The Best Data Enrichment Strategy for Marketing and Sales

B2B Data validation and enrichment is the practice of refining your existing CRM database by eliminating redundant and unwanted contact information and appending additional data points to your prospects’ records like phone numbers, industry, size of the company, designation, etc. It is one of the most beneficial practices for both your marketing and sales teams.

Refreshing your email list can be seen as an ongoing process during your marketing campaigns, as it allows you to source highly qualified leads, which enables targeting the right person with the right message. It can help your sales team with customer segmentation and lead scoring, allowing them to create personas for your prospects and craft a personalised sales pitch, improving the chances of converting them into customers.

But what is the most profitable method to get this highly valuable task done? Is it software tools for automated data enrichment or tools enhanced with data research by a team of experts? Find out the benefits of both in the article below.

How is data generally enriched?

• Data enrichment can be done on data that is sourced for the client or data that is already existing in the client’s database. Data cleansing is where redundant, outdated, and duplicate data is cleaned via the company’s software programs.
• The data is processed to remove inconsistencies in order to standardize the data, which ensures that it is in a consistent format.
• After cleaning and standardizing the data, it is appended by adding data points to the existing raw data.
• Data points such as designation, company size, contact number, social profiles, industry, etc. are added to enrich the data.
• Finally, this data is integrated with the company’s database, which can be accessed by the client’s marketers and salespeople.

These data refresh and append processes are commonly done using software tools called data enrichment tools. These are web-based, and require you to log in and apply filters based on industry, job title, geography etc. to a huge database. Then you get exactly the contact details you need, which can be downloaded directly into your CRM.

Major drawbacks

At first, the above-mentioned process might seem perfect to you from a marketing or sales standpoint, but most data enrichment solutions has their drawbacks as well:

• Lack of Data Accuracy: The industry standard for B2B contact data is only 80%. Outdated databases, poor database management systems, and a lack of human verification cause the accuracy of data to drop significantly.
• Email Bounces: Marketers have reported that 20 to 40 percent of their emails bounce. This number might not shock you unless you know the repercussions. Email bounces are one of the primary reasons that Google and Yahoo classify your business email as spam, affecting your opportunities, credibility, and deliverability.
• Identical Data: Enriched data is stored in databases which can be accessed by anyone who is willing to pay the cost. Your competitor may have downloaded from the same database provider as you, and hence both end up having identical data. This means your data is not exclusive to your company.
• No real-time data enrichment: B2B industries are very dynamic; people are changing jobs and positions at any given moment, mergers and acquisitions are sporadic, and the contact data gets outdated at an extremely fast pace. Data enrichment tools are unable to keep up with this pace as their software enriches their bulk databases on a monthly or quarterly basis, making it impossible to refine millions of records in real time.
• Cost vs. quality: The cost of data versus the quality of data is a constant source of contention. Many of these platforms and providers price themselves at a very low price, but they cost you more than money; they cost you quality and email bounces. The platforms might look profitable to you in the short term, but this practice is unhealthy for long-term growth.

A Better Strategy: Custom Data Research

A better solution to all the drawbacks is to perform custom data research. It might sound like a tedious and resource-intensive task, but the quality achieved would be far greater than any of the industry standards. It not only provides 100% accuracy but also a far greater return on your investment. The data is “freshly sourced” during your marketing campaign, reducing email bounces, improving email deliverability, and sending the right message to the right person.

One of the most important parts of this strategy are the channels of data sourcing: double opt-ins and primary research constitute consent-based marketing that complies with data privacy rules like the GDPR, CCPA, etc. The data must be bespoke, tailored, and built from scratch to ensure the highest quality and accuracy. Most email databases and tools provide information only for mass and mainstream industries but fail to include niche industries, which can easily be overcome by freshly sourcing the data.

Email tools often rely on automation to clean their bulk data of millions of contacts, which is done on a monthly or quarterly basis. This procedure lacks human verification and hence sets a low industry standard, but custom data research and human verification can be done on demand, therefore truly enriching the data in true real-time.

Custom data research is built on exclusivity. In very simple words, your data is exclusive to you, and no other organisation can access it. It helps in avoiding identical data and eventually enables you to target a much better and more defined set of highly qualified leads, increasing your chances of conversion. Therefore, this strategy works best for 100% accuracy and real-time data enrichment as it includes:

• Customization: One of the greatest strengths of custom data research is the ability to have full control and customizable access to your email list. You can tailor it to your specific requirements, audience types, and the ability to qualify leads even from the most niche industries.
• Exclusivity: As mentioned earlier, exclusivity gives you complete ownership of your data list. On the other hand, data enrichment tools only let you access the database, like paying rent. Custom data research, on the other hand, allows you to actually own that list as intellectual property. The major issue of having data that is identical to that of your competitor is also resolved.
• Accuracy: A combination of software as well as human verification is one of the most important aspects of data enrichment, which almost all the online tools miss leveraging. Only using software verification can get you a certain level of decent accuracy, but it is far inferior compared to the current industry demand.
• Real-Time Verification: Data enrichment tools can take months to verify and refine their databases containing millions of contacts, but custom data research can give you an edge by verifying data in real time. This is the combined result of exclusivity, customization, and the power of software plus human verification.
• Beyond the email list: Most tools often limit themselves to just providing an email list, but custom data research allows you to obtain valuable intelligence regarding your competitors, market, and upcoming trends, gearing you to stay ahead in the industry and make more informed business decisions.