Data enrichment refers to enhancing or supplementing lead data with information such as phone numbers, email ids, employer name, etc. and insights or buying signals such as recent social activity, tech stack, or buying intent. In the B2B context, enriching a CRM refers to contact data enrichment and company data enrichment as a means to get a comprehensive understanding of the lead and the account that the GTM teams are targeting.
The need for data enrichment
Data enrichment is a critical activity for B2B companies, particularly those hingeing their go-to-market strategy on outbound sales, as it transforms raw data into actionable intelligence and helps sales teams be more precise with their outreach efforts. Here’s why data enrichment is important and why businesses need data enrichment
- Focus prospecting efforts on high-potential leads rather than wasting resources on broad, unfocused outreach.
- Craft personalized outreach based on signals and social insight, so response rates to cold outreach is better and engagement between the sales team and the prospect is stronger.
- Tailor sales presentations and demos to each account based on buying signals, business priorities, and product requirements – all of which can be found using AI data enrichment.
- Generate more accurate revenue forecasts based on a clear understanding of the sales pipeline
- Improve team efficiency by eliminating time spent on lead or account research
- Gain competitive advantage by understanding prospects better and crafting conversations that resonate with them
- Align sales and marketing around a unified view of customer and lead data
Common misconceptions about data enrichment
- Data enrichment is often mistakenly reduced to simply adding phone numbers and email addresses to contact records. In reality, modern data enrichment has evolved significantly to include valuable behavioral and contextual signals such as:
- Social media activity and engagement patterns
- Website visit history and interaction with content
- Recent fundraising events and company milestones
- Technology stack implementation and changes
- Buying intent signals across multiple channels
- Many organizations incorrectly view data enrichment as a periodic project to be completed quarterly or annually. This misconception leads to working with outdated information and missed opportunities. Effective data enrichment should be:
- Continuous and automated
- Integrated into daily GTM workflows
- Happening in real-time as new information and signals are available
- Traditional data enrichment relied heavily on static databases like company registrations and public filings. While these remain valuable, today's most effective enrichment strategies incorporate dynamic, real-time data sources including:
- Social media engagement with industry influencers
- Recent press mentions and news coverage
- Content consumption patterns across multiple platforms
- Market and competitive positioning shifts
- Behavioral signals indicating buying readiness
- Many organizations mistakenly believe that collecting as much data as possible will automatically lead to better outcomes. This often results in:
- Data overload that overwhelms sales teams rather than helping them
- Too many data points delay decision-making
- Focusing on quantity over quality and relevance
- Neglecting proper data governance and quality control
Signs your business needs data enrichment (and what to do about it)
Nearly every business owns a CRM to manage its customer and prospect data, but regular CRM data enrichment and CRM hygiene is often overlooked. This can turn out to be a major hurdle for rapid growth, because the B2B market has evolved to a state where swift and timely outreach to leads is critical.
Businesses need to keenly track buying signals and reach out to leads at the right time with the right message, before competitors reach them. Having an updated CRM is essential to support this.
How to spot incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate data
Here’s how you can tell that it is time to enrich your CRM:
- Response rates are low because your outreach messages aren’t recent or relevant, and doesn’t resonate with your prospect
- You have a lot of bounced emails or errors in deliverability
- Emails or cold calls reach the wrong person, because you missed information about job changes or promotions
- Your CRM misses important and relevant buying signals such as fundraising, M&As, or other relevant news
While such things can happen once in a while, seeing too many instances of such gaps or errors is a clear indication that your CRM needs an update.
The impact of poor data quality on business decisions
Outdated and inaccurate data in your CRM, whether it is incomplete data or inaccurate information, can hold you back from scaling growth. It can result in a direct drain of resources, time, money, and human effort.
- Productivity of sales reps will take a hit, impacting conversions
- Sales cycles will get longer and pipeline velocity will slow down
- Outreach will be unfocused, with a spray-and-pray approach rather than precise targeting
- Competitors might eat into your market share because of inaction or inaccurate action from your sales teams
When to prioritize data enrichment strategies
The real, honest answer to this question is: Always!
CRM data enrichment is no longer an option or a choice for businesses. Having a CRM that is up-to-date and rich with basic information, signals, insights, and deep research is becoming table stakes at most companies, leading to the need for platforms such as Highperformr that enable businesses to enrich their data with first-party insight in real-time.
