Your customer relationship management (CRM) system is the backbone of your sales, customer interactions and success. However, a CRM is only as valuable as the data it holds.

That’s where CRM enrichment comes into play. It involves augmenting your existing CRM data with valuable insights such as purchase history, browsing patterns, demographic data, etc. By enriching your CRM, you get a more holistic view of each customer so you can better tailor your messaging, find hidden opportunities and forge stronger connections.

In this guide, we'll delve into the world of CRM enrichment and provide practical insights you can use to drive revenue expansion.

What Is CRM Enrichment?

CRM enrichment is the process of enhancing lead and existing customer data in a CRM with additional information from various sources, such as contact data, demographics and social media profiles.

It gives sales and marketing teams deeper insights into their target audience, improving lead scoring and segmentation, identifying new opportunities and streamlining day-to-day tasks.

5 Benefits of CRM Enrichment

From cost savings to improved marketing effectiveness, the advantages of CRM enrichment are profound.

1. Optimize Your Costs

According to IBM, bad and dirty CRM data costs US companies over $3 trillion every year. Storing useless data not only clutters your system but also drains resources.

Data enrichment addresses this issue by helping you streamline your data storage. By pulling relevant information from internal and external sources, you can ensure that your CRM is filled with actionable insights.

The money saved from efficient data management can then be reinvested into sales initiatives like account-based marketing (which you would be able to do more successfully thanks to the wealth of accurate CRM data) or other areas of your business, fostering more growth and innovation.

2. Improve Segmentation and Data Structure

Nearly 90% of marketers feel that their companies aren't using data effectively. This inefficiency often stems from data mismanagement.

Data enrichment helps you structure and organize poorly formatted data. By enhancing data quality, you can easily categorize leads into distinct segments based on common attributes such as company size, industry or seniority.

You’ll get clear profiles of your customers, along with their priorities, which you can use to create targeted outreach campaigns, maximizing the impact of your efforts.

3. Respond Faster to Business Signals and Triggers

Timing is everything. But if you’re not a fly on your prospect’s wall, it can be hard to know when to reach out. Meet business signals or triggers. They signify major changes relevant to your prospects, many of which could be good indicators of their improved qualification.

You need to promptly identify and respond to these signals to time your offer properly. Data enrichment helps in this process by extracting relevant information from various sources, including social media and online platforms.

Similarly, if a new competitor enters your market, data enrichment will help you know right away so you can proactively protect and monitor your share.

4. Build Well-Rounded Customer Profiles

Research finds that 52% (and growing) of customers expect personalized offers. You need a keen understanding of their needs and preferences if you want to stay at the top of your game.

With different data points, B2B CRM enrichment can help you create comprehensive customer profiles. You’ll go beyond vague firmographic data and start gaining insight into what truly keeps your customers up at night.

It’s the difference between pitching your prospects with the generic “increase your sales” and the specific “get rid of low-quality SQLs.”

5. Boost Your Marketing ROI

A study from McKinsey found companies that experience rapid growth attribute 40% of their revenue to personalized marketing efforts – compared to slow-growing companies.

Enriched data plays a crucial role in driving this success. When you use detailed customer insights, you can launch hyper-personalized campaigns at scale, increasing your conversions and your ROI.

Types of Data You Can Enrich in Your CRM

The following are the key types of data that you can enrich to drive growth and enhance customer relationships.

Contact Data

Contact data enrichment in CRMs refers to augmenting basic information about an individual or organization, such as name, email address, phone number, job title, company name and email address. When you enrich contact data, you’ll add as much additional and fresh information as possible to the existing records – enhancing their completeness and accuracy.

Here’s an example of what that could look like:

  • Name: John Doe
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Phone: +1 (555) 123-4567
  • Job Title: VP of Sales
  • Company Name: XYZ Corp
  • Mailing Address: 123 Main Street, City, State, ZIP Code

You can use enrichment to validate data you already have or to fill in the gaps. Typically, as your sales organization grows, so does your data. A significant portion of it decays over time, so you must keep it up-to-date.

Of course, the more relevant info you have, the more complete your customer profiles will be.

Demographic Data

Demographic data encompasses characteristics of individuals or groups within your target accounts, such as age, gender, education level and geographic location.

While your primary audience might be other businesses, you will still be talking to individual stakeholders within them, all of whom have their preferences and needs.

Some examples of an enriched profile could be:

  • Name: Susan Jones
  • Age: 25-34
  • Gender: Female
  • Income: $50,000-$75,000
  • Education: Bachelor's degree
  • Marital status: Married
  • Location: New York City, NY

Now, if you're running a campaign for a new product targeted at young professionals, then you know you can put Susan into your target group. On a more personalized basis, Susan could be one of the leads you can use informal outreach with (e.g., subject lines with emojis), as opposed to more senior stakeholders who respond better to formal approaches.

That’s the power of enriched demographic data. It improves your segmentation so you can be confident you’re getting the right offers in front of the right eyes.

Firmographic Data

Firmographic data shows you the characteristics of businesses within your target market, such as industry, company size, revenue, location and organizational structure.

