Key Reasons to Implement CRM Data Enrichment

Most of the tech savvy CRM users and advanced business users for sure have heard of the term CRM data enrichment at least once. In fact, as your contacts database keeps growing and since the CRM providers such as SalesForce base their pricing calculations on the number of the size of your database, it’s probably a term that you’ve come across numerous times. So, what are the key benefits of using data enrichment API for SalesForce and other CRMs and why is it a good idea?

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1. Improve the quality of your prospect, lead and customer records

This one is the most obvious, but yet the most impactful on your business. How many times have you heard it from your sales team that the leads they’re getting from marketing are lacking the key data points, i.e. company name, vertical, company size, location, etc.? Of course, you could attempt solving that problem by putting extra mandatory fields on your lead capture forms, but guess what, your leads have zero motivation to give you correct info about themselves.

Your leads have zero motivation to give you correct data about themselves and their organization

Most likely they’ll choose whatever pops up first from the dropdown list. Companies have been struggling with this problem and the current consensus is – you should ask for as fewer fields as you can and implement a continuous data enrichment process to help you gather noise-free data about both the individuals and the companies they represent.

Continuous data enrichment process to help you gather noise-free data

The key benefit here is obviously better quality data since there’s no human intervention – the data enrichment tool simply takes the input data and pulls the remaining fields directly to the standard or duplicate fields of your CRM through the API.

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2. Clean up your CRM database and save on storage costs

This one speaks more to the operations and finance teams, but most of the times both sales and marketing team also have a stake in the cost-of-ownership discussions. The truth is, everyone wants to have a CRM and nobody appreciates the price tag and that’s not surprising at all. In case your marketing team’s generating 50 – 100K new leads every year, your annual check from your CRM provider keeps growing exponentially. At some point the finance team or operations people will start questioning the size of the database and suggest regular data cleanups and data cleansing to keep the costs at bay. And that’s actually a very good idea! But, how do you know exactly who you can clean up and who should be preserved? Well, data enrichment tools and email validation API can help you easily identify leads with bogus information so you know for sure who’s a valuable contact and who’s just taking up space and can be deleted with zero impact on the business.

Data enrichment will help identify valid contact to keep and junk leads to get rid of with zero negative impact on your business

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3. Enhance targeting options and improve the results of your marketing programs

When marketers are thinking about launching vertical campaigns, data question comes up nine times out of ten. And honestly, how do they know for sure who’s from healthcare or software industry? And even if they have this data being collected on the registration forms, can they really trust it? Again, your leads have ZERO motivation to give you correct data about themselves, so it’s always a chance your data is wrong. By launching a continuous data enrichment process for your leads and customers and incorporating this process into your sales and marketing operations, you’re setting your teams up for success in vertical sales and marketing programs. As a marketer, you’ll have more confidence in your data and the right message will truly hit the right audience.

Data enrichment gives you confidence that the right message will hit the right audience

As the result, you’ll see higher open rates, click rates and more leads. If you’re in sales, you can rest assured that when the “Vertical” or “Industry” field states “Healthcare”, this lead does in fact represent the Healthcare vertical and your pitch won’t sound ambiguous.