CRM data enrichment helps you avoid costly mistakes like wasting sales effort and marketing spend.
Manual data entry is insufficient. Fortunately, solutions like Cognism offer a range of capabilities to enrich and refresh contact and account data in your CRM and ensure it stays clean afterwards.
How to enrich customer data in your CRM?
Most companies use data enrichment tools or sales intelligence software to enrich CRM data. To do this effectively, follow the steps we highlighted below.
1. Evaluate existing CRM data
Are there specific key data points that your records are missing? Maybe you lack cell phone number data for your decision-makers, data in a particular region, or need to enrich an IT decision-makers’ email list?
Knowing which essential data points are underserved in your CRM will help you decide which tool to use because each tool specialises in different data types.
2. Pick a customer data enrichment provider
Find a contact data provider that automatically supplies you with the information you need.
Besides account and contact data, look for other B2B data points:
- Intent data
- Sales event triggers
- Technographics
All these data types help sales and marketing teams segment customers into personas for more targeted campaigns and increased engagement.
To save sales and marketing teams time, find a provider that seamlessly integrates with your existing tech stack.
Do your due diligence before committing to a solution. Most companies offer free demos, during which you can see the platform in action and ask questions to a product expert.
Director of Marketing & Sales Development @Drift
3. Rinse and repeat
CRM data decays quickly. B2B buyers change email addresses, get promoted, and switch companies often. To keep your database accurate, consistently enrich your contact data as time goes on. Make sure your providers offer flexible CRM enrichment jobs, from instant to scheduled at set intervals to enriching a specific lead list to revive an old campaign.
Why do 3000+ companies use Cognism to enrich CRM data?
With Cognism Enrich you can instantly clean up existing CRM records or schedule an enrichment job at a set frequency to keep the data fresh on an ongoing basis. It also allows you to enhance specific lead lists with actionable contact data.
Check out how easy CRM data enrichment can be. 👇 Choose between:
- Instant CRM data enrichment.
- Scheduled enrichment jobs.
- CSV list enrichment.
Key features:
- Global coverage with leading EMEA B2B data
- GDPR and CCPA compliance
- Phone-verified mobile numbers (Diamond Data®)
- Verification service on request (Diamonds-on-Demand®)
- Validated B2B emails
- Unrestricted record views and page-level exporting (subject to our fair-use policy)
- Consent-based intent data, powered by industry leader Bombora
- Sales trigger events and firmographics
- Integrations with popular CRMs and sales enablement tools
Cognism pricing
- The price of your licence depends on your company’s needs.
- Packages for individual prospecting and operational workflows.
- For a more detailed rundown, see the Cognism pricing page or book a call with a data expert.
What is the best CRM data enrichment tool for Salesforce?
Cognism has a native integration with Salesforce which makes it one of the best tools to enrich Salesforce data. It allows you to export contacts in bulk from the Cognism platform into your Salesforce either as Leads or Contacts, with or without Accounts.
Cognism data enriches Salesforce records according to your defined field mappings and field update rules. The tool will also accommodate enrichment according to your specified criteria.
Sales Administrator @Simpleshow
Is complying with privacy laws important when enhancing customer data?
Failure to follow privacy laws regarding contact data can result in serious penalties. For example, breaking GDPR laws can cost your business up to 20 million euros or 4 % of your firm’s total revenue from the last fiscal year.
That’s why Cognism is committed to collecting and processing contact data in compliance with CCPA and GDPR laws.
How to evaluate CRM data enrichment providers?
The main factors to consider when evaluating a customer data enhancement provider are:
- Contact and account data accuracy
- Data enrichment attributes
- GDPR/CCPA compliance
- Data verification methods (opt for manually verified)
- Integration capabilities with your CRM and tech stack
Why should you enhance CRM records?
Data enrichment is usually used to fill in the gaps in CRMs and to provide more context for marketing, sales, and customer success teams. But that’s not all. Let’s go over some of the results you can expect.
1. Remove inefficiencies and build pipeline faster
Bad CRM data can hinder your ability to sell. First of all, false information can misdirect salespeople, causing them to spend time on fruitless activities.
Imagine a salesperson sees that a lead is the VP of Marketing. Trusting this CRM data, they spend five minutes crafting a perfect cold email speaking to common issues senior marketers face.
They send the email and follow-up multiple times but it’s all in vain. Unbeknownst to them, the VP actually became CEO a year ago and is now too high up the ladder to ever respond to a cold email about a marketing point solution.
Your CRM data enrichment prevents such waste of effort. It ensures that salespeople are making decisions based on sound information. And this reduces inefficiencies and improves your pipeline velocity.
2. Improve lead scoring and customer segmentation
Lead scoring is when you use demographic, behavioral, and other types of data to assess the qualification level of each individual lead. It helps you separate the wheat from the chaff.
For this process to give you accurate results, however, you need to feed your lead scoring tool accurate data.
A tool can’t judge a new lead’s qualification level if all it has on them is what they submitted in the contact form — usually just their name, email address, or phone number.
Automated CRM data enrichment fills in these records with data that you can use to assign an accurate score. Additional information about leads improves the routing process as well.
On another note, your customer segmentation improves when you take data enrichment seriously. You can easily divide buyers into similar groups based on specified attributes, like job title or company size.
3. Reach company decision-makers
Enriching CRM data helps you contact decision-makers in your target accounts in two ways. First, it ensures that you have access to their correct, up-to-date information, like direct phone numbers or emails.
Access to these empowers your sales team to bypass gatekeepers and switchboards.
Second, with intent data and selling signals, that some data enrichment tools provide, you’ll have more visibility into the decision-maker’s situation and company. For example, you may find out when a new C-level executive is appointed or when the company receives new funding. This knowledge empowers you to create personalised emails that get their attention.
4. Deliver a tailored message
Customers and prospects all want tailored messages from the B2B brands they buy from. They want to feel like you know them and are privy to their specific needs.
In fact, in a Salesforce survey, 73% of customers agreed with the statement, “I expect companies to understand my unique needs and expectations.”
When you enrich marketing data, you’ll have more information about your buyers and be able to craft email campaigns, sales call scripts, and cold emails that anticipate their needs.
For instance, technographics give you insights into a company's workflow, how it can be improved, and what pain points the company might be facing. You could then contact prospects with a solution that complements their workflow or offer to replace a competitor technology.
5. Avoid compliance issues
Countries are instituting more regulations around B2B data compliance. It’s crucial that your business stays in line with these policies to avoid serious penalties and fines.
By using a compliant data provider, like Cognism, you can rest easy knowing that the B2B data you’re using has been lawfully sourced and processed. For example, our phone numbers are scrubbed against DNC lists in the US, UK, and multiple European countries to leave you with compliant numbers only.
Check out Cognism compliance checklist.
6. Increase email delivery and connection rates
Your CRM and other tools should always reflect any changes in your customers' email addresses. Otherwise, you’ll send too many emails straight into the ether.
Consistently enriching your B2B contact data ensures that your prospects and customers’ email addresses are up-to-date. And this leads to greater email delivery and connection rates.
Like what you read?
Get your hands on the latest RevOps Guide. Learn about strategies to break down data siloes, increase transparency across GTM teams and build an authoritative source of data and information from Cognism experts.👇
