As a sales and marketing professional, you know that data runs the show. Whether it is creating customer personas or optimising your outbound sales strategy – the success of it all rides on data.

It is no surprise then that companies today are trying to get the most out of the data in their CRMs. But, without a complete view of your data, you may struggle to hit your targets. You need quality as well as quantity when it comes to B2B contact data.

Queue data enrichment (CRM enrichment), the oft-neglected part of B2B CRM strategy. Adopting a data enrichment process can directly translate to more meaningful customer relationships and more business opportunities.

This post will uncover what data enrichment is and then explore six key reasons why you need to have a B2B data enrichment process in place. In the end, you will find a guide on what factors to consider when evaluating a B2B data provider.

What is data enrichment or CRM enrichment?

B2B data enrichment is the process of enhancing B2B contact data with additional variables at the prospect and company levels. Sometimes referred to as data appending, data enrichment can be performed manually or with the help of a data enrichment service.

By this token, CRM enrichment is the same process of appending additional variables, but to the contacts in your CRM database since this is where most of us manage our B2B data. This can be done by integrating a data enrichment tool with your CRM and using that integration to build your customer profiles.

The level of data enrichment you need will directly depend on the quality of your data source and what that source is. So, before we delve deeper into CRM data enrichment, let us discuss what the main sources of B2B data are.

Common sources of B2B Data

The majority of B2B data will come from one of these data sources:

Inbound

B2B data can come from inbound leads who directly share information with you by interacting with advertisements, landing pages, website contact forms, social media, etc.

This is a highly valuable source of data as it is sourced from the lead directly, however, it relies heavily on quality content that inspires them to take some form of action. The kind of data you get will therefore largely depend on the content material the lead comes from.

For example, a white paper offers an in-depth and well-researched piece of content about a specific topic. You can gate this type of content and require prospects who want access to it to fill out a long-form since the content material is highly valuable. You also qualify the prospect too as those who take the time to fill it out will show they are more serious candidates for becoming a potential sales opportunity.

On the other hand, offering an ebook could be used with another method which is for the prospect to provide just an email address to access it. A short, single-field form like this encourages more leads to come through but gives you very little information about who they are.

In-house

The second source of B2B data is the information that is self-sourced by internal marketing and sales teams.

This method relies on your teams to research various companies and prospects to scout for prospective leads. Tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator can be used and the information gathered should be very close to your target market as your revenue teams are researching them. However, it presents a huge opportunity cost due to time taken away from other revenue-generating activities, which in turn lowers sales efficiency.

Paid tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator can provide many variables on the prospects but may still lack some vital information which would limit the use of the data or may require other tools to provide the missing variables.

Data providers

The third source of B2B data is third-party data providers and database vendors.

With third-party data, you can partner with providers who specialise in delivering you the data you need and according to your criteria. Not only does this save your team time from getting the data themselves but also the quality of data should be much higher than any other data source.

Companies like hubsell offer Data Processing as a Service (DPaaS) meaning the data you get will be processed on-demand to ensure you get accurate and fresh data that is already enriched with a multitude of variables for you to use.

Although looking for the right data provider that fulfils all your business needs can be a daunting task, getting data this way opens up a lot more sales opportunities to be generated by your revenue teams.

Using one or a mix of the methods above to source your data, there are some key ways in which data enrichment can help you learn more about your prospects. These insights can be grouped into five main categories:

• Personal data: The first component of B2B data enrichment is related to the prospects’ personal and geographical characteristics including their name, job title, location etc.
• Categorical data: The second component of B2B data enrichment is detailed categorical information on the prospect such as their gender, seniority, department, tenure, etc. Some of these details require human effort to check for variables like gender or correct seniority based on their job title.
• Firmographic data: The third component of B2B data is based around the prospects’ company information, such as company name, company size, industry, location, etc.
• Contact data: The fourth component of B2B data includes all the contact details of your prospect including email address, phone number, LinkedIn profile URL, etc.

Additional information: This can include technographic data, intent data or engagement data that show interactions between your prospect and your company.

Why do you need to have a B2B data enrichment process?

As we can see from the previous section, depending on the source, your data may not be complete and may even be inconsistent with each other.

If your B2B data does not have enough information or is inaccurate, you will suffer a hit when it comes to personalised customer interactions. This may result in fewer conversions or a longer sales cycle owing to low quality or un-enriched data. In this post, we go into a lot more detail explaining the real cost low-quality B2B data has on the performance of your sales reps.

