What is lead enrichment?
Lead enrichment is the process of collecting, managing, and analyzing data that pertains to a customer's interest in a company's product or service.
Ultimately, the goal of lead enrichment is to generate insights on how to enhance the marketing and sales process and increase conversion rates.
Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies is becoming progressively competitive as companies are seeing new marketing channels and platforms arise (such as TikTok, Twitter, etc.), the sales intelligence market, and advancements in lead intelligence tools.
Furthermore, a data enrichment tool provides companies with data-driven solutions to improving their acquisition processes, ultimately enhancing sales conversion rates.
Benefits of lead enrichment for a sales team
As mentioned above, the overarching goal of lead enrichment is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of lead generation by marketing and sales teams, both internally and externally. Enriching leads provides enhanced information and insights about a potential customer, benefiting all aspects of business that rely on leads.
For example, more information about a potential customer can help marketing teams more accurately qualify and score leads by creating more accurate customer profiles. Consequently, lead enrichment assists the sales team by connecting with decision-makers on a more personal level, due to crafting a more comprehensive customer profile.
Here are some more benefits of lead enrichment:
- Increased conversion rates;
- Improved customer retention;
- Enhanced lead generation processes;
- More efficient lead sourcing strategies.
Lead enrichment use cases
Beyond the main objective of lead enrichment, it is important to note there are many other use cases involved in lead enrichment. This applies to both B2B and B2C lead enrichment processes and strategies.
Here are some other use cases within lead enrichment:
- Create more personalized marketing content (i.e. ad campaigns);
- Keep your nurturing cycle up-to-date for both current and prospective customers;
- Integrate ready-to-use contact data and leads from external sources directly into your CRM;
- Improve lead scoring models and strategies with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML);
- Boost overall performance and efficiency across acquisition and sales channels.
How does lead enrichment work?
Now that we've looked at the benefits, importance, and uses surrounding lead enrichment, let's take a closer look at the process of lead enrichment itself.
Ultimately, there are four major steps involved in lead enrichment: data collection, lead routing, lead conversion, and lead nurturing.
It is important to note that lead conversion and lead nurturing are ongoing processes and sometimes don't occur chronologically, as listed above.
1. Gather data
Before any lead enrichment processes can occur, companies must gather lead enrichment data. Companies can either collect data from prospective customers with in-house data collection and CRM data collection processes, or they can purchase external data from third-party sources.
External data is a great solution for many companies looking to extract and leverage significant amounts of data without expending too many overhead costs.
You gain numerous benefits that could help you improve your lead generation efforts by employing an up-to-date web data provider. Company data points such as company websites, name, size, location, and more allow to see a better picture of the new lead and help attribute an ICP status to it.
Once this is done, part of the gathering procedure includes lead scoring and lead segmentation.
- Lead scoring is a point-based lead management method that analyzes sales leads with customer data such as job title, age, location, etc.
- Lead segmentation is the process of determining how you segment or group your leads based on various criteria and data points.
Scoring and segmentation combine to act as a standardized operation of qualifying and measuring leads as they move into your CRM and through your sales funnel for your specific business needs.
2. Lead routing
Also known as a lead assignment, it's the process of assigning and distributing leads throughout the sales team.
Today, many businesses automate routing by using a lead enrichment tool with factors such as industry, deal size, location, and more.
While this step is rather straightforward, it is important to get it right, as many sales reps have different strengths and weaknesses that may impact a particular lead type.
3. Convert leads
Lead conversion is the process within the marketing and sales funnel in which a lead passes an established threshold lead score.
Typically, marketing and sales funnels all consist of four major stages:
- Awareness is a stage when a potential customer is aware of your products or services. They might not be interested in your offerings, but they are aware that you exist.
- Interest is a further development of awareness. They're still not buying yet, but they are interested to take a closer look at what you have to offer.
- Decision, or desire, is when they want what you've got. At this point, they might look for your contact information and consider digging deeper into the specifics of your product.
- Action is the last stage where they make whatever action there is. It could be a purchase, starting a free trial, downloading a free sample, or filling out certain forms to finalize their decision.
Lead conversion takes place during the decision and action stages. This doesn't necessarily mean there is a guaranteed deal, but rather a strong probability that they will become a new client or remain in the decision stage as they stay in the nurturing stage.
4. Nurture leads
As we know, the sales processes don't always occur linearly. Sometimes, buyers and potential customers enter, exit or change stages within the sales funnel quite frequently.
However, a successful lead nurturing procedure helps companies ensure that they are developing and maintaining relationships with customers, no matter in what stage of the sales funnel they are.
It is important to note, sales teams can boost lead conversion and nurture simply by connecting with decision-makers.
How web data improves lead enrichment?
Web data is external data gathered by third-party data providers about a business as opposed to internal data collected within a company.
It breaks down into many categories, such as company data, employee data, job posting data, community and repository data, and technographic data, among others.
External data sources
Firmographic data
Firmographics is categorical company information that helps measure and identify a company's structure, qualities, and other unique identifiers.
If you're into B2B affairs, you can use this data to enhance your understanding of the customer's needs. Once you know what they need, you can utilize appropriate marketing strategies and, if successful, boost your lead generation.
Some firmographic data points include company size, location, industry, and revenue.
Employee data
Employee data is all the information related to professionals from professional networking sites and other public sources. By having access to this dataset, you can start building a high-quality prospect list and enhance your lead generation efforts.
It provides companies with intel such as work experience, location, industry, education, and connections.
Job posting data
Job posting data provides insights into a company's expansion and growth. You can see what job positions they are trying to fill and in what location.
What's more important for lead generation and enrichment purposes, is that you can access the job description records that could help you enrich leads.
If you know exactly what they need the new employee to do, you can find the potential pain points and tailor your marketing strategies that focus on alleviating those pain points.
Consequently, you open the doors to gaining new leads.
Community and repository data
You can use community and repository information for lead data enrichment on your current database. Find relevant information in public discussions to gather additional data for your lead profile. Fill in the missing intelligence gaps to qualify leads better.
You can boost your ideal customer profile by gathering data on what problems your target audience faces and implementing more personalized marketing campaigns. You no longer need to waste time guessing about their problems.
You can see those problems first-hand. As a result, sales reps will have more information and be able to offer better-tailored solutions; therefore, they will have a better chance of attracting more leads.
Technographic data
Technographic data is information about a company's technology stack and provides specifics and details about what tools and technologies are being used by companies.
For example, technographic data includes information such as company name, tech stack list, features, and integrations.
Internal data sources
Contact data (CRM)
Aside from third-party people data from data providers, such as Coresignal, contact data is also collected internally by companies in nearly every interaction they have with a prospective customer.
For example, email subscription forms and sample downloads gather and store all information input by a prospective client. Further, contact data collected from email subscriptions are stored and managed in CRM platforms, such as Salesforce or Hubspot.
It's recommended to automate lead enrichment to remove some of the hassles and make sure that leads are assigned to the correct sales rep. There are various lead enrichment tools that you can use to help route leads according to a specific data point, remove delays, reduce costs, and more.
Wrapping up
All in all, applying an automated lead enrichment solution to any marketing or sales process can help a sales team make more informed decisions. Furthermore, it can increase efficiency between departments, and ultimately help companies gain consumer and market trust by providing insights for a more personalized marketing campaign and sales experience.
In today's competitive and digital marketplace, it is more important than ever for companies to maintain brand awareness, create personalized and quality experiences, and enrich outbound marketing strategies.
