For years, intent data has promised to help sales and marketing teams understand which accounts are showing signs of interest, prioritize those accounts, and engage them at the right time.

In theory, that is exactly what every B2B team wants. In practice, a lot of intent data has felt a little too broad to act on with confidence.

An account is “surging.” A company is “researching.” A topic is “trending.” Those signals can be useful, but they often leave teams with the same follow-up question: what do we actually do with this information?

That is why I have been so interested in HubSpot’s Custom Intent Signals.

HubSpot gave me early access a couple months ago, and I will be honest, I was not fully convinced it would work at first. I understood the concept, but I wanted to see whether it could surface moments that were specific enough to actually change how we think about outreach, prioritization, and campaign strategy.

After testing it, I think this is one of the more interesting moves HubSpot has made for sales and marketing teams.

The reason is simple: Custom Intent Signals give teams the ability to define intent around what matters most to their business. Instead of relying only on standard, generic signals, you can surface the specific pieces of intel your team has always wanted access to.

That is where things get interesting.

For DemandWorks, that meant testing signals like when a company sponsors an industry newsletter, publishes a major research report, starts promoting content on LinkedIn, or adds platforms like Demandbase or 6sense to its tech stack.

Those are moments that matter to us because they tell us something about how a company is investing in market education, audience development, content distribution, or account-based programs.

But that is also what makes Custom Intent Signals interesting beyond our own use case. The point is not that every company should track the same signals. The point is that every company has specific moments they have always wished they knew about sooner.

For an HR or payroll company, the moments that matter might look completely different. They may want to know when a company is rapidly hiring across multiple states, expanding internationally, opening new locations, changing benefits providers, hiring a new CHRO, or dealing with new compliance requirements.

A payroll provider, for example, may care about signals like rising hourly headcount, new payroll or HR operations roles, distributed workforce growth, union-related workforce changes, or signs that a company’s HR tech stack is becoming more complex.

Those moments create a much more relevant reason to engage than simply knowing an account is “active.” They suggest the company may be facing a specific operational challenge around people, payroll, compliance, or workforce growth.

And that is where intent starts to become more useful.

The biggest difference, in my opinion, comes down to personalization versus relevance. Personalization says, “I know who you are.” Relevance says, “I understand what you are dealing with right now.”

Most B2B outreach gets stuck at personalization. It references someone’s title, company, industry, or maybe a recent post. That can make the message feel less generic, but it does not always create a real reason for someone to respond. Relevance is different because it connects the message to a real business moment.

If a company just published a major research report, the conversation should not start with a generic demand generation pitch. It should start with the report. Who are they trying to reach with it? How are they planning to extend the life of that content? Is it being used for brand awareness, pipeline creation, sales enablement, or all of the above?

That kind of context changes the conversation. It gives sales and marketing teams a way to engage based on something the account is actively doing, not just who they are.

The same is true if a company is running thought leadership ads on LinkedIn, sponsoring an industry newsletter, adding a key platform to its tech stack, or publishing new customer stories. These moments give you a window into what the company may be prioritizing, investing in, or trying to accomplish.

That does not mean every signal equals buying intent. It should not be treated that way. But it does mean the account is doing something worth understanding. And in B2B marketing, that context matters.

One of the things I appreciate about HubSpot’s approach is that the signal is not just surfaced without explanation. You can see the source, the timeframe, and the context behind where the signal came from. That is important because if a sales or marketing team is going to act on a signal, they need to trust it.

A rep should not be left guessing why an account appeared on a list. A marketer should not have to build a campaign around a vague intent score with no supporting context. The value comes from being able to look at the signal and understand what happened, when it happened, and why it might matter.

That is what helps turn intent data into actionable context. When each signal is backed by source, timeframe, and context, teams can better understand why an account may be ready to engage now. That gives them more confidence to prioritize the right accounts and lead with relevance, not just personalization.

To me, that is where this starts to feel closer to what ABM was always supposed to be.

ABM was never supposed to be about uploading a target account list and running the same message to everyone. It was supposed to be about focus, prioritization, and relevance. It was supposed to help teams understand which accounts matter most, what those accounts care about, and how to engage them in a way that feels connected to their business.

Custom Intent Signals help move teams in that direction because they make intent more specific to the business using it. For one company, the most important signal might be a prospect onboarding a key integration partner. For another, it might be a competitor campaign, a newsletter sponsorship, a new research report, a website outage, a security incident, or a shift in how the company is allocating spend.

That flexibility is what makes this interesting. You are not just reacting to the same generic signals everyone else can see. You are building signals around the moments your team has always wanted to know about.

For DemandWorks, this is also exciting because of how it can become another layer of intelligence in the campaigns we run for clients.

We spend a lot of time helping clients reach the right accounts with the right message at the right time. That sounds simple, but anyone in B2B knows how complex it really is. Buying committees are larger, journeys are less linear, and most of the market is not actively ready to buy at any given moment. Even when an account is showing some level of interest, it is not always obvious what message will resonate.

Signals like these can help provide more context. If a target account publishes a new report, that may influence the content we recommend promoting to them. If they are running thought leadership ads, that may suggest they are investing in category education or brand awareness. If they add an ABM platform to their tech stack, that may indicate a shift toward more account-based programs. If they sponsor an industry newsletter, that tells us something about the audience they are trying to reach.

None of those signals tell the full story by themselves, but together they create a clearer picture of what an account is doing and what moment they may be in.

The next step is where this gets even more interesting: pairing these Custom Intent Signals with HubSpot’s prospecting agent.

Finding the signal is only the first part. The real value comes from what happens next. Can your team turn that signal into a useful sales message? Can it influence campaign segmentation? Can it help route the account to the right rep? Can it change the content, offer, or talking points based on what just happened?

That is where AI can be much more valuable than simply helping teams write more emails. AI should help teams understand why the email is worth sending in the first place. Better signals create better context, and better context leads to better messaging.

That is the piece I keep coming back to.

Intent data has always promised relevance, but too often it has only delivered targeting. It helped teams decide who to go after, but not always why now or what to say. Custom Intent Signals feel like a step toward closing that gap.

They are not a replacement for strategy. You still need the right audience, content, creative, follow-up, and measurement. But they do give sales and marketing teams a better way to understand what is happening inside their target accounts and how those moments might connect to real business needs.

For DemandWorks clients, that is exactly the kind of intelligence we want to bring into campaigns. Not as a single source of truth, but as another layer of data our AI engine can reference to make programs more timely, more informed, and more relevant.

Because at the end of the day, personalization is nice.

Relevance is what gets people to pay attention.