Account & Person Identification Explained

Learn how Sona transforms anonymous website visitors into identified companies and individuals, revealing who's interested in your product and when to engage.

The Challenge: Anonymous Website Traffic

Most website visitors leave without a trace. Without identification, these visitors represent missed opportunities, potential customers whose interest goes unnoticed and unaddressed. Industry research shows that typically 98-99% of website traffic is anonymous, meaning you're missing insights on nearly all your visitors.

Sona solves this challenge through sophisticated identification technology that operates at two levels: account-level (companies) and person-level (individuals). Together, these capabilities transform your website into a powerful pipeline generation engine.

Account-Level Identification

How It Works

Account-level identification reveals which companies are visiting your website, even when visitors don't fill out forms or provide contact information.

• Reverse IP Lookup Sona uses industry-leading reverse IP lookup technology to match visitor IP addresses to business entities. When someone from a company network visits your site, their corporate IP address provides a unique identifier that Sona maps to firmographic data. The platform maintains an extensive database of business IP addresses, updated continuously to ensure accuracy. This reverse IP process happens in real-time as visitors navigate your website.
• Session Linking Sona doesn't just identify individual visits—it links multiple sessions from the same company into unified account profiles. This creates a comprehensive view of organizational interest over time, showing you which accounts are repeatedly engaging with your content.
• ISP Filtering To maintain data quality, Sona automatically filters out residential ISPs, mobile carriers, VPNs, and cloud hosting providers. This ensures you're only seeing genuine business traffic from companies that could be potential customers.

What Information Gets Captured

For each identified company, Sona provides:

• Company name and website domain
• Industry and sub-industry classification
• Company size (employee count ranges)
• Estimated annual revenue
• Headquarters location (city, state, country)
• LinkedIn company profile URL
• Description and company overview
• Technology stack (tools and platforms they use)
• Employee growth trends

This firmographic data is automatically appended to each account record, giving you immediate context about who's visiting without any manual research.

Accuracy and Confidence Levels

Not all identifications are created equal. Sona assigns confidence scores to account matches to help you assess data quality:

• High confidence (90-100%) - Strong IP match with verified, up-to-date firmographic data
• Medium confidence (70-89%) - Reliable match with some data fields requiring verification
• Low confidence (50-69%) - Possible match that may need manual review

You can set minimum confidence thresholds in your integrations to ensure only high-quality accounts sync to your CRM or trigger alerts. This prevents low-quality data from cluttering your sales pipeline.

Account Identification Limits

It's important to understand what account-level identification can and cannot do:

Can Identify:

• Companies with dedicated corporate IP addresses
• Organizations with on-premise networks
• Businesses accessing from office locations
• Enterprise companies with clear IP ownership

Cannot Identify:

• Individuals browsing from home networks
• Visitors using personal devices on mobile data
• Remote workers on residential internet
• Users behind VPNs or proxy servers

This is why person-level identification is crucial for capturing the full picture.

Person-Level Identification

How It Works

While account identification tells you which companies are interested, person-level identification reveals the specific individuals exploring your product.

• Form Submission Tracking When visitors complete forms on your website (demo requests, content downloads, newsletter signups, contact forms), Sona captures their information and retroactively links it to their previous anonymous activity. This reveals their complete journey from first visit to conversion.
• Email Click Tracking When someone clicks a link in your marketing emails, Sona tracks their subsequent website activity and connects it to their contact record. This shows you which email recipients are actively engaging with your content beyond just opening emails.
• Historical Stitching One of Sona's most powerful features is its ability to retroactively connect past anonymous sessions to newly identified contacts. When someone fills out a form, Sona can look back and attribute their previous visits to their now-known identity, giving you a complete view of their buyer journey.
• Cross-Session Recognition Sona's fingerprinting technology recognizes the same person across multiple sessions and days, creating a unified activity timeline even when they visit your site repeatedly before converting.

What Information Gets Captured

For each identified person, Sona provides:

• Full name
• Business email address
• LinkedIn profile URL
• Job title
• Seniority level (C-level, VP, Director, Manager, Individual Contributor)
• Department and function
• Associated company (automatically linked to account record)
• Location
• Professional background and bio

This contact data is enriched automatically, so you don't need to manually look up information on each person.

