The power of data: B2B data enrichment explained

All sales start with one thing: data.

Data is what helps you define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). It’s what allows you to connect via phone, email, or LinkedIn. It’s what allows you to personalize your messaging, nail your timing, and create compelling buyer journeys.

So if your data enrichment isn’t up to scratch, everything in your selling suffers. 

One survey found that 91% of businesses feel data issues are damaging their performance.

You want to be in the 9%, right?

Let’s dive into the secrets of effective data enrichment, data management, and how to build the right data foundations for your pipeline!

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What is data enrichment?

Data enrichment is the process of enhancing existing data by adding new, relevant detail from various sources. 

This process ensures that your data is accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date. 

For example, you could start with a prospect’s LinkedIn URL and enrich that person’s contact profile to include everything from their job title to current company, location, industry, email address, phone number, and more!

Essentially, data enrichment means transforming basic data into more actionable stuff you can leverage in your outbound. 

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Benefits of enriching data

Enriching lead or customer data allows you to be more accurate and strategic in your selling: 

1. Better understanding of your buyers: Data enrichment helps you ensure you’re always targeting your true ICP and engaging in a personal way.
2. Enhanced customer experience: With more data on your buyers and customers, you can learn to anticipate their needs and offer solutions at the perfect time.
3. Increased sale efficiency: Having access to accurate and detailed data means your sales team can focus on their hottest leads, improve their conversion rates and boost overall sales performance!
4. Cost savings: By eliminating redundant and irrelevant data, you can reduce storage costs and ensure your CRM is always the central source of truth.
5. Smarter decision-making: You can make more effective strategic decisions when you’re relying on comprehensive, reliable data instead of speculation!

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Database enrichment fundamentals

Data validation and cleansing

Before you start enriching new data, you need to make sure your existing data is clean and accurate! 

Data validation and cleansing involve identifying and correcting errors, removing duplicates, and standardizing data formats. 

Looking after your data hygiene helps protect the integrity of your database and will improve enrichment accuracy.

Remember that some enrichment tools will charge per lead enriched, so you don’t want to lose credits on duplicate or outdated records!

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Leveraging external data sources

Most data enrichment tools work by compiling data from multiple sources - including social media, third-party databases, and more.

This brings a few advantages:

1. Pulling data from diverse sources helps you unlock more details about individual prospects and means you can segment specific audience groups for hyper-targeted campaigns.
2. Cross-checking data between sources increases your overall accuracy because you’re not overly-dependent on one database.
3. It’s impossible to enrich data manually and at scale! Using a data enrichment tool makes prospecting and qualifying leads infinitely faster and frees you up to focus on other tasks.

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Advanced data enrichment strategies

So far we’ve talked about enrichment in terms of consolidating your contact database.

But what about using data enrichment to add an extra level of precision to your lead targeting?

Here are some more advanced data enrichment techniques to give your prospecting a competitive edge:

1. Using technographic insights

Imagine you’re selling a SaaS tool that is designed to replace or integrate seamlessly with other tools. If you knew prospects already had these tools in their techstack, you’d have a great reason to reach out to them.

Tools like Amplemarket give you access to technographic data just like this. In other words, you can filter prospects by their tech tools to identify the best use cases for your solution!

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2. Uncovering buying intent

By enriching your data with indicators of buying intent you can prioritize leads that are more likely to convert. 

These signals could include:

• Prospects engaging with your competitor’s content on LinkedIn
• Prospects in decision-making roles who have recently changed jobs and have fresh budgets
• Companies who’ve achieved a recent funding round
• Companies that are actively hiring and looking to grow
• Etc.

This extra layer of enrichment means you can reach out just as prospects are looking to buy.

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3. Real-time data updates

Prospects leave jobs. They move companies. Contact details change. If you’re not constantly updating your lead database, your data will go stale very quickly.

But by continuously updating your data with real-time information, you can ensure that your sales and marketing efforts are always based on the most current and relevant data.

The easiest way to do this is to look for a tool that automatically refreshes your existing contact data - and ideally, syncs seamlessly with your CRM on a regular basis.

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Customer database best practices

Handling customer data is a serious business. Failure to comply with privacy regulations can land your business in legal trouble, so data protection is a non negotiable.

Here are a few best practices to stay safe:

1. Audit your data regularly

Review your database for errors, inconsistencies, and outdated information to make sure your data remains reliable and valuable.

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2. Be aware of data protection regulations

Educate yourself around the data privacy and protection laws relevant to your region, such as GDPR or CCPA. This not only protects your customers' privacy but also helps you avoid legal issues and maintain trust with your audience.

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3. Monitor your marketing bulk email lists

It’s easy to lose track of your growing marketing lists, but when it comes to bulk email, you should only be engaging people who have consented for you to do so.

Always make sure it’s obvious to leads how they can opt out of your lists. This not only helps you focus on best-fit leads - it will also help protect your outbound deliverability and engagement!

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What to look for in a data enrichment tool

Manual data enrichment is incredibly time-intensive and inefficient. No rep wants to spend their days looking for scraps of data and copy and pasting individual records!

Thanks to the recent advances in AI and machine learning, there are plenty of enrichment tools that can help you find the prospect data you need in seconds.

Here are some things to consider when choosing your B2B data enrichment tool:

• Integration capabilities: Prioritize tools that integrate smoothly with your existing systems (especially your CRM) so that enriched data is automatically shared across platforms and you don’t have to resort to manual data entry.
• Real-time updates: Look for real-time data updates that will keep your information current and relevant.
• Comprehensive data sources: Tools that pull data from a wide range of reliable sources - like social media, third-party databases, and public records - will give you the most robust and holistic lead insights.
• Ease of use: Select a tool with an intuitive interface, clear instructions, and straightforward processes to reduce the learning curve and ramp time for your team.
• Data accuracy and reliability: Check for average data accuracy scores, frequency of data refreshes, and whether your chosen tools cross-verify data with multiple sources.
• Scalability: Choose a tool that can scale with your business, handling larger data volumes, datasets, and global coverage as go-to-market strategy grows.
• Customization options: Look for a flexible tool that offers customization options. For example, the ability to define custom data fields, create specific enrichment rules, or adjust data validation criteria are might be important if your ICP if highly specific.
• Security and compliance: Prioritize data security by selecting a tool that complies with relevant data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).

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The ultimate B2B enrichment tool

Data enrichment is what helps you shape your buyer journeys from start to close - and beyond! 

If there’s one thing you should always bear in mind, it’s that data enrichment isn’t a one-off exercise. You need the tools and processes in place to ensure your data is always fresh and current. Otherwise, you’ll quickly fall behind your competitors.

If you’re looking for a data enrichment tool that gives you unbeatable breadth, depth, and accuracy in the B2B world, Amplemarket is your best bet! With over 70M updates per month across more than 100 data sources, Amplemarket helps you identify your best-fit buyers with pin-point precision. Sign up for a demo today to lean more!