New for Intent Signals: Company Surge®, Powered by Bombora

Hey there, community! Justin here, PM for Intent at HubSpot. :waving_hand:

I’m really excited to share something we’ve been building for a while: Company Surge® signals, powered by Bombora, now live and native in HubSpotno existing Bombora account required.

As a marketer, you’re always looking for the clearest signal of who’s ready to buy. Visitor intent tells you who’s on your site — but what about the companies actively researching your category before they’ve ever found you? That’s the gap Company Surge® fills.

As an ops pro, you’re constantly looking for ways to sharpen the data powering your GTM motions. Better signals mean better-segmented audiences, smarter triggers, and higher-quality pipeline — and now you’ve got one more source of signal to work with natively.

As a seller, you know context is everything. Company Surge® gives you something concrete: a company actively researching “CRM Software” or “Sales Intelligence” is a company in-motion. That’s a reason to reach out, not a guess.

Now, as a HubSpot customer, you get access to this research intent data as part of your standard intent signal tracking. No extra setup required. This is one more powerful signal in your toolkit.


What Are Company Surge® Signals?

When a company starts spiking on a topic tied to your category, HubSpot shows that activity on their record as a Company Surge® signal. If they’re spiking on multiple related topics at once, that’s your cue to reach out. The data is powered by Bombora’s B2B Data Co-op, a one-of-a-kind data source that reflects the research activity of millions of companies across thousands of trusted publisher and business website sources.

A few things worth knowing:

  • High / Medium / Mild / Low research level. We translate Bombora’s research intensity score into simple High, Medium, Mild, and Low levels—making it easy to see how strongly a company is researching a topic.

  • “Powered by Bombora” attribution. Signals are clearly labeled so you know where the data is coming from.

  • Up to 12 topics per portal. You (or HubSpot, automatically — more on that below) pick the topics that map to your buyers’ research journey.

  • Company-level, not contact-level. Company Surge® detects intent at the company level — clean signal, ideal for account-based motions.


How to Get Started

You can be up and running in two steps.

Step 1: Review and Customize Your Topics

Here’s something we’re proud of: HubSpot automatically selects up to 12 Bombora research topics for your portal based on your website. By the time you go in to configure, we’ve already done the legwork.

To review or adjust your topics, go to Marketing > Buyer Intent > Signals tab, find the Company Surge® signal in your My Signals panel, and click Select Topics. From there, you’ll see your auto-selected topics and can add, edit, or remove them. You can search by keyword to explore Bombora’s full topic library and swap in topics that map better to your ICP.

If you find you want access to a deeper volume of Bombora data, you can always reach out to the Bombora team directly to explore their plans.

Step 2: Act on the Signal

Every Company Surge® signal automatically fires as a company event — complete with topic, category, research level, and top metro areas — on the company record — for every company you’re already tracking. That means there’s no extra configuration to unlock this: if a company is being tracked for your standard signals, they’re being tracked for your Bombora topics too, at no additional cost.

From there, the signal flows everywhere standard intent signals already flow:

  • Workflows: Trigger a rep notification when a tracked account hits “High” research level on one of your topics. Create a task. Enroll associated contacts in a sequence. Build intent into your existing automated motions.

  • Segments: Build a segment of “Companies with high research level in the last 14 days” for targeted campaigns or ad audiences.

  • Lead Scoring: Factor level of research activity tied to your chosen topics into your company scoring. High research level = points. Your hottest accounts rise to the top automatically.

  • Company Records: Reps see the signal right on the record activity timeline without leaving HubSpot.

  • Company Index: Use the Recent Intent Signals company property to segment and save views for companies that have detected Company Surge signals.


Why This Matters

Company Surge® signals are included in your standard company tracking cost. Every company you’re already tracking gets Bombora intent intelligence added to the same feed as your 40+ other standard signals — visitor intent, news events, job changes, and more. One tracking cost, one place to act.

That’s the bet behind this: Bombora’s research intent data, fully native in HubSpot, working seamlessly with everything you’ve already built.

And if you’re getting serious signal value and want to go even deeper — more topics, more data volume — Bombora has plans for that. This is a great starting point.


Try it out — go check your auto-suggested topics, make any adjustments, and let us know what you see firing in the comments. Especially curious to hear which topic combinations are working well for different ICP types. I’ll be in the thread.

— Justin

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