The Person-Account Connection

One of Sona's most powerful features is automatically linking individuals to their associated companies. This enables:

• Multi-Stakeholder Visibility See when multiple people from the same account are researching your product. This reveals buying committees forming and helps you understand who the key decision-makers and influencers are.
• Multi-Threaded Engagement Instead of relying on a single point of contact, you can identify and engage all relevant stakeholders in an organization, increasing your chances of winning the deal.
• Account-Based Orchestration Coordinate outreach across an entire buying committee, ensuring consistent messaging and avoiding duplicate or conflicting communications from your team.

Person Identification Methods

Sona identifies people through multiple methods:

1. Form fills - Demo requests, content downloads, contact forms, newsletter signups
2. Email clicks - Links clicked in marketing emails with tracking parameters
3. Chatbot conversations - Interactions where visitors provide their information
4. Calendar bookings - Meeting scheduling tools that capture contact details
5. Integration syncs - Existing contacts from your CRM matched to website visitors

Anonymous vs. Identified Traffic

Understanding the difference helps you maximize Sona's value:

Anonymous Traffic

• Visitors who haven't been matched to a company or person yet
• Still valuable for understanding aggregate behavior, content performance, and traffic sources
• May become identified in future sessions through form fills, email clicks, or other methods
• Can still be evaluated for account-level fit when IP addresses are identified

Identified Traffic

• Visitors linked to known companies and/or contact records
• Enables personalized outreach and targeted engagement
• Powers intent scoring, lead prioritization, and account-based strategies
• Provides complete context for sales conversations

Sona captures both types, ensuring you have complete visibility into website activity while progressively enriching your understanding of visitors over time.

Identification Rates: What to Expect

Typical identification rates vary by traffic source and business model:

Account-Level (Company) Identification

• B2B SaaS: 30-50% of traffic identified to companies
• Enterprise-focused: 40-60% (larger companies have more stable IPs)
• SMB-focused: 20-40% (smaller businesses often use consumer ISPs)

Person-Level (Individual) Identification

• With active form strategy: 2-10% of total traffic
• With email nurture campaigns: 5-15% of engaged email recipients
• Combined across all methods: 10-30% of company-identified traffic

You can improve these rates by optimizing form placement, running email campaigns, using gated content strategically, and maintaining active outbound efforts that drive known contacts to your website.

Privacy and Compliance Considerations

Sona's identification technology operates within strict privacy guidelines:

• No PII in anonymous tracking - Visitor fingerprints are hashed values, not personally identifiable information
• GDPR compliant - All tracking occurs without third-party cookies and respects European privacy regulations
• CCPA compliant - Meets California Consumer Privacy Act requirements for data handling
• Consent-free operation - Basic visitor tracking doesn't require intrusive cookie banners
• Data encryption - All visitor and contact data is encrypted in transit and at rest
• Opt-out mechanisms - Visitors can request data deletion in accordance with privacy laws

Person-level data only appears in your Sona account when individuals voluntarily provide information through forms, email engagement, or other explicit actions.

Practical Applications

Understanding who's visiting enables powerful go-to-market strategies:

For Demand Generation Teams

• Identify net-new accounts showing interest before they convert
• Discover which content attracts your ideal customer profile
• Measure true campaign reach beyond just form submissions
• Build retargeting audiences based on account attributes

For Sales Development Teams

• Prioritize outreach to companies actively researching your solution
• Personalize messaging based on pages visited and content consumed
• Time conversations when prospects are most engaged
• Re-engage dormant opportunities showing renewed interest

For Account-Based Marketing

• Track engagement across entire target account lists
• Coordinate multi-channel campaigns based on buying stage signals
• Measure account-level awareness and intent
• Identify which accounts need more top-of-funnel awareness

For Sales Teams

• See complete visitor history before first conversations
• Identify multiple stakeholders from the same account
• Reference specific interests based on pages viewed
• Understand the research journey leading to demo requests