CRM data enrichment tools to prospect better

CRM data enrichment

Successful companies of all sizes agree that customer relationship management, also known as CRM, is one of the most useful of all modern sales tools. CRM can increase sales productivity and maximize sales effectiveness. Unfortunately, most CRM projects fail.

Failure of a CRM system can mean different things to different companies. Company A may regard a cost overrun as a failure. Company B may be especially sensitive to data collection shortcomings. Company C may focus on data integrity issues.

But the real reason CRM systems fail is usually this: Unsuccessful CRM projects are targeted at keeping tabs on employees. Successful CRM projects are targeted at keeping up with customers.

The wrong ways to use CRM

• To provide project visibility
• To improve the accuracy of forecasts and predict project delivery dates
• To enhance business intelligence

The best way to use a CRM

All of these are useful goals, but the purpose of CRM is to improve the sales process. And when companies use customer relationship management to focus on customers, they quickly find that their data needs frequent refreshes. They quickly discover the need for CRM data enrichment.

With CRM data enrichment, your sales reps have facts at their fingertips that help them anticipate and fill customer needs. For CRM to boost the bottom line it must at least be used to reach, satisfy, and retain customers.

What is CRM data enrichment?

Before we dive in to look at the top data enrichment tools for 2022, let's answer a basic question: What is CRM data enrichment, anyway?

CRM data enrichment is the process of expanding and appending your company's first-party database. In other words, it adds to the data you get directly from your customers—your first-party database. It supplements these data from the data enrichment tool provided by your data enrichment company.

Your CRM takes raw data from a variety of sources. It can aggregate raw data from your site traffic, Facebook page, or email list. It formats and parses data into a central database. But that data isn't very useful until it is enriched.

Data enhancement vs data enrichment

It is helpful to understand data enhancement vs data enrichment. Data enhancement fills in the gaps in missing data. It keeps data up to date. CRM data enrichment adds new dimensions to the database. It gives your salesforce insight into customer needs and wants and enhances the ROI of your demand generation efforts.

Data enhancement is a necessary step before data enrichment. Data enhancement gives you a working list of leads. Then data enrichment gives your sales staff a direction to go with them.

Key CRM data enrichment benefits

The point of CRM data enrichment is this: The more you know about your leads, the more you can personalize campaigns, advertisements, messages, and internet content, and the more you can offer your customers. Relevant messages are efficient messages that convert to sales.

The ability to enrich data at scale is important for consumer sales, but it is even more essential for B2B sales. With consumer sales, usually, your CRM system only needs to associate one individual to one profile to make one sale. But for B2B sales, your CRM tools used in salesforce lead generation need to link multiple profiles of decision-makers and influencers in your client companies. The larger the deal, the more people will be involved in making the decisions to go ahead.

How CRM data enrichment works

Unique identifiers help you link data sets. Most CRMs use email addresses as the unique ID for all the contacts in the dataset. Every time a user updates information, it is linked to the email address.

Your B2B lead enrichment tool must use identifiers that uniquely link each and every one of your thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of customers and prospects to relevant data. Then the CRM data enrichment process steps build on the unique identifier to create a unique customer profile for sales action. A company name or customer name could also be used as the unique identifier in some salesforce data management tools, but it's important to choose an ID field that can be used at scale.

With your company enrichment API, you can look up company data by the domain name. You can retrieve company name and DBA data, address, industry niche, headcount, and other details. Your company enrichment API provides an HTTP interface you can use to manage enriched data on a MySQL data store for all your workflows.

CRM data enrichment examples

Here are some data enrichment examples that show how it works:

Contact data enrichment

Time zone, city, county, state or province, country, ZIP code

Demographic data enrichment

Income, education, gender, age

Professional consumer data enrichment

Company position, company size, business niche

Behavioral data enrichment

Wish list, pain points

Top CRM data enrichment companies

Where do you go for data enrichment?

For decades, if you were to ask sales managers about their favorite data enrichment tools, they would have answered Hoovers or Dun and Bradstreet.

There is still a place for Hoovers and Dun and Bradstreet data in your company, but chances are that you will need additional tools in your marketing technology stack for higher conversion rates. The options may seem overwhelming, but here are some of the top providers of data enrichment tools.

Clearbit

Takes your ideal customer profile and matches it with your enhanced customer data to give you insights into customer desires and drive higher conversion rates. Clearbit can be integrated into your existing CRM and other marketing platforms such as Slack, Marketo, Salesforce Zapier, and HubSpot Data Enrichment.

UserGems

Monitors your customers and buyers when they change their jobs, and enrich them with their new contact information. It also monitors your target accounts for any new prospects that match your target persona and enrich them with contact information.

LeadGenius

Provides cloud-based data enrichment. It lets businesses enhance data with custom data points. It also enriches the CRM with buyer personas, and personal, vertical, and international data. LeadGenius promises to assist your Go To Market strategy.

Snov.io

This is a CRM data enrichment for cold outreach and contact management. Snov.io API is your source of data enrichment. It can be integrated with your database platform to bring you all the information connected to a contact address. This way, all you need to enter is a contact address and you get a complete lead profile. You can verify and send emails through API.

InsideView 

Provides B2B data enrichment and intelligence solutions to keep your CRM database clean and up to date. InsideView gives you detailed information about your leads from your CRM platform.

BeenVerified

This is a popular customer data enrichment tool because it is so easy to use. All you need to enter is a lead's first and last name to access:

• Address lookup
• Email lookup
• Property records
• Username lookup
• Vehicle lookup

Data Axle Genie

Formerly known as Salesgenie, Data Axle Genie gives in-depth enriched data for your hottest leads. You can add enhancement data for contact information. It is an advanced platform that provides in-depth enriched data for you to find the most relevant prospects. With this data enhancement tool, you can add the missing data to your customer profiles such as contact points, geographic information, and demographics.

Other top CRM data enrichment tools include:

• FullContact
• RingLead, Datanyze
• Leadspace
• Enrich.io
• ZoomInfo

But where most CRM data enrichment tools fall short are dedicated features to keep known contacts up to date, identify which prospects are likely to close, and the ability to prospect net new leads based on data from your existing database. Tools like UserGems are unique in that they offer a multitude of these benefits all within one platform.

Leverage customer data enrichment

Company-level data brings you back down to data enrichment at a customer level. You need this capacity for a very simple reason: Customers don't necessarily stay with the same company.

You need to be able to keep track of buyers who recognize the value of your products when they move to new companies. And you need to be able to keep track of buyers who recognize the value of your products but are looking for new solutions at the same company.

Customer data enrichment from a provider like UserGems makes sure you stay informed of warm leads. Supplementing data for existing customers, wherever they may be in their purchase decisions, and wherever they may be employed, reduces churn. And with data enrichment, you can automate the process to generate a bigger pipeline so you can close more deals faster.

CRM data enrichment tools for Salesforce

Does all of this sound complicated? It doesn't have to be.

With the best data enrichment APIs and data enrichment tools, you’ll have AI on the side of your marketing and sales teams. UserGems keeps your database accurate so you can reach the right buyers at the right time. Not many other software providers offer it all.