IP Match & Engage — Business Overview
Also known as: Anonymous IP, Company Match & Engage, Web Widget, Web Intent
Last updated: February 2026
Feature Owners
| Role | Owners |
|---|---|
| Product manager | Martina Tuco |
| IT project manager | Martin Davitkov |
| Lead developers | Aleksandar Arsovski, Igor Naumoski, Ivan Velinov |
| Stakeholders | Julie, Dragica, Kristijan Todorov |
Table of Contents
- What Is IP Match & Engage?
- How It Works — The Big Picture
- The Four Systems
- Step-by-Step Journey
- How a Company Gets Identified
- From Visitor to Prospect
- The Widget on Client Websites
- Credits & Costs
- What Clients See (Portal)
- Security & Privacy
- Glossary
1. What Is IP Match & Engage?
IP Match & Engage turns anonymous website traffic into real business opportunities.
When someone visits a Sopro client's website, we can't see who the individual person is — but we can identify which company they work for based on their internet connection (IP address). Once we know the company, we can automatically find relevant contacts at that company and add them to the client's outbound campaign.
The Value Proposition
| Without IP Match & Engage | With IP Match & Engage |
|---|---|
| A visitor lands on your website and leaves. You never know they were there. | A visitor lands on your website. We identify their company, find the right decision-makers, and add them to your campaign — automatically. |
In Simple Terms
"Someone from Acme Corp visited your website today. We found 3 relevant contacts there and added them to your campaign."
2. How It Works — The Big Picture
Six steps, fully automated:
- Detect — A small piece of code (the "widget") on the client's website notices a new visitor
- Identify — The visitor's IP address is looked up to determine which company they belong to
- Qualify — The company is checked against the campaign's targeting rules (right industry? right size?)
- Source — Relevant prospects are found at the company (matching job titles, seniority, etc.)
- Verify — Prospects are verified for data quality
- Engage — Verified prospects with valid emails are added to the client's outbound campaign
3. The Four Systems
IP Match & Engage is powered by four interconnected systems:
| System | What It Does | Analogy |
|---|---|---|
| Web Widget | Sits on the client's website, watches for visitors, triggers the identification process | A security camera at the front door — notices who walks in |
| IP Resolver | Takes an IP address and figures out which company it belongs to | A detective — takes a clue (IP) and identifies the company |
| Processing Engine | Takes identified companies, qualifies them, finds prospects, runs email finding | An assembly line — takes raw leads and produces campaign-ready prospects |
| Sopro Master Data | Our central database of companies and people, used for enrichment and prospect sourcing | The phonebook — where we look up company details and find contacts |
4. Step-by-Step Journey
What Happens at Each Stage
1. Visitor Arrives (Instant)
A potential buyer visits the client's website. They might be browsing products, reading a blog post, or checking pricing. They don't fill out any forms — they're just browsing anonymously.
2. Widget Activates (Instant)
The widget code on the website detects the new visitor. It records the page they're visiting and captures their IP address.
3. Company Identified (< 1 second)
The IP address is sent to the IP Resolver, which checks three sources in order:
- Our cache — Have we seen this IP recently? (free, instant)
- Our internal database — Do we have a record for this IP? (free, fast)
- Clearbit — A third-party IP intelligence provider (costs 1 credit per lookup)
The first source that finds a match wins — we don't keep checking after that.
4. Visit Recorded (Instant)
The identified company visit is placed into a message queue for later processing. The visitor's browsing experience is unaffected.
5. Daily Automation (Runs Overnight)
A scheduled process reviews all company visits from the past period and for each one:
- Qualifies the company against campaign targeting (industry, size, geography)
- Searches Sopro's database for contacts matching the desired job titles
- Verifies the prospect data for quality
- Finds emails for verified prospects
6. Prospect Added to Campaign
Qualified prospects with valid emails are automatically added to the client's outbound campaign, ready for engagement.
5. How a Company Gets Identified
The IP Resolver uses a three-tier approach to identify companies. This balances speed, cost, and accuracy.
Why Three Tiers?
| Tier | Source | Cost | Speed | When It's Used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Cache | Previous lookup results stored locally | Free | Instant | ~60-70% of requests hit the cache |
| 2. Internal DB | Curated IP-to-company mappings | Free | Fast | Known corporate IP ranges |
| 3. Clearbit | Third-party IP intelligence API | 1 credit | ~500ms | New/unknown IPs — most accurate source |
This approach means most lookups are free and instant (cache hits), and we only spend credits on genuinely new IPs we haven't seen before.
Not Every IP Can Be Identified
Some IPs can't be matched to a company:
- Home/residential IPs — People working from home appear as regular consumers
- Mobile/cellular IPs — Mobile networks share IPs across thousands of users
- VPN/proxy IPs — The real company is hidden behind the VPN provider
- Datacenters & bots — Automated traffic, not real people (these are excluded)
6. From Visitor to Prospect
Once a company has been identified visiting a client's website, the daily automation process turns that signal into actionable prospects.
