Top 10 APIs for a More Efficient Sales Pipeline, SaaS Demand Generation & B2B Lead Generation Strategy for Startups | StartUP MQL
The importance of using APIs to collect actionable data from your users and SaaS leads is becoming more important as you can use this data to understand each customer's behavior. This will allow for personalized marketing content based on services and products viewed by them, it also helps with segmenting users into different buyer personas so you can truly optimize each message and increase the sales pipeline with high-quality, qualified B2B leads!
The information you gather from your customer’s behaviors and preferences from a lead generation API can be used to create quality content that will improve their experience, leading them towards purchasing your SaaS products.
Think about your business operations, does it make sense that you are still using spreadsheets or databases to store data? API is one of the most accurate technologies for businesses because with an API you can reduce time, money and most importantly, errors. Balancing out all the tedious manual tasks in favor of a machine-driven interface will increase efficiency, one of the best things that can happen to any SaaS startup.
StartUP MQL’s founder, Vas Edelen was responsible for Demand Generation and Lead Generation at two API startups. The first API startup, Apiphany: developed an API Management platform to publish, manage, secure and analyze APIs and was acquired by Microsoft then baked into Microsoft Azure. The second API startup, API Fortress: developed an Automated API Testing platform for debugging and to secure API connections and was acquired by Sauce Labs. Vas used more than a dozen marketing APIs in order to facilitate an overflowing sales funnel with B2B leads. We’re excited to share in this article some of the APIs we use at StartUP MQL for our SaaS startups partners that generate extremely targeted B2B SaaS leads, ranging from Google’s Ad APIs to SendGrid’s email marketing APIs.
What is an API and Can It Really Help With SaaS Demand Generation and B2B Lead Generation?
APIs (Application Programming Interface) allow for different pieces of software to communicate by using protocols. They are like bridges that connect one program with another, allowing both sides in the conversation at once!
APIs have become a powerful tool in today’s business world. Businesses use them for everything from automation and optimization, to data access and integration - there's no limit!
As an example, you can use APIs from platforms like Restkit which helps with generating nice looking URLs without having to write custom HTML tags and it even generates controller methods if needed, so there's less chance they'll break when deployed onto third party servers.
Marketing APIs Help Create Extremely Segmented Audiences for B2B Lead Generation
APIs are the most efficient way to collect, transfer, and organize data in real time. APIs are the lifeline for modern applications, acting as a middleman that forwards your request, data to internal or 3rd party applications.
Here’s a simple example of how we use Facebook’s (Meta) Marketing API to build extremely segmented audiences that we place our SaaS partners ads in front of in order to generate targeted B2B leads.
Facebook’s Marketing API allows us to build a target custom audience based on data our partners have already collected and placed into their CRM. This includes using a prospect’s email addresses, phone number, gender, title, date of birth, locations, name and other data that they have already collected on existing prospects and target personas. We then pass this data into Facebook’s Marketing API, which in return creates a very segmented and targeted audience for us to place our SaaS partners ads in front of.
Let’s review for first 3 steps and take a quick look at how simple it is to use the Facebook Marketing API to target a Custom Audience with specific ads in order to upsell them on newly released products or services:
Create an empty Custom Audience:
Specify subtype=CUSTOM and customer_file_source in your API call.
Set parameters and values. (customer_file_source, user_provided_only, partner_provided_only, both_user_and_partner_provided)
Specify a list of users:
Use a POST API call to the /{audience_id}/users endpoint to specify the list of users you want to add to your Custom Audience.
Set parameters (session, payload)
Create the session fields (session_id, batch_seq, last_batch_flag, estimated_num_total) and we are referring to the positive 64-bit integer, positive integer, boolean, and integer.
Create A Response
A successful response includes JSON objects.
Audience identifier
Session ID Passed in
Total number of users received in a season so far
Number of entries sent with incorrect hashing
To review more technical steps please refer to the developer documentation on Facebook. (Meta) Creating Custom Audiences
The Top 10 APIs for B2B Lead Generation
To improve your lead generation strategy, it's important to have a good understanding of the different APIs available, and with so many readily available APIs, it can be difficult to decide which ones are worth your time. REST assured - our team has compiled a list of 3 lead generation tools that will instantly improve any business efforts in generating new B2B leads!
