Businesses have used professional contact listings to reach their markets for generations, dating back to the days when a phone book arrived at your doorstep with a thump.
In our digital world, where millions of business contacts are changing by the minute, ZoomInfo simplifies that age-old process for businesspeople who have no time to lose. Simply put, we help people connect with each other to conduct business.
The combination of our best-in-class business contact data and industry-leading software helps customers define their market, deliver their message, and close more deals. This efficient and effective edge is what every business is looking for and why the average ZoomInfo Sales customer willingly pays more than $30,000 a year for it.
But for nonprofits, startups, and small businesses, this sort of investment can be prohibitively expensive. Our solution for these potential customers is ZoomInfo’s Community Edition (CE), which provides access to our business data and insights — at no cost to its subscribers. Each subscriber accesses the same data set as our ZoomInfo Sales customers, opening up new markets for smaller organizations.
In exchange for free access, CE users share business contact information from their email accounts with ZoomInfo. The type of information shared is what you would find on a resume or business card: company, job title, email addresses, and phone numbers. User contributions and participation make our business data better for everyone. They also make CE more valuable for the next person looking to join.
However, we understand that even if the data gathered is low-risk, we are collecting and providing it at scale. Data privacy is a top priority at ZoomInfo. We’ve funneled enormous amounts of time, resources, and energy into continually improving our privacy standards. We ensure that data sharing through CE complies with our industry-leading privacy practices.
Let’s break down exactly how CE opens up markets for small businesses while keeping your privacy protected.
Privacy is a Priority
More than 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses take advantage of our CE, which connects them with their next best prospect eight times more frequently than outdated manual methods, such as web searches.
Because our focus is on helping businesspeople connect with each other to do business, we limit the data collected by CE subscribers to professional contact and career profile information. We’re not interested in any individual’s buying habits or sensitive personal data. CE users run an application in their own environment that identifies, filters, and extracts the business-related information in their email contact list, email headers, and email signature blocks, and shares that data — and only that data — with ZoomInfo.
ZoomInfo takes privacy very seriously, and we hold ourselves accountable for upholding the highest industry standards. We follow applicable laws in the regions where we collect and receive data and where people access our platform. This includes adherence to laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California.
We are dedicated to being an industry leader in data privacy and security, which is recognized in our memberships and certifications with trusted third-party data privacy and security organizations, such as ISO, TrustArc and SAFECode.
We expect CE subscribers to meet these same high standards. Before registering, every user must agree to our Community Edition Terms of Use, which requires subscribers to use the data they get from ZoomInfo lawfully, respecting the rights of every person on our platform.
This agreement also applies to the information users share with ZoomInfo. It requires new subscribers to confirm that they have the right to provide ZoomInfo with information — both from their employer and from a legal standpoint. No one can subscribe to CE with a personal email, which helps ensure that only business-related information is provided to ZoomInfo.
If you feel these actions aren’t enough, you also have a say in how we share your information.
You Have Control of Your Data
ZoomInfo supports individuals maintaining control over their data, as well as how it’s distributed and used. That starts by letting people know their information has been added to our database.
We promptly notify individuals around the world when their information is added to ZoomInfo’s database, regardless of whether local laws require us to provide this notice. This is a level of commitment to data transparency rarely seen among other companies in our industry.
Since 2021, we’ve sent more than 100 million privacy notices. In 2022, we took privacy notification a step further with a re-notification program, emailing individuals so they remain aware of their continued presence on ZoomInfo and their ability to opt out.
Our dedicated email management team is always improving its processes to ensure that not only are these emails being sent, but that they arrive successfully in the correct inboxes.
Many of our customers also use the GDPR as a benchmark for global privacy compliance, and our notifications are designed to be GDPR-compliant, regardless of the data subject’s location. We make every individual aware of what information we process and why, where the information came from, and how long we will hold it.
Our notifications also include clear instructions on how to modify or remove the contact information that has been collected. Most of the opt-out requests we receive are processed in a few hours.
Still Have Questions?
We work hard to create a product that supports data minimization, emphasizes privacy, and provides real value to our subscribers. We want to be as transparent as possible and are happy to answer any questions. If you have a question, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at zoominfohelp@zoominfo.com.