Data has the potential to provide marketers with a wealth of meaningful information about prospects and customers – but only if that data is accurate and relevant. This is where data enrichment and CRM enrichment comes into play.

As we can see, enriching your data is to ensure you have a complete and real view of your data so your revenue teams can accurately use this data. This is part of a process called data hygiene which we’ll dive deeper into in the next section.

What is data hygiene?

Data hygiene is the larger umbrella that includes all the data appending and validation processes conducted to ensure data is available in the most accurate and usable format. Both data cleansing and data enrichment are two quite distinct processes that fall in the purview of data hygiene. Let’s have a look at the key differences between the two.

Data cleansing essentially means keeping your CRM data clean, accurate and up-to-date. A good data cleansing process involves cross-checking data, validating and removing inaccuracies in them to maintain data quality.

In contrast, CRM enrichment refers to polishing an existing data set by augmenting them with additional relevant details. CRM enrichment by definition focuses only on added data fields to strengthen customer profiles in your CRM.

Both data cleansing and data enrichment processes are key to maintaining data hygiene to give you the best results. You must first ensure your dataset is accurate and then use data appending to enhance your contact list.

Benefits of having a B2B data enrichment process

Having a data enrichment process can do wonders for your sales and marketing initiatives. Read on to discover six key reasons why you need to have a B2B data enrichment process.

1. Increase engagement by sending more tailored outreach with data segmentation

A “spray and pray approach” whether in marketing or sales is a losing game. To find success, you need to have a more structured and tailored approach when reaching your target audience.

Data enrichment enables you to segment your data into more focused categories. Using the company and prospect information such as company size, industry, department and seniority, you can plan the right marketing strategy for each group in your target market.

With this, it is possible to create highly targeted campaigns for each segment focusing on the key value propositions. As a result, your prospects are much more likely to open your emails and reply to them as they will be more meaningful and relevant to them.

2. Improve sales conversion rates with richer customer profiles through data enrichment

The success of any marketing campaign depends on the quality of prospects’ data. Bad data can pull down the conversion rates of even a well-planned marketing campaign. To stand out from the crowd, you need to demonstrate that you know your prospects. This knowledge directly depends on the quality of the data you have on them allowing you to personalise your messages.

This is where data enrichment comes in. By providing you with extensive data on your prospects, data enrichment helps you to flesh out your customer profiles. A richer customer profile helps you to get to know your contacts and accounts to better prepare your pitch when presenting the solution you are offering to them. Being armed with accurate and up to date information will increase your chances of having a positive interaction.

Data enrichment can potentially skyrocket sales conversions by pushing only the best quality data in your marketing campaign and in turn get you a good ROI on your marketing campaigns.

3. Speed up the sales funnel with an effective lead scoring mechanism

The sales funnel can typically take weeks or even months for a lead to convert. But, if you have the right data on your hands, you can speed up this process by cutting down on wasted time due to an ineffective sales funnel.

Data enrichment can help you eliminate prospects who do not fit your ideal customer profile and instead provide you with prospects that do fit your target audience. The more accurate the data, the easier it is to categorise leads based on the likeliness of purchasing by the process of lead scoring.

Lead scoring can help you identify which leads should be prioritised and have teams focus more on them to increase the chances of converting them to sales. When your sales pipeline is full of qualified, well-vetted prospects, you are rewarded with faster conversions and a shorter sales cycle.

4. Increase web form conversions with shorter lead capture forms

Lead generation is a key priority for businesses today. A marketer knows that you need to capture inbound leads from multiple sources like your website and social media pages and nurture them to grow their business consistently. But, the problem is visitors often don’t want to fill out extensive lead capture forms for you.

Creating straightforward, easy-to-complete forms is key to a successful conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategy, and form submissions are usually the final hurdle in the conversion process.

Data enrichment tools create a win-win situation for site visitors and marketers alike. Marketers can use shorter forms that request only must-have information such as an email address, in turn, creating a better customer experience for site visitors and more conversions. A data enrichment tool can then help source additional information to create a more robust customer persona.

5. Eliminate data decay with an up-to-date customer database

B2B businesses rely on an accurate database for sales and marketing campaign success — from phone numbers, email addresses, prospect details, to company information. However with data, comes its most common issue, data decay.

