The Data Enrichment Services and Best Practices You Need to Know in 2021
If you’ve got a set of data that’s not in perfect health, chances are you’re considering how you can fill in the gaps. Data enrichment is the answer.
In this post you’ll learn:
- Different kinds of data enrichment
- How to get data from external sources
- Data scraping and how to do it legally
- Data enrichment services that will help you personalize your email campaigns
- Which data quality tools we think are great and how to use them
Want to check the health of your data and how much if it can be enriched? Request your free data quality check.
What is data enrichment?
Data enrichment improves your existing data. It usually involves starting with an existing database, and merging it with third-party data. With data enrichment you start with an email address, and add first and last name, gender, location, maybe even job title and firmographics.
You can combine this with data cleansing. First you clean and make sure your data is accurate, then you enrich that data. Suddenly your email list is 100x more powerful than before.
We wrote about the difference between data enrichment vs data cleansing. It’s not really one or the other. They’re both essential tasks to ensure your database is in its best shape.
Data enrichment benefits
Data enrichment services takes your existing data and add more details, filling in the gaps against your contact fields, so that you have a clearer picture of who your contacts are.
The fuller the picture you have of each contact, the more personalized and relevant your messaging can be. Importantly, the more opportunities you have to segment your email marketing and add personalization tags.
According to Mailchimp, segmented email campaigns achieve 14.31% higher open rates than non-segmented email campaigns, giving you a much better chance at conversion.
When you can segment, you can automate emails easily, saving time with bulk marketing emails.
Here’s what segmentation looks like:
Without a full picture of demographic, behavioral, or other information, you can’t segment your emails effectively.
Related post: 10 Essential Email Hygiene Best Practices For 2021
Data enrichment tools & services
There are plenty of data enrichment solutions out there, but it’s important to choose the right one for your goals and your database size.
How do data enrichment services work?
They work by improving prospect or customer data in your database. Most data enrichment services cover both the process of cleaning data and adding to your data (sometimes called data appending services).
What does the data enrichment process look like?
Here’s a typical data management workflow:
Start by ensuring your databases follow a consistent format. Standardize your field entries and remove duplicates.
Next, ensure your list is high quality by cleaning your data. Fix typos, make sure the phone numbers and email addresses you have are correct.
Enrich your data by filling in any gaps. Add new fields, source new information about your existing contacts.
Continue to keep your lists healthy.
Clean your email list with this 15-point email hygiene checklist
How can we use data enrichment tools to improve our database?
Find your contacts’ gender or age
While not applicable in B2B marketing, if your B2C business has gender or age targeted products or services, having this data can be useful as you can send more targeted ads or emails.
Find your contacts’ location
This can help by making your messaging super tailored, for example, “Hey, how’s the weather in New York?”. It certainly stands out more than “Hi *First Name*,”.
It may also be useful if your business goals involve targeting clients in specific cities or countries.
Advanced lead scoring
Lead-scoring is the process of applying plus or minus points against a contact based on the information you have about them. Their score tells you how good a lead they are so you know who is most worthwhile to pursue.
When going through a data enrichment process, you can seek to find out specific additional data that you know will be valuable for lead scoring, making this more effective.
Firmographics
Firmographics are another type of segmentation that refers specifically to the business or firm that a contact belongs to. It can describe company size, profits, structure, and industry. It’s another way you can segment your data, or score your contacts.
Fewer form fields
By auto-filling forms, or asking for less data on sign up, you provide less friction at the point of opt-in.
By making forms easier to fill in, the more likely a contact will complete it. Simply put, the better the customer experience, the more successful your marketing efforts.
There’s nothing worse for a marketer than having a huge list of contact data, and not being able to use it effectively, because all you have is email addresses. Here's how #dataenrichtment helps you make the most of your email list:
Best data enrichment tools out there in 2020
Here are some of the best tools available for data enrichment services in 2020:
tye
RingLead
ZoomInfo
Snov.io
Datanyze
tye
tye both cleans your data and enriches it. You can start with just a set of email addresses, and we will gather contact information e.g. first and last name, country, age, gender and more. We combine databases and machine learning to get the best results. Best if you’re looking to get started and dramatically improve your personalized email marketing, improve your sales pipeline automation and improve your CRM data.
We’ll also remove any invalid or inaccurate email addresses at the same time so your list is high quality, and ready for effective email marketing.
There’s no training needed, and no migration required. It’s as simple as extracting your data and then getting it back clean and enriched.
Best for: SMBs with 10k+ contacts who need to improve their list quality for email marketing
RingLead
RingLead is an end-to-end data enrichment solution with expertise in Salesforce management.
They specialize in duplicate management, usually as a result of large scale Salesforce merges.
Best for: Medium to Enterprise-sized businesses with 50k+ contacts who need to clean their Salesforce data
Zoominfo
Zoominfo is a B2B database management tool that helps you identify ideal clients, enrich your data, and manage your pipelines. Useful for prospecting, demand generation, and data management.
Best for: Medium to Enterprise-sized businesses with 50k+ contacts who want to overhaul their contact management approach
Snov.io
Snov.io is an email marketing ‘toolbox’. It provides tools to help with lead generation, competitor research, re-engagement, and email verification.
Best for: SMBs with contact lists of any size who want to send better bulk emails
Datanyze
Datanyze is a B2B technographics expert. They allow you to track your prospects’ technology tools, score contacts with predictive analytics, manage your prospecting processes, and enrich data in your CRM.
Best for: Medium to Enterprise-sized businesses who want to upgrade their prospecting approach
Data enrichment next steps
Data enrichment isn’t a one-time thing, it requires maintenance and upkeep to ensure results are consistent long-term.
Your database is constantly evolving. Just as it decays, it grows. You are likely collecting new data all the time, creating more and more gaps. Your data may also become outdated. People change jobs, locations, and even names.
There’s a real-time commitment required for maintaining good data, which is why using tools that can do the hard work for you just makes sense. Especially when you are working with bigger datasets.
Want to check the health of your data and how much if it can be enriched? Request your free data quality check.
Clean your email list with this 15-point email hygiene checklist
Maeva - August 26, 2020
Maeva Cifuentes is a B2B content marketer for tech scaleups and the founder of Flying Cat Marketing. She helps SaaS companies build trust and authority with useful, on-brand and original content.