Understanding Lead to Account Matching

What’s the difference between a lead and a contact and why do they need to be matched?

A lead is a potential customer within an account, and traditional marketing and sales efforts are often focused on generating and nurturing these leads. Sales people typically build relationships with each lead, aiming to convert them into a closed deal.

A contact is an individual associated with an account. Contacts provide marketing and sales teams with a more complete view of the entire account, helping them understand the broader context of the potential customer.

While your CRM and Marketing Automation System (MAS) track your leads, Demandbase enhances your Account Based Marketing (ABM) efforts by linking these leads to specific target accounts. This allows you to analyze and act on leads within the broader strategy of ABM.

How does matching work?

Once accounts are added to an account list, Demandbase begins Lead-to-Account (L2A) matching, continuously enhancing your account-based analytics, orchestration, and action capabilities.

Demandbase matches leads to accounts using the account name and email address.

Additionally, geographic fields (such as country, state/region, city, and postal code) are used to distinguish between potential matches. The system compares the company name on the lead with the account name, using fuzzy matching to account for variations in how names are entered. For example, Demandbase recognizes that "Microsoft Corporation, Inc." and "Microsoft" refer to the same company. For email addresses, the system matches the email domain with the account website.

What if there are multiple matched accounts?

If multiple matches are found, leads are prioritized using the following rules:

1. First priority: Both account name and email address.
2. Second priority: Account name only.
3. Third priority: Email address only.

If multiple accounts match a lead with the same priority, the account is selected based on geographic hierarchy: Country < State/Region < City < Postal Code.
Tip: Demandbase recognizes that different spellings, such as "United Kingdom" and "UK" refer to the same location.

If there is no geographic data, Demandbase maps the lead to the account with the most contact records.

When does Demandbase match leads to accounts?

Demandbase syncs your leads multiple times every hour. After leads are synced from your CRM and MAS, it can take as little as 10 minutes for matching to occur in Demandbase. A high volume of leads might take longer to match. 

You can adjust how often leads sync into Demandbase. See Understanding Integration Data Sync Settings.

How does Demandbase indicate a lead is matched to an account?

After a lead is matched to an account, Demandbase updates the Account Name field on the lead record with the matched account name.

Why isn't a specific lead matched?

Lead to account matching can fail due to a variety of reasons such as:

• The account must exist in Demandbase, CRM, or CSV import. 
• The account must belong to an account list.
• The user syncing Demandbase with CRM or MAS must have access (visibility) to that lead.
• The lead record has incorrect or missing email information.
• The email domain associated with the lead changes but the account website doesn’t get updated. For example, accounts change their website due to acquisitions.
• There are multiple account records with the same website.
  Important: If a lead is associated with a domain that matches more than one account, Demandbase maps it to the account with the most contact records.
  

Lead to Account Matching Features by CRM 

Salesforce CRM 

The following features are supported for Lead to Account matching with Salesforce CRM. 

In Salesforce: 

• Matched account write-backs: Demandbase automatically populates the Matched Account custom fields on the Lead object.

In Demandbase: 

• Lead to Contact Conversion: Within Demandbase, you can directly convert Salesforce lead records into contact records. See Set Up Lead to Contact Conversion in Salesforce.
  Important: To convert a lead to a contact, the lead cannot be in a queue. It must have an explicit owner.
• Fields available on the Demandbase Person record: 
• Name (account) 
• First Name
• Last Name
• Title
• Lead or Contact? (displays Contact if contact record in Salesforce, Lead if lead record in Salesforce)
• Email
• Status 

HubSpot CRM 

The following features are supported for Lead to Account matching with HubSpot CRM. 

In Demandbase: 

• Fields available on the Demandbase Person record: 
  • Name (account) 
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Title
  • Lead or Contact? (displays Contact if there is a matched account, Lead if there is no matched account) 
  • Email