Smart ways to source high-quality data for enrichment
Unlike what it was about 2 decades ago, we’re now in a world where technology such as AI and automation make it super quick, easy, and efficient to get reliable data to enrich your CRM.
Here are a few ways you can enrich data with accurate information and insight:
Use modern AI-native data enrichment tools
The B2B sales tools market now has dozens of data enrichment tools that provide you with verified, accurate data and insights about contacts and leads. Highperformr is an AI-native data enrichment tool that has been built to give you first-party signals, AI deep research, and intent data in addition to verified company and contact data. Highperformr collates and curates data from first-party sources such as social media and third-party sources such as regulatory filings and adds a layer of AI intelligence to it, so your CRM has comprehensive data about every prospect or account.
Use public databases, APIs, and external sources effectively
AI becoming more accessible for businesses opens up the opportunity to research public databases and third-party sources more effectively. AI makes it possible to replace manual research and scan documents to get information about companies and contacts.
Tips for choosing reliable data sources
- Check for privacy and security compliance and other legal requirements
- Ensure data is refreshed frequently if not updated in real-time
- Evaluate integration capabilities such as APIs and webhooks
- Analyze sample data to verify accuracy
- Use multiple channels to source data
Data enrichment techniques: actionable methods to enrich your data
Data enrichment isn’t a linear one-step process. There are different techniques you can adopt to enrich data. You can choose one or a combination of the following methods, depending on the kind of data you have and the kind of end insight you’re looking for:
Data appending
Core to the data enrichment process is appending existing data – enhancing basic data with contact details, firmographic and technographic data, intent data, etc.
Data merging
This refers to cleaning up the CRM to merge duplicate data and combining different pieces of data to provide a simple yet comprehensive view of the company or contact.
Data contextualization
This data enrichment technique involved adding a layer of intelligence to basic data, and adding relevant context about the contact or company. This technique is essential to add a lot of value and help turn raw data into actionable insights.
Data segmentation and data categorization
This technique of CRM data enrichment is done to sort existing data based on the type of enrichment that needs to be done or has been done. Segmentation can be done based on location, company type, ICP, or any other type that is relevant for your sales and marketing teams.
Cross-referencing data
Similar to data contextualization, cross-referencing is the concept of linking different pieces of data together to provide a more robust, comprehensive view of the company or contact.
Data cleansing
This is an important piece of data enrichment. It includes removing duplicates, fixing errors, filling gaps, and standardizing data formats to ensure that the information is easily consumable and actionable.
Must-have tools & technologies for data enrichment
There are many data enrichment tools available, some to provide basic contact and company enrichment, some to handle sales intelligence, some for sales automation, and a few to handle the entire process end-to-end.
Here are some tools that must be a part of your data enrichment toolkit:
AI-powered tools
Products that heavily use AI to streamline work, automate repetitive tasks, and scale productivity are part of this category. Highperformr, Hubspot, are some of the good AI data enrichment tools you can add to your sales and marketing tech stack.
Sales intelligence tools
These are tools that provide insights and intelligence in addition to basic data enrichment such as contact and company data. Sales intelligence is essential because that is what will bring a contact name or company name to life, and help you with outreach. Here is a list of the top sales intelligence tools for B2B companies.
Expert tips to maintain data quality after enrichment
B2B data is only valuable and actionable if it is accurate, recent, and relevant. This requires you to update your CRM regularly. Here are some best practices you can follow to ensure data quality and ensure all the information you have is easily actionable:
Data audits
Audit your data periodically to ensure that every piece of information you have is recent and relevant. For example, it is important to update your CRM with signals such as job changes of key contacts in real time, and ensure that any new hires or promotions are updated in your CRM so you can take immediate action on those signals.
Data governance policies
Put processes in place to ensure that any new data that enters your system adheres to your policies and norms. Set guidelines around the kind of data, the sources, and even the formats in which the data is presented.
Data validation
Regularly analyze data to ensure that it is contextually relevant and accurate, and keep tabs on the CRM to identify potential issues.
Maintain a clean and up-to-date CRM
Highperformr is an AI-first data enrichment and GTM workflow automation platform that has been designed to help you maintain a clean, updated CRM. Highperformr helps you enrich your CRM with contact information, company data, intent data, and signals that you can use to prioritize leads and personalize outreach at scale.
The automated workflows enable you to refresh your CRM in near real-time so your sales teams can instantly act on the signals and data. To learn more about how to enrich data using Highperformr, , sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo with our AI engineer now!
