executed by the computer system, when a title of a contact in one the target companies correlates to a desired targeted role in excess of a minimum frequency threshold;

validating, by the computer system, an email address of the contact by real-time querying online social networks and calculating a validation score indicating a confidence level for the email address of the contact;

validating, by the computer system, a geographic address of the contact against third party services via a coding accuracy support system that corrects, matches, standardizes and confirms validity of the geographic address;

outputting, by the computer system, the validated contact, on a user interface.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising auto-populating, by the computer system, a form of the website with the firmographic records.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the auto-populating the form occurs without direct interaction from the visitors.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the firmographic records comprise one or more of:

an industry of the target companies, and a revenue range of the target companies.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying when the firmographic records were entered by an automated computer program.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the automated computer program is a spambot.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the validation score comprises values between 0 and 5.

8. A system for discovering, validating and outputting contact information using reversed internet protocol mapping and heuristic artificial intelligence, the system comprising a server computer configured for:

embedding, a tracking code fragment into a website;

automatically detecting, from the tracking code fragment, internet protocol addresses of visitors accessing the website;

reverse mapping, the internet protocol addresses of the visitors accessing the website to identify target companies to which the internet protocol addresses belong;

matching, by a weighted, multi-stage matching algorithm, each of the target companies with firmographic records stored in a master database;

aggregating, the firmographic records into cluster patterns;

sorting, filtering and pruning, the target companies based on the firmographic records;

detecting, by a proximity heuristic statistical distribution learning model, when a title of a contact in one the target companies correlates to a desired targeted role in excess of a minimum frequency threshold;

validating, an email address of the contact by real-time querying online social networks and calculating a validation score indicating a confidence level for the email address of the contact;

validating, a geographic address of the contact against third party services provided by a coding accuracy support system that corrects, matches, standardizes and confirms validity of the geographic address;

outputting, the validated contact, on a user interface.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the server computer is further configured for auto-populating, a form of the website with the firmographic records.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the auto-populating the form occurs without direct interaction from the visitors.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the firmographic records comprise one or more of:

an industry of the target companies, and a revenue range of the target companies.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the validation score comprises values between 0 and 5.