What is Data Enrichment: Types, Benefits and Best Practices

Nowadays, it has become virtually impossible not to generate data from the moment we wake up. That early inbox review after we turn off the alarm, the first social media check while waiting for the coffee and even the podcast we sync into while driving to the office are all great examples of the information we share without even paying attention.

However, with so much data available, B2B marketers must be careful about the freshness, intent, and accuracy of their prospect's data footprint, which is a crucial part of the database enrichment process.

The B2B data enrichment methodology will ensure that marketing reps save time filtering the most valuable information while having all the tools to precisely shape personalized campaigns and make the customer experience effortless.

Let's take a closer look at the data enrichment concept and what it can do for your business.

What Is Data Enrichment?

Data enrichment (also known as data enhancement or data augmentation) is a process of analysis, cleansing, updating, and upgrading missing or incomplete customer data that you have stored in your CRM or database to have a full picture of every business acquaintance you make. 

So for instance, if you have a potential customer named Bob, you may know his location and the name of his company yet do not know his job title (which is crucial when trying to target the right decision-makers). Instead of doing manual research, database enrichment tools find the info you're missing and match it with the data you already have. 

This allows you to fill in the existing gaps about your prospect to provide the best user experience and accelerate the jobs of your B2B sales and marketing teams. It's a resource-efficient process that involves recycling and repurposing old data to modernize your business environment.

Types of Customer Data Enrichment

Before enriching your data, you'll need to perform data analysis and data hygiene to see which data points need to be cleaned out and which ones need to be added. Based on this information, you should then decide on the type of data enrichment that fits your business needs:  

Behavioral data enrichment

Behavioral data enrichment focuses on the user activity on your website, landing pages, or emails. This data is usually gathered through first-party data: cookies, web pixels, and website visitor tracking tools. It can indicate where exactly users are on their buying journey, show overall behavior patterns that can indicate possible flaws and lead leaks, and connect it to the datasets you already have.

Usage data includes points like logins, clicks, page views, session lengths, messages, form entries, call-to-action (CTA) clicks, and video views. This information allows a better understanding of the buyer's journey and what approach you should take for maximum effect.

If you want to know more about website visitor tracking, how it works, and what's the best-fit tool for your business purposes, check out our extensive website tracking guide on this topic.

Demographic data enrichment

Demographic data enrichment refers to anything you might possibly need to know about your potential client to provide a better customer experience. This includes points like job title, marital status, physical address, deal stage, income level, first interaction, customer lifetime value (CLV), or what services they are interested in.

This information is vital for understanding a buyer's persona and who the actual person is on the other side of your sales outreach. 

Geographic data enrichment 

Geographic data enrichment is exactly what it sounds like—it gathers data points like different addresses, countries, cities, ZIP codes, and time zones. This information is pretty basic and usually available online yet very much needed for proper outreach.

Segmenting your audience based on their time zone is crucial for a timely email or a call, just as a correct address is the major factor of a direct email campaign.

Note: A proper data enrichment tool or a data service provider will not go to the dark side (using unreliable third-party data vendors or data gathered without consent) to get that information. It is done through cookies, legal web monitoring, and data available on the web. GDPR compliance should be a priority for this process. 

Benefits of B2B Data Enrichment

Why is data enrichment so important and why do we need it? In addition to  making business communication better from both sides, data enrichment offers these top benefits:

1. Removes outdated information

Data is decaying as we speak, so to ensure that your efforts are not going to waste, you should keep your data fresh and on-point. Data hygiene, combined with customer data enrichment, removes outdated information and replaces it with new customer details. 

2. Provides full-picture customer profiles

While common research usually provides sales representatives with enough info to conduct outreach (email address, company name, phone number, etc.), they still have to look for valuable details that can provide insight into the buyer's personality, including business goals and needs.

With data enrichment, you get as much information as possible, plus an actual live feed of their interaction with your brand. 

3. Standardizes data entries 

The way you store your data affects how quickly this information can be reached. Both cleanness and standardization using a data enrichment process can create law and order in your customer data platform (CDP). It also simplifies analytics and reporting. 

