NetProspex

About NetProspex

NetProspex, founded in 2006 by Gary Halliwell and Jeff Clewley, established itself as a key player in the B2B marketing data management sector. The company specialized in providing services to assess, cleanse, enhance, and target marketing databases for business-to-business clients. Its primary offering was the cloud-based "Workbench" platform, a SaaS tool that allowed marketers to analyze and improve their data quality in real-time. This platform provided features for continuous data management, target market analysis, and the acquisition of new, targeted audiences to bolster marketing campaigns and accelerate sales pipeline creation.

The business model was centered around a subscription-based service, which proved successful, leading to an eightfold revenue growth between 2010 and 2015. This growth was fueled by its ability to provide more accurate and verified B2B contact information, which at one point included a database of 21 million contacts. The company's services were designed to integrate with clients' existing marketing systems, helping them to remove inaccurate or duplicate entries, add missing attributes, and enrich inbound leads. NetProspex addressed a critical need for marketers by offering a way to better segment, target, and communicate with their ideal customers.

A significant milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by Dun & Bradstreet in January 2015 for $125 million. Following the acquisition, NetProspex was rebranded as "Dun & Bradstreet NetProspex," and its CEO, Michael Bird, became the general manager of the new entity. The integration was strategic, combining NetProspex's data management platform with Dun & Bradstreet's extensive global commercial database. This merger created a more powerful offering, enabling B2B marketers to gain deeper insights and connect offline customer data with online advertising campaigns. Even after the acquisition, the NetProspex Workbench platform continued to be developed, with enhancements such as new analytics dashboards and the integration of D&B's firmographic data.