This data may become obsolete due to inaccuracies, coming from an unreliable source, or ageing out. Data decay occurs in every database because of how often people change jobs or titles, companies go out of business, and mergers occur. Acting on data that has decayed can impact overall sales and marketing teams’ performance and revenue.

CRM enrichment can help eliminate customer data that is obsolete, wrong or redundant. Thus helping the sales team to redirect their attention to relevant and up-to-date datasets for prospecting. Eliminating data decay is key to ensure that your marketing efforts are effective, so you do not lose potential sales.

6. Maintain company data compliance with data enrichment

Data protection laws such as GDPR set restrictions on what type of customer data you can store and how long you can keep it. As prospects request to be unsubscribed from future touchpoints or add themselves to do-not-call lists, data enrichment can help ensure you keep in line with these data protection requirements.

Data enrichment allows you to regularly scrub your database, maintain data profiles of your prospects in a GDPR adherent manner, and deduplicate contacts to prevent repeat messaging. When outsourcing your data enrichment, ensuring that you work with a reputable company that is committed to compliance and following GDPR when enriching your datasets can help your company stay compliant with regulatory requirements.

A quick guide to doing data enrichment

Data collection and management is a necessary function in all business functions. However, in-house data maintenance is not always possible owing to the sheer magnitude of datasets in a B2B corporation.

An easy solution to this problem is getting a reliable third-party data provider. This begs the question, what factors must you consider when choosing a data provider?

How do you evaluate your data provider for B2B data enrichment?

Below is a short checklist that can help you evaluate your data provider for B2B data enrichment.

High-quality prospect data

The central point of consideration for a B2B data enrichment provider is that they provide quality B2B data.

Now the term quality data gets thrown around a lot. So, before you demand your B2B data provider for quality data, let’s take a moment to understand what it means. Quality data stands for complete, accurate and standardised data that is targeted around your specific needs.

To break it down, B2B data quality hinges on 5 parameters:

Data relevancy: The right contacts as per your target audience.
Data accuracy: Error-free information with human-powered prospecting.
Data validity: Complete, standardised and valid prospect details.
Data breadth: Extensive array of data points on each prospect.
Data freshness: Near real-time data sourcing to offset data decay.

Human-powered data processing

A good data provider relies on human intervention in some form to ensure the highest-quality data. Not only will this ensure your data is suitable for your business needs but also is especially important when validating the data. Such as checking to see if all the data is complete, accurate and structured correctly before being delivered to the customer.

GDPR adherent research methods

This is a best-practice approach to ensure the B2B data provider you pick is GDPR adherent in the way they source contact information.

The best quality data providers give you B2B contacts from on-demand GDPR adherent research where contact information is collected from sources where the information was self-published by the data subject and/or obtained from a public source.

Integrations with the sales tech stack

A data enrichment tool that integrates with your sales tech stack bridges the gap between your data source and how you use it.

Your B2B data software must integrate your source of data with all other tools in your sales stacks such as CRM tools, email and social media accounts etc. This can make it easy for you to automatically log all executed marketing activities in your CRM without having to manually add them.

Rounding off

B2B data is key for outbound prospecting for any business, big or small. However, when it comes to prospect data, data enrichment is the fuel that revs up your marketing efforts and drives revenue.

All customer data in your CRM is fundamentally only a snapshot in time, it needs upkeep to keep your sales and marketing activities running. An effective data enrichment process not only cleans your contact lists but also appends additional details to them at prospect and company level.

An up to date, enriched dataset lets you accurately target prospects with customised sales copy leading to more engagements and better brand loyalty. Data enrichment when done right can significantly improve your company’s bottom line.

Keep your B2B data enriched and accurate

Our GDPR adherent Data Processing as a Service (DPaaS) processes B2B data on-demand and according to your criteria. We provide B2B data enriched with over 25 variables and have a multistep data validation process guaranteeing you near real-time data with at least 95% accuracy.

Our outreach software incorporates all your data to automate the sending of hyper-personalised one-on-one messages across multiple channels. With integrations to your CRM, social media accounts and more, hubsell is truly an end-to-end B2B prospecting solution enabling you to bring all of your outbound prospecting processes to one dashboard and generate sales-qualified leads at scale.

Book your discovery call today to see how you can scale your opportunity generation.