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Website visitor identification: how it works

How website visitor identification turns anonymous B2B traffic into named leads with emails and mobiles, what match rates to expect, and how to set it up legally.

Updated

Website visitor identification tells you who is on your website, not just how many people came. Instead of "212 visitors from Chicago viewed your pricing page", you get the name, job title, company, business email and mobile of the people behind those visits, and the pages each of them read.

Most B2B websites convert 1–3% of visitors into a form fill or demo request. The other 97% leave without a trace. Visitor identification lets you follow up with the part of that 97% who were clearly interested: the ones who read your pricing page twice, or compared you with a competitor.

Company-level versus person-level identification

There are two kinds of visitor identification, and they're often confused.

  • Company-level (reverse IP lookup) matches the visitor's IP address to a company. It works for people on an office network and tells you "someone from Acme Corp visited". It can't name the person, and with remote and hybrid work, a growing share of visits come from home connections that resolve to an internet provider rather than an employer.
  • Person-level identification matches the visitor to an individual using a first-party cookie and an identity graph that links browsers to known people. It names the person and comes with contact details, so you can reach them directly.

Intent Leads does person-level identification for US visitors.

How person-level visitor identification works

  1. You add a small script to your site, the same way you'd add an analytics tag, directly or through Google Tag Manager.
  2. The script sets a first-party cookie and reports page views.
  3. Visits are matched to people using an identity graph that links browsers and devices to known people.
  4. Matched visitors arrive as leads with their name, title, company, business email, LinkedIn and mobile, plus the pages they viewed and when.
  5. You act on them: send them to your CRM, your sequencer or a webhook, and reach out while the visit is fresh.

What match rate to expect

No tool identifies everyone. On a typical US B2B site, expect to identify roughly 15–20% of US visitors as named people. Rates vary with your audience:

  • Safari and iPhone visitors are rarely identified, because Apple limits third-party tracking and shortens cookie lifetimes.
  • Visitors outside the US aren't identified by US-focused tools. Intent Leads never identifies visitors in the UK, the EU or Switzerland.
  • Bots, crawlers and repeat visits inflate raw traffic numbers, so your match rate on real people is higher than on raw sessions.

Be wary of any vendor promising 50%+ person-level match rates on B2B traffic. Ask how they count a "match": a company, a person, or a person with a verified email.

In the US it's widely used and legal when it's disclosed and you honor opt-outs. Practical steps:

  • Update your privacy policy to say you use visitor identification and how people can opt out.
  • Use a cookie banner where it's required. If your site is operated from the UK or EU, a consent banner is required, and the script must not load until a visitor accepts. In the US, many companies show the banner to visitors from California, plus the UK, EU and Switzerland.
  • Follow outreach rules: CAN-SPAM for email, and the TCPA and do-not-call rules for calls and texts. Intent Leads flags every mobile with its own do-not-call status.

Our cookie consent guide shows the banner wording and setup step by step.

What website visitor identification costs

Pricing models vary: monthly plans with a capped number of identified visitors, per-company pricing, or per-person pricing.

With Intent Leads, identified visitors are billed per person from a prepaid balance, on the same scale as intent leads: 10¢ each for the first 2,500 people a month, falling to 5¢ above 20,000. A person who visits ten times in a month is charged once. See pricing. For how that compares with monthly plans at 600, 2,500 and 10,000 identified people a month, see RB2B alternatives compared on price.

How to use identified visitors

  • Follow up fast. Reach out within a day of the visit, while your product is fresh in their mind. Don't mention that you saw them on your site; lead with the problem the pages they read solve.
  • Prioritize by pages. Pricing, comparison and case study pages signal buying intent. A single blog visit doesn't.
  • Route by account. Send visitors from target accounts straight to the account owner.
  • Combine with intent data. A visitor who is also researching your topics elsewhere is a hot lead. Intent data finds the people researching your category who haven't visited yet.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to identify a visitor?

With Intent Leads, identified visitors arrive on your webhook within about 15 minutes of the visit, and they show in the dashboard and the API.

Do I need a developer to set it up?

No. You paste one script into the <head> of your site, or add it as a Custom HTML tag in Google Tag Manager. It works on WordPress, Webflow, ClickFunnels, Unbounce and custom sites, and on Shopify through the theme code. It doesn't work on Wix or Google Sites.

Can I identify visitors from outside the US?

Intent Leads identifies US visitors only. Visitors in the UK, the EU and Switzerland are never identified.

Will it slow down my website?

No. The script loads asynchronously after the page, like an analytics tag, so it doesn't block the page from rendering.