Affinity Launches “Alliances™,” Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Grow Users’ Professional Networks

Affinity announced today the official launch of Alliances™, a relationship management solution that helps business professionals expand their networks and identify more opportunities for warm introductions. Alliances™ enables users to connect with any contact outside their organization and instantly share their relationship graph. Affinity then allows users to see the best paths to referrals within two degrees by applying a patent pending relationship strength algorithm so users truly understand who is best suited to make a referral or introduction. Alliances™ is now available for all users as an integrated part of the Affinity platform.

Alliances™ reinvents professional networking by using machine learning algorithms and Natural Language Processing to analyze a user’s relationship graph and identifying sources of warm introductions. While Affinity's relationship management platform enables an organization’s team to leverage each other’s relationship graph, Alliances™ allows Affinity users to connect with external contacts such as advisors, partners, investors or mentors to tap into their networks and access their connections. Unlike social media networks, which treat all relationships the same, Alliances™ automatically shows which connections have the strongest relationships to targeted prospects based on the tenor of their emails, frequency of their meetings, and other factors, enabling users to easily identify opportunities for referrals and introductions.

“Alliances™ unlocks the real power of business networks to help professionals source new opportunities, raise capital and close deals,” said Ray Zhou, co-founder of Affinity. “Unlike traditional networks, Alliances™ captures not only who your colleagues and peers know, but how well they know them, so you always know who’s in the best position to introduce you to a new contact or organization. With Alliances™ you can stop cross-checking social networks, your CRM system and other platforms hoping to stumble upon the right person to make an introduction.”

According to LinkedIn, 84 percent of B2B decision makers begin the buying journey by way of a referral. And yet, most sales professionals lack the insight to know which contact in their network is best suited to make that referral for them. Social networks can help identify mutual connections, but they’re insufficient for professional networking due to an overabundance of connections and an inability to determine which relationships are real or genuine. Affinity’s Alliances™ opens the doors for more warm introductions by easily and quickly surfacing the people in a user’s network that are in the best position to make a referral.

Affinity’s Alliances™ offers features such as:

• Relationship Strength: Affinity’s machine learning and Natural Language Processing algorithms analyze relationship data buried in peer-to-peer communications to let you easily identify which contacts in your network, within two degrees, have the best relationship with targeted prospects or organizations.
• Prospect Lookup: Look up any prospect to see every relevant contact your allies can provide a warm introduction to, based on real-time network data including the latest emails sent or received, the latest meetings held or scheduled and more.
• Prospect Finder: Within Affinity’s CRM, input your targeted prospect by industry, job title, location or other criteria, and Alliances™ will display every relevant prospect who you can get connected to via your allies’ real-time networks.
• Prospect Import: Within Affinity’s CRM, import a list of prospects by an organization or person name, in either .csv or .xlsx format, and see which of your allies can make a warm introduction.

“The real economy is comprised of relationships; it consists of people working together to deliver the products and services that run our modern world. Alliances enable professionals to better grow, leverage and manage the relationships that dictate their success,” said Joe Lonsdale, General Partner at 8VC and an Affinity co-founder.

“Alliances™ for Affinity has helped our portfolio companies supercharge connectivity within our common network; spotting new opportunities for adoption and partnerships,” said Luca Zorzino, Investment Director at Illuminate Financial.

Alliances™ is immediately available for all existing Affinity customers by selecting the “Alliances™” tab directly from the main menu within the Affinity dashboard. For more information, visit https://www.affinity.co/product/Alliances.