For example, your firmographic data might look something like this:

  • Company: XYZ Corporation
  • Industry: Information Technology
  • Company Size: 500-1000 employees
  • Annual Revenue: $100 million - $500 million
  • Location: San Francisco, CA
  • Key Decision Maker: John Smith, Chief Technology Officer

Now, if you're launching a campaign for a new enterprise software solution tailored to mid-sized technology companies, you can confidently include XYZ Corporation in your target audience. More importantly, you can customize your messaging to resonate with John Smith's role as the Chief Technology Officer, highlighting technical features and benefits that align with his responsibilities and objectives.

Speaking of stakeholders, your firmographic data can also identify organizational structures, so you know who the stakeholders on the buying committee are. In addition to the main economic buyer, you’ll be able to find out the technology and financial stakeholders.

Additionally, enriched firmographic data enables you to segment your target market effectively. For example, you might identify clusters of companies in similar industries or geographical regions that have specific needs or pain points.

Behavioral Data

Behavioral data is one of the most actionable CRM data types. It tracks how individuals interact with your business, including website visits, product views, purchase history and engagement with campaigns.

With these types of insights, you can better capture opportunities and understand the customer lifecycle.

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Behavioral data in CRM enrichment can be tricky because it involves collecting and collating data from multiple sources, making it difficult to ensure accuracy.

A CRM profile enriched with behavioral data might look something like this:

  • Name: Joe Smith
  • Website visits: 5 (in the past 30 days)
  • Product views: Product A, Product B
  • Purchase history: no purchases
  • Search history: searched “Product A” on (date)

Let’s say you have a customer who frequently visits your website, engages with your emails, does searches but hasn't made a purchase yet, just like our Joe above. You can use this data to reach out, perhaps with a discount for one of the products he’s reviewed, locking in that sale.

Similarly, this data could also tell you when a customer is interested in upgrading their plans because they’re reaching maximum usage or perhaps when they’d be open to hearing your cross-sell offer.

Sales Event and Trigger Data

It’s not just individual, physical people who behave. Companies have their behavioral signals, too. Sales trigger data can point you to specific events or actions within a company that signal potential buying opportunities or changes in needs.

Typically, the sales trigger data looks at events such as the following:

  • Funding rounds
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Leadership changes
  • Product launches
  • Mass hiring (or layoffs)
  • Regulatory compliance initiatives

For example, notifications about mass hiring could suggest increased demand for certain products or services, while layoffs might indicate cost-cutting measures and a need for more cost-effective solutions in that area.

Technographic Data

Technographic data is info about the tech stack and preferences of prospects, such as software usage, IT infrastructure and online behavior.

Here’s an example of what we mean:

  • Company: XYZ Corp
  • Software: Hubspot, Findymail, Slack and Pipedrive
  • IT infrastructure: AWS cloud
  • Online behavior: Likes tech content, follows tech influencers
  • Social media profiles: Facebook, LinkedIn, X

How can technographic data help? Let’s say you sell B2B CRM software that specializes in XYZ Corp’s industry.

You can see they’re already using Hubspot from the enriched data, so you can develop a targeted cold email that highlights how your CRM is better suited for their needs.

Of course, there are other types of data you can enrich. But at its core, the purpose of enriched CRM data is to provide insights you couldn’t find without it.

4 Best CRM Enrichment Tools

1.  Findymail

The quest for actionable and relevant data is a constant challenge. As a team, we've experienced the frustration of sifting through mountains of data, only to find it incomplete or outdated.

That's why we set out to find a solution – a tool that not only enriches our CRM data but also ensures its accuracy and relevance.

Enter Findymail. Gone are the days of searching for verified email addresses and accurate contact data. With Findymail's proprietary algorithm, you can now find and eliminate email address duplicates with ease. As Kyle said, "Just use Findymail and you'll get the right email straight away."

But Findymail is more than just an email finder – it's a comprehensive solution for data enrichment.

With its seamless integration with CRM tools like Hubspot and Salesforce, as well as lead generation tools like Sales Navigator and Apollo.io, Findymail provides top-notch actionable contact data.

And the numbers back it up.

However, we wanted more. That’s why we envisioned Datacare – our new data cleansing and enrichment system.

How Does Findymail’s CRM Datacare Work?

Findymail’s CRM Datacare ensures that every record in our CRM is filled automatically as soon as it enters the system, eliminating manual data entry.

CRM Datacare offers:

  • Comprehensive Prospect Profiles: Every record in your CRM is populated with the necessary email addresses as soon as it enters the system.
  • Improved Segmentation: By plugging data gaps in your CRMs, Datacare makes your segmentation more accurate and helps develop more relevant sales processes.
  • Duplicate Record Detection and Merge: Keep data clean and usable by eliminating duplicates as soon as they occur.
  • Continuous Data Cleaning: Datacare continuously checks your existing data and replaces outdated or invalid information with up-to-date versions.
  • Reduced Bounce Rates: Since it auto-removes invalid emails and replaces them with the right info, you can keep your bounce rates low and a healthy sender reputation.
  • Dynamic Data Updates: As your data evolves with changes in job roles, company structures and more, you can trust Findymail to keep everything fresh and relevant.

