---
title: Monitor buying intent on a target account list
description: Get real-time alerts when companies on your target account list show buying intent for a specific topic — combine TheirStack's buying intent dataset with a target account list and a webhook to power ABM workflows.
url: https://theirstack.com/en/docs/guides/how-to-monitor-buying-intent-on-target-accounts
---

## The problem

If you run an ABM (account-based marketing) motion, you typically work from a curated list of target accounts — a few hundred to a few thousand companies your sales team has agreed to focus on. The question that matters every week is: **which of these accounts is showing fresh intent to buy something we sell?**

TheirStack's [buying intent dataset](/en/docs/datasets/options/buying-intent) surfaces companies that mention a given topic (a product category, a competitor, a problem space) in their job posts — a strong signal that the company is hiring against that problem and likely evaluating solutions.

Out of the box, a [buying intent](/en/docs/data/buying-intent) search returns matches across TheirStack's full universe of companies. For ABM you want the opposite: **only fire when one of _your_ target accounts shows intent**, ignoring everything else.

This guide shows how to scope buying intent monitoring to a specific list of companies and get a webhook in real time when a new signal appears.

## How it works

TheirStack [webhooks](/en/docs/webhooks) are attached to a [saved search](/en/docs/app/company-search). The search's filters determine which records trigger the webhook. To scope to a target account list you combine two filters in the same company search:

1.  **A buying intent filter** — the topic(s) your sales team cares about.
2.  **A company domain or LinkedIn URL filter** — the explicit list of accounts.

When you attach a webhook to that saved search, you only get `company.new` events for companies that match **both** conditions.

## Step-by-step

1.  **Open a new [company search](/en/docs/app/company-search).**
    
    Go to [app.theirstack.com](https://app.theirstack.com/search/companies/new) and start a new company search. Remove any default filters by clicking the X next to each one.
    
2.  **Add the buying intent filter.**
    
    Add a **Buying intent** filter and pick the **specific topic** you want to monitor (e.g. a single competitor name, or a single concrete product category). Pick the topic at the most granular level your sales motion needs — not a broad category that groups many topics.
    
    This matters because company webhooks fire once per account: if you filter by a whole category, an account that already shows intent for _any_ topic in that category will never re-trigger when a _different_ topic in the same category appears later. The recommended pattern is **one saved search + one webhook per specific topic** you care about. See the [Tips and caveats](#tips-and-caveats) section below.
    
    See [the buying intent dataset reference](/en/docs/datasets/options/buying-intent) for the full list of available fields.
    
3.  **Add your target account list.**
    
    Add a **Company domain** filter and paste the domains of your target accounts (one per line). For best coverage, also add a **Company LinkedIn URL** filter and paste the LinkedIn company URLs — domain matches and LinkedIn matches are complementary and together maximize hit rate.
    
    If your list lives in a CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), export the domains/LinkedIn URLs first and paste them here.
    
4.  **Save the search.**
    
    Click **Save** in the top right corner and give the search a clear name, e.g. `ABM — Target accounts × Snowflake intent`. The search has to be saved before you can attach a webhook.
    
5.  **Create the webhook.**
    
    Click the **Webhooks** button on the saved search and then **Create Webhook**. In the form:
    
    -   **Choose where to start**:
        -   `From now on` — only fire for new intent signals after webhook creation. Recommended for steady-state monitoring.
        -   `All time` — also backfill historical matches. Useful for the first run so SDRs see which accounts are _already_ showing intent today.
    -   **Webhook URL**: your endpoint (Zapier, Make, n8n, HubSpot workflow, custom service, etc.).
    -   **Signing Secret** (recommended): set a secret so you can [verify the payload authenticity](/en/docs/webhooks/verify-webhook-signatures).
    
    Use **Send test event** to confirm your endpoint is reachable.
    
    See [how to set up a webhook](/en/docs/webhooks/how-to-set-up-a-webhook) for the full walkthrough.
    
6.  **Keep the target list up to date.**
    
    The list of accounts lives in the saved search, not in the webhook. To add/remove accounts, edit the company domain / LinkedIn URL filter on the saved search — the webhook will pick up the new scope automatically.
    
    If you rotate target accounts frequently (e.g. quarterly with sales ops), you can do this programmatically through the [Webhooks API](/en/docs/api-reference/webhooks/get_webhooks_v0) and the [saved searches](/en/docs/app/saved-searches) API instead of the UI.
    

## Routing the signal into your stack

The webhook payload contains the company that triggered the intent. Common downstream actions:

-   **CRM**: create a task on the account owner, or update an `Intent topic` custom property on the company record.
-   **Slack**: post to the AE's channel with the company name, the topic, and a link to the job post that triggered the signal.
-   **Sequencing tool** (Outreach, Apollo, Salesloft): enroll the account owner in a topic-specific sequence.
-   **Ads**: push the company to a LinkedIn matched audience for a topic-specific campaign.

Zapier, Make and n8n all consume TheirStack webhooks directly, so most of these integrations don't require custom code.

## Tips and caveats

-   **One saved search per specific signal you want to hear about — not per category.** This is the most important caveat. Because company webhooks fire once per account (the event is `company.new`), as soon as an account matches the search you won't get another event from it on that same search. So if you filter by a whole **category** (e.g. "Data infrastructure", which groups dozens of topics), an account that already shows intent for _any_ topic in that category will silence the search forever — even when it later shows intent for a _new_ topic in the same category. To get a fresh alert every time a new topic/technology lights up, create **one saved search + one webhook per specific topic** you actually care about (e.g. one for Snowflake, one for Databricks, one for BigQuery), not a single search filtered at the category level.
-   **One webhook per topic also helps with routing.** If you want to route different topics to different channels (e.g. competitor mentions to AEs, problem-space mentions to marketing), the per-topic split is cleaner than parsing the topic out of a single firehose anyway.
-   **Company webhooks fire once per account.** Because the underlying event is `company.new`, each target account triggers a single event the first time it matches the search — there's no risk of the same account firing repeatedly as it posts more jobs. (The "Trigger once per company" toggle only exists on **job** webhooks, where the natural event is per-job and you'd otherwise get one event per matching job posting.)
-   **List size.** The domain / LinkedIn URL filters comfortably handle lists of a few thousand entries. If your target list is larger, contact us — for very large lists it can be more efficient to invert the flow and pull intents periodically via the [API](/en/docs/api-reference).
-   **Domain + LinkedIn URL together.** Some companies match on domain, others only on LinkedIn URL (e.g. domain changes, multi-brand groups, regional sites). Adding both filters typically lifts coverage materially over either alone.
-   **Backfill once, then switch to incremental.** A common pattern is: create the webhook with `All time` for the first run to seed your CRM with existing matches, then either disable that webhook and create a new one set to `From now on`, or simply rely on the duplicate-prevention built into webhooks (no event will be re-sent).

## Related guides

-   [How to set up a webhook](/en/docs/webhooks/how-to-set-up-a-webhook)
-   [Buying intent dataset reference](/en/docs/datasets/options/buying-intent)
-   [Monitoring open jobs from current and past customers](/en/docs/guides/monitoring-open-jobs-from-current-and-past-customers) — same target-account pattern, applied to job postings instead of intent signals.
-   [How to monitor job postings automatically](/en/docs/guides/how-to-monitor-job-postings-automatically)