4. Creates a better user experience

Nowadays, customers want companies to know their preferences to ensure the best possible experience. In fact, 88% of customers won't return to a website after non-satisfactory browsing. Behavioral data enrichment can show what works, what doesn't, and what can be tweaked to achieve perfection. 

5. Enhances personalization and nurturing

The chance of easily scoring a new customer in the age of endless competition is very slim. According to SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers say they only engage through personalized messaging. And personalization is much easier when you see where your leads are and what they need. 

6. Offers advanced segmentation

Sometimes all you need to succeed is to be in the right place at the right time. Grouping your leads by location, time zone, level of interest, or industry sector can cover loads of leads and still target all of them correctly. 

7. Saves resources 

All automation processes should be in place to help save time and money—and data enrichment is no different. The benefits mentioned above are meant to take your everyday processes to a new level, expedite research, and put your employee resources to better use. 

B2B Data Enrichment Use Cases

Data enrichment is helpful to any business that handles big volumes of data in both B2B and B2C. Here are some ways that sales and marketing can utilize enriched data: 

Sales

To be fair, it’s all about upgrading sales to shorten sales cycles, perfect targeting, and get as many high-quality leads as possible. Data enrichment influences the data in a CRM: how easily it is accessed, how clean and updated it is, and what leads should be prioritized because of activity on your website.

Since most CRMs are highly automated, you can also set specific actions that can be taken depending on where the lead is in the buyer’s journey.

Marketing 

Data enrichment highly influences ad targeting by lowering customer acquisition costs (CAC) and improving the return on ad spend (ROAS). Since most of the ads involve some machine learning, the more information you possess on your target audience, the higher chances you have to hit the spot and reach the right person with the right message.

Besides that, thanks to website visitor tracking, you can see how well your content is performing and what needs to be adjusted based on the needs of your leads.

Data Enrichment Best Practices

First and foremost, the most effective practice for data enrichment is … to just do it. If you rely on customer data, want to make your sales cycles faster, and build your relationships with users, it is a worthy investment to make using these best practices: 

1. Establish your data goals. 

You'd like your data to get better, but this is often too big in scope, so you’ll need to narrow it down. What's the most urgent need: data analysis, data cleansing, data enrichment, or all of these? Focus on key areas that need improvement but also make sure you don’t clutter your database with unnecessary data.

To find what data you require, you should first choose the right type of data enrichment to match your needs. After that, you should set the objectives that will be influenced by the new data so that you can see the effects.

For instance, if your new webpage design is not getting long user visits or necessary clicks, you can change some elements, track them again, and see if you make progress. 

2. Utilize data tools.

Data enrichment is a process, right? Theoretically, you could enrich your data manually with a separate team dedicated to that. However, that would be counterproductive given the array of tools available.

Most services on the market offer data enrichment services and data management, formatting, cleaning, and storage. Some sales intelligence platforms may also offer brand-new records for your database, ICP development, audience activation, and website visitor tracking.

Some of the top tools out there include CIENCE GO Data, Clearbit, Crunchbase, LeadGenius, and Zoominfo.

3. Check all the data boxes.

Just as with any business process, as soon as you go in, there are many more areas you'll want to dig into, which is why so many people prefer to outsource. With data enrichment services, there are many additional tasks that you can conquer:

• Segmentation: This process allows you to divide your data into groups based on a certain category.
• Categorization: You can label all of your unstructured data for further structuring and analysis.
• Entity extraction: This facilitates the process of taking necessary data out of the unstructured one.
• Data appending. You are able to bring multiple data sets together to create a holistic and consistent data set. 

Refine Your Data with B2B Data Enrichment

No matter what industry you are in, raw data never stays raw. It is processed, compressed, and filtered—all to be easily analyzed and used. However, data can get messy. It can be used, stored, or acquired incorrectly, ending up with something unrecognizable.

A sure-fire way to success is to invest in database enrichment. Simply put, data enrichment improves data accuracy, which affects all aspects of your business. And that’s a case worth pursuing.