With Datacare, you can rest assured that our CRM data is always up-to-date and accurate. As Datacare comes online, it will help unlock the full potential of your CRM system – driving growth, meeting targets and daring to dream bigger.

2. Lead Genius

When it comes to lead gen, Lead Genius is a powerful online platform designed to provide all the data you need about potential customers and companies. Whether you're looking for contact details, demographics or firmographics, it covers a variety of enrichments.

Lead Genius helps with filling in the missing info gaps and discovering new business opportunities. With its strong verification features, it helps you quickly figure out who your ideal customers are and fine-tune your marketing strategies to reach them effectively. It also helps you find new accounts that might not already be in your CRM, expanding your reach and potential customer base.

3. Pipl

Pipl is a leading SaaS company dedicated to enhancing businesses' CRMs with a wealth of valuable information. Pipl's mission revolves around providing detailed insights into individuals' contact details, work history and social profiles.

That means you can use it to enrich contact data, demographic information and even technographic data, so get a full picture of your target lead.

What sets Pipl apart is its capacity to delve deep into online identities – it can verify them and connect their digital footprints. Need deep background on a particular contact?  You can rely on the billions of trust data points Pipl uses to build profiles.

4. FullContact

FullContact is a simple-to-use yet robust enrichment software solution. You can gather comprehensive info on companies, individuals and enterprises in a centralized database for easy access.

At its core, FullContact empowers users to build detailed customer profiles, providing complete information on contacts and enriching their CRM data. It can include the basics like name and contact info.

But it delves deeper with insights such as market verticals, employment history, hashed emails, behavioral insights and over 300 other data points.

Common CRM Enrichment Challenges (And How to Overcome Them)

1. Dealing with Data Silos

Data silos (situations when data isn’t easily exchanged between systems) can pose significant challenges in CRM enrichment. To overcome this challenge, fostering a culture of communication and collaboration across departments is paramount.

You need to implement integrated CRM systems and regular cross-departmental meetings to break down silos and ensure that valuable data is shared effectively throughout the organization.

2. Ensuring Data Accuracy and Consistency

Inaccurate or outdated data leads to misguided decisions and wasted resources. Make sure you have robust data validation processes and regular data hygiene practices.

Use data cleansing tools like Datacare to identify and correct inaccuracies and establish clear data entry guidelines to ensure consistency. Regularly audit your CRM database and take proactive steps to address them promptly.

3. Deciding What Data is Important

While there's a wealth of data to collect, not all of it is relevant to your specific needs. For example, a retail business may find demographic data and purchase history vital for understanding customer preferences, while a B2B company may prioritize firmographic data and lead intent signals.

Conduct thorough research and analysis to identify the key data points that align with your business objectives. Start by defining your ICP and then focus on collecting data that directly contributes to achieving your goals.

CRM Enrichment Best Practices

Follow these best practices when implementing your CRM enrichment strategy:

Define Your Acceptable CRM Data Quality

Establish clear criteria for acceptable data quality within your organization, considering factors like relevance, accuracy and completeness.

For example, customer data should include information such as contact details, purchase history and product preferences. Similarly, you can implement data verification checks. When recording customer addresses, you could verify postal codes against official databases to minimize errors.

When integrating third-party tools or working with large sales teams, enforce completeness standards for your data. For example, a customer profile must include fields such as name, email address and purchase history to be logged in the first place.

Finally, the data should be uniform across databases and apps.

Keep Your Data Up-to-Date

Prospects change jobs, email addresses stop accepting mail and the market keeps shifting. The data that may have been accurate one month ago doesn’t have to be accurate today.

While we do advocate regular data audits, you can’t constantly re-check the data. And if you don’t, you risk your email deliverability and poor campaign performance. That’s why it’s crucial to integrate tools like Findymail which not only populate your CRM with data but keep it accurate.

Conduct Regular Health Checks and Audits

Schedule routine data audits to identify and address any inaccuracies, redundancies or outdated information to maintain the integrity and reliability of your database.

In our rush to make the most of data, we tend to “hoard” it. With every new salesperson on your team, that mountain only grows. When the data is accurate, it’s an asset, but it tends to decay.

Don’t work with inaccurate information. Check the health status of your data.

Use Enrichment Tools

Invest in advanced CRM enrichment tools like Findymail, Clearbit, ZoomInfo and Crunchbase to streamline the enrichment process, automate repetitive tasks and ensure data accuracy.

Don’t Forget Data Privacy and Compliance

Follow data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA when conducting enrichment activities involving personally identifiable information (PII).

Empower Your Team with CRM Enrichment

CRM enrichment is a powerful strategy in our data-driven day and age. You’ll get a complete view of your customers, allowing you to spot the opportunities you’d otherwise miss.

With this ultimate guide, you can take the first steps into unlocking the full potential of your CRM.

And to get a headstart, sign up for Findymail’s Datacare service. All the benefits of data cleansing and enrichment – without the painful implementation.