Facebook (Meta)
The Facebook Marketing API is an ingenious way for developers and brands to tap into the power of digital advertising. Developers have access to Facebook's advertising platform through their ad libraries. With the help of this API, developers can programmatically integrate dynamic ads into websites or mobile apps with ease! It also provides best practices for targeting customers as well as other management services such as insights data on what kind of audience you're looking at and conversion data. With this programmatic access, you can get dynamic ads that are tailored just for your needs with information on target audience demographics including age range, gender, title, location and many more.
Review Facebook’s Marketing APIs to start advertising on Facebook and to start generating targeted B2B leads.
HubSpot
HubSpot APIs are another one of Hubspot's attempts to make your website more efficient and desirable for generating leads, assigning them and enabling the sales team with success. The APIs also gives you the opportunity for creating apps that will help improve conversions on different parts within Hubspot or within 3rd party services like Monday.com, such as increasing lead generation, improving customer support or giving more data transparency around prospects! Hubspot’s APIs provide developers with many opportunities by allowing them to tweak existing products, but also create entirely new products from scratch.
Get started today with HubSpot’s marketing APIs and check out their API overview.
The Google Ads API is a programmatic interface that enables developers to interact directly with google ads and the next generation of Adwords. It's perfect for those who want increased efficiency when managing large or complex accounts, such as marketers looking at higher lead conversion rates. The power of Google Ads lies in its ability to provide an intuitive interface for advertisers. The company’s sophisticated software tools allow you to not only manage your account but also explore key performance indicators (KPIs) like keyword research and conversion tracking, providing valuable insights that can help optimize every B2B lead generation strategy.
Use Google’s Ads API to start generating highly targeted B2B leads for your SaaS startup.
Twilio
Twilio is changing the way that businesses communicate with their customers and how business create more sophisticated lead generation strategies. They offer programmable APIs, which are building blocks for developers to create whatever customer experience they want. SMS is a key component of modern marketing and communications. With text messaging, you can reach customers on their phones with targeted messages at just the right time, and it's more effective than ever before! Twilio offers powerful APIs that make building your SMS strategy and lead generation easy, no matter what type or size company needs with help connecting its message to potential customers.
Take your customer engagement to new heights with Twilio.
Klazify
Klazify's artificial intelligence and machine learning technology enables it to collect data from different sources in real-time. You can collect data from different sources, such as URLs, domains or emails to help you with your lead generation campaigns!
Klazify's advanced text categorization algorithm GroupV2 automatically sorts website pages into one of 385+ pre-set topic groups. This data is available in multiple programming languages including JSON, Python and PHP so you can choose what best suits your needs!
Learn how Klazify’s API and enrich your customer data.
Lusha
Lusha is the trusted leader in business engagement. The company's impressive tools help you build trust and create authentic connections with your leads, contacts or candidates by instantly verifying their professional profiles!
Lush’s software and APIs are a must for B2B professionals who want to change the way they engage with their leads, contacts and candidates on an everyday basis.
Let Lusha’s API enrich your database, system or app with accurate B2B contact and company data.
LinkedIn is a great way to connect with people in your industry. But it can be tough trying out new connections one-by-one and most BDRs and sales reps become exhausted doing so! That's where the Marketing Developer API comes into play - the API lets you easily generate B2B leads, raise brand awareness, but also build relationships through targeted sponsored content, InMail, and text ads that will help bring more visibility in your overall marketing strategy.
FullContact
FullContact is the world’s first identity management cloud service that helps marketers get greater insights into their audience by cross-referencing both first and third party data sets. This allows them to segment audiences more effectively, develop deeper customer profiles for each one of those individuals/groups in order better understand who they are targeting or trying to appeal to--and ultimately power meaningful experiences with greater lead generation outcomes. Be sure to check out FUllContact’s APIs for your next lead generation marketing campaign.
Discover how FullContact can help your startup create amazing customer journeys.
SendGrid
Sendgrid is the leading provider of Send Management Services for Marketers. They offer scalable email services that keep your marketing content from being pushed into spam folders and give you the insights into what's your marketing emails! With their APIs, customers can access data about bounces, unsubscribes, as well as other critical metrics necessary to troubleshoot any problem.