Prospect Status Journey
Each prospect moves through a lifecycle:
| Status | Meaning | What Happens Next |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | Prospect identified, processing started | Email finding in progress |
| Awaiting Engagement | Email found, ready for outreach | Will be included in next campaign send |
| Engaged | Outreach message sent | Waiting for response |
| Responder | Prospect replied | 🎉 Handed to client's sales team |
| Email Not Found | Couldn't find a valid email | No further action |
| Verification Failed | Data quality check failed | No further action |
| Duplicate | Already in this campaign | Skipped |
| Exclusion | On a suppression/exclusion list | Skipped |
Safeguards
- Per-company limit: Maximum of 20 prospects per company per campaign — prevents over-targeting
- Exclusion lists: Respects client-defined exclusions (people, companies, domains)
- Data verification: Every prospect is checked for data quality before engagement
- Deduplication: Prevents the same person from being contacted twice in the same campaign
7. The Widget on Client Websites
What Is the Widget?
The widget is a small piece of code that clients add to their website — similar to Google Analytics or a Facebook Pixel. It's invisible to visitors and doesn't affect website performance.
Widget Features (Configurable Per Client)
| Feature | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| IP Detection | On/Off per client | Resolves visitor IP to company name |
| Page Personalisation | Optional | Dynamically changes text/images based on visitor's company |
| WebChat | Optional | Loads a Sopro chat widget pre-filled with visitor/company context |
| Visit Tracking | Always on | Records page visits and time spent |
| Bot Protection | Configurable | Filters out crawlers, scrapers, and automated traffic |
| URL/IP Filtering | Optional | Exclude specific pages or IP ranges from tracking |
Personalisation Examples
When enabled, the widget can dynamically modify the website content:
| Type | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Text | "Welcome to our platform" | "Welcome, Acme Corp — see how we help technology companies" |
| Image | Generic hero image | Company logo or screenshot of Acme Corp's website |
| Background | Stock photo | Industry-relevant image |
8. Credits & Costs
How Credits Work
IP resolution through Clearbit (the third-party provider, used when our cache and internal database don't have a match) costs 1 credit per lookup.
Credit Tiers
| Event | Credit Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cache hit (Tier 1) | 0 | Free — most common |
| Internal database hit (Tier 2) | 0 | Free |
| Clearbit lookup (Tier 3) | 1 | Only when Tiers 1-2 miss |
| Clearbit lookup — credits exhausted | 0 | Lookup skipped, widget paused |
What Happens When Credits Run Out
- The widget stops making Clearbit lookups for the rest of the month
- Visit tracking continues (we still record page visits)
- The Sopro team is notified automatically via email
- Credits reset at the start of the next month
- A Sopro admin can manually top up credits if needed
9. What Clients See (Portal)
Clients can manage their IP Match & Engage feature through the Sopro Portal:
IP Detector Dashboard
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Company List | See all companies identified visiting their website, with visit dates and page details |
| Company Details | Drill into a specific company: industry, size, website, and all page visits |
| Engage Prospects | Manually select companies and trigger the prospect sourcing pipeline |
| Export | Download identified companies as a spreadsheet |
| Settings | Configure URL/IP filtering rules — choose which pages to track and which to exclude |
| Targeting | Set industry and company size preferences for automatic engagement |
10. Security & Privacy
Visitor Privacy
- No personal data is collected — IP Match identifies companies, not individual people
- No cookies for identification — IP-based only (cookies are only used for returning known prospects)
- No form data captured — The widget doesn't intercept or read form submissions
- Invisible to visitors — No visible UI elements unless personalisation or WebChat is enabled
Bot & Fraud Protection
| Protection Layer | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Bot Detection | Identifies and blocks 100+ known web crawlers, scrapers, and automation tools |
| Rate Limiting | Prevents abuse — maximum 50 requests per minute per IP address |
| IP Blacklist | Blocks known malicious IPs using threat intelligence feeds |
| Datacenter Detection | Skips IPs belonging to cloud providers and datacenters (not real visitors) |
| VPN/Proxy Detection | Identifies traffic coming through VPNs and proxies |
| Sopro IP Exclusion | Optionally excludes Sopro's own office IPs from tracking |
11. Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| IP Address | A unique number assigned to every device connected to the internet. Corporate offices typically share one or a few IP addresses across all employees. |
| Widget | A small, invisible piece of code added to a client's website that enables visitor tracking and company identification. |
| Integration Token | A unique identifier (like a serial number) assigned to each client's widget installation. |
| Clearbit | A third-party data provider that can identify which company an IP address belongs to. |
| SoProMasterData | Sopro's internal database of companies and contacts, used for enrichment and prospect sourcing. |
| Cache | A local store of previous IP lookup results, allowing instant (and free) re-identification of returning visitors. |
| Credit | One unit of Clearbit IP lookup. Each lookup of a new IP costs 1 credit. Cached lookups are free. |
| Queue | A message pipeline that processes work in the background without slowing down the visitor's experience. |
| Intent Signal | The event of a company visiting a client's website — indicates potential buying interest. |
| Source & Engage | The automated process of finding contacts at identified companies and adding them to campaigns. |
| Personalisation | Dynamically changing website content (text, images) based on the visitor's identified company. |
| Portal | The client-facing web application where clients can view identified companies and manage settings. |
| Prospect | A specific person at a company who matches the campaign's targeting criteria (job title, seniority, etc.). |
| WebChat | An optional chat widget that appears on the client's website, pre-loaded with visitor/company context. |
| Bot | Automated software that visits websites (search engine crawlers, scrapers, etc.) — not real human visitors. |
| Heartbeat | A signal sent every 3 seconds while a visitor is actively on the page, used to measure engagement duration. |