The Challenge
Fixing out-of-date news
A leading CRM software provider wanted to differentiate by integrating real-time data intelligence capabilities. They faced key obstacles:
- Static lead data: Customer records quickly became outdated, forcing sales teams to manually research prospects before engagement.
- Manual news monitoring: Sales teams had to separately track news about prospects and portfolio companies, missing critical opportunities and insights.
- Limited lead discovery: Traditional databases only captured companies meeting basic criteria and "rigid" categories, missing high-potential prospects with nuanced characteristics.
The Solution
Adding real-time data enrichment
The provider built an intelligent data enrichment layer that automatically augments CRM records with fresh company data, powered by Exa's websets API. Users can access the latest news, identify current ICPs within target companies, view relevant LinkedIn posts, accurately categorize companies, and identify competitors - all without leaving their CRM.
Working with Exa's API, the CRM provider created:
Live Data Enrichment
Users can request specific enrichments about companies in their pipeline - from product updates to news, employee count and more.
Automated News Monitoring
Real-time alerts and updates when prospects or portfolio companies appear in news, funding announcements, leadership changes, or industry developments.
Intelligent Lead Expansion & Discovery
Used content similarity to discover companies with matching profiles to successful customers, expanding qualified lead pools.
Semantic Industry Classification
Enhanced traditional industry taxonomies with dynamic, real-time business activity analysis to better classify companies, even for fuzzy criteria (e.g. healthtech early stage startup).
What's under the hood?
Integrating Exa's Websets API
Name | URL |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| withpika.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| productboard.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| ai.autify.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| blinq.io | Match | Match | Match | |
| ox.security | Match | Match | Match | |
| fernhq.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| manifestcyber.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| altscore.ai | Match | Match | Match | |
| kosli.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| antithesis.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| swarmia.com | Match | Match | Match | |
| diffblue.com | Match | Match | Match |
Qualities:
- Continuous monitoring
- Real-time updates
- Semantic matching
Integrate Exa Websets
Key benefits of using Exa's Websets API include:
- Fully validated results: Each enrichment or additional lead is validated from multiple sources, combining Exa's search and LLM capabilities to grade if they fit specific criteria.
- Continuous web-scanning: Continuously scanning the web for news or new prospects that fit specific criteria, always running in the background so nothing gets missed.
- Real-time company data: Fresh information about companies, products, people, news, and competitive landscape.
- Semantic search capabilities: Find companies that match nuanced criteria beyond traditional database filters.
Business outcomes
Improved engagement through data coverage and freshness
The lifts in data coverage and user satisfaction were immediate upon launch:
- Increased data coverage and freshness: CRM records now contain current, actionable intelligence instead of static information.
- Improved engagement rates: New features increased platform engagement as users found more value in their CRM workflow.
- Expanding product workflow: Captured other pieces of customers' workflows that were previously done outside the platform - increasing product stickiness, satisfaction and willingness to pay.
Most importantly, the new enrichment features were received with incredibly positive sentiment from users (we wish we could share the quotes!).