Buying Intent helps you spot companies that are actively researching topics related to your product or service. In lemlist, this signal is powered by Bombora data through Explorium and works at the company level, so you can identify early research activity before a buyer reaches out directly.
By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to create a Buying Intent signal agent, choose the right intent topics, define the companies you want to monitor, and launch the workflow with the right expectations around billing, updates, and limitations.
Why this matters
Buying Intent is useful when you want to reach companies while they are still evaluating solutions. Unlike signals based on hiring, funding, or job changes, this one is based on what companies are researching now, which can help you prioritize earlier-stage opportunities and time your outreach more effectively.
Prerequisites
You should already know how to access Signal agents in lemlist.
You should already have a clear idea of your ideal customer profile and the topics buyers research before purchasing.
If you want to monitor a list or CSV-based segment, you should already have that company data prepared.
Core lesson: Create your Buying Intent workflow
Phase 1: Start a new signal agent
Go to Signal agents from the left sidebar, then click Create signal agent. This opens the signal builder, where you can choose the type of signal you want to monitor.
In the signal selection step, open the Buyer intent category and choose Bombora Buying intent. This tells lemlist you want to detect companies researching relevant topics, rather than track contact-level or event-based signals.
Phase 2: Configure the signal
Enter an agent name and wait for topic suggestions to load. lemlist can generate suggestions based on your AI context center, which can help you start from topics already related to your positioning.
Add your intent topics. These topics come from Bombora’s fixed taxonomy, so you select from available suggestions instead of typing completely free-form keywords. For best detection quality, add at least 10–12 relevant topics. The more relevant topics you include, the better lemlist can measure whether a company is actively researching your category.
How to choose good topics
Choose topics tied to your product category, buying problems, and common evaluation terms.
Include adjacent research themes, not just your exact product name.
Avoid topics that are too broad, unrelated, or overly niche.
Best practice: Start with a wider but still relevant topic set, then refine based on the companies and themes you see in the results.
Phase 3: Define which companies to monitor
Choose the scope of companies to monitor. You can use:
All segments to scan broadly
Company list to monitor an existing list in lemlist
Specific segment to monitor companies from a CSV-based segment
This step matters because Buying Intent only becomes useful when matched against the companies you actually care about.
Set your identification limit using the slider or preset values. This controls the maximum number of signals identified within your configured limit and helps you manage credit usage. Each successfully identified Buying Intent signal costs 100 credits, so this step is important for budgeting.
Scope filters you may have available
Company exclusions
Location inclusions or exclusions
Industry inclusions or exclusions
Company size inclusions or exclusions
Phase 4: Review and deploy
Review your summary before deployment. Confirm your selected topics, billing model, processing settings, and scope, then click Deploy agent. This final review is your chance to make sure the workflow matches both your targeting strategy and your expected credit usage.
How Buying Intent works after launch
Once your signal agent is live, lemlist checks your selected company scope against Bombora intent data on a weekly basis. When a company shows increased research activity on your chosen topics, lemlist creates a company-level signal you can review in the signal side panel.
Buying Intent signals can include:
Intent level: In-Depth Research, Active Research, or Early Research
Topic count: how many of your selected topics are showing intent
Intent topics
Composite score for each topic
Date stamp for the Bombora data week
Company details such as name, website, industry, employee count, location, and LinkedIn URL when available
How intent levels and scores work
Buying Intent scores come from Bombora, not from lemlist directly. They are based on how frequently and deeply people from a company are consuming content related to the selected topics.
The score is useful for understanding relative research intensity, but the exact scoring formula is managed by Bombora and is not fully transparent. Treat it as a directional buying signal, not as a guaranteed purchase prediction.
Practical application
Example: If you sell sales engagement software, you might select topics such as sales engagement, outbound sales, lead nurturing, sales automation, CRM, and lead generation. Then you could monitor a target account list of SaaS companies in a specific employee range.
When a company from that list starts surging on multiple related topics, you can:
Review the company-level signal
Check which topics are showing intent
Find or enrich the right contacts at that company
Start outreach with messaging aligned to the topics they appear to be researching
Try it yourself checklist
Name the signal agent clearly
Add at least 10–12 relevant topics
Choose the right company scope
Set an identification cap that fits your budget
Prepare a follow-up workflow for contact discovery or enrichment after a company is detected
Important limitations to know
Buying Intent detects companies, not individual contacts.
Data is refreshed weekly, so results are not real-time.
Scores come from Bombora and are not fully transparent.
Topics must be selected from Bombora’s taxonomy.
lemlist may exclude companies that already triggered a Buying Intent signal recently, typically for around one month, to reduce duplicates.
Buying Intent signal details are visible in lemlist, but may not sync automatically to CRM company properties.
Billing
Buying Intent is billed at success. You are charged when a company-level signal is successfully identified.
100 credits per identified signal
Charges apply only when a match is found
Troubleshooting and common pitfalls
Issue: I’m not seeing many results
Root cause: Your topic set may be too narrow, or your monitored company scope may be too restrictive.
Fix:
Add more relevant topics until you have at least 10–12
Review whether your company list or segment is too small
Check again after the next weekly refresh
Issue: Results did not appear immediately
Root cause: Buying Intent is not real-time.
Fix:
Wait for the next weekly data refresh
Confirm your topics and scope are correctly configured
Issue: I want to push Buying Intent companies directly into a campaign
Root cause: Buying Intent is a company-level signal, not a contact-level one.
Fix:
Use the detected company as your research starting point
Find or enrich relevant contacts from that company first
Then add those contacts to your campaign
Issue: Buying Intent fields aren’t syncing to my CRM properties
Root cause: Buying Intent signal details may not currently sync to CRM-syncable custom fields.
Fix:
Review your current CRM sync setup
Use manual workflows if you need the data in your CRM today
Check product updates for future sync support
Summary
Buying Intent helps you detect companies researching topics related to your business. To get the best results, create a focused but broad enough topic set, monitor the right company segment, and set a signal cap that fits your budget. Keep in mind that it is a weekly, company-level signal, billed at 100 credits per identified company, and best used as an early signal for timely outreach.