Like all things in the world of business, quality is better than quantity when it comes to the customer information you have on file.
If all you have is a name and email address for a prospective customer, you may struggle to make that all-important sale.
Data enrichment can be a fantastic way to supercharge your existing data and find out more about your prospective buyers.
In this article, we will look at what data enrichment is and how it can improve the way your sales team operates.
What is data enrichment?
Data enrichment is when you take the data you have already collected. You can then add to it or update it.
You can use data enrichment to make the contact information you have in your CRM more efficient, and more likely to result in a sale for your business.
How can you enrich your data?
When you are enriching your data, you’re effectively filling in the blanks.
For example, let’s say that you have a business card from a potential lead. The business card contains the person’s name, job title, email and the company they work for, but not a lot else.
While this information makes it easy to contact your prospective customer, it doesn’t tell you a lot about whether they could be interested in what you do. As a result, your sales team could spend much time following up with this customer, only to find they are not in the market for your product or service.
You can use data enrichment to find out more about the person who gave you the business card, and the business they work for. This gives you the valuable knowledge needed to see if they are a good match for your product or service.
Information you can look for includes:
- The turnover of the business they work for
- The countries the business operates in
- The number of branches the business has
- How many employees the business has
There is no limit to the amount of information you can include in your data enrichment strategy – as long as it is relevant to your business.
You can find some of the data you need for free online.
Why data enrichment is so important
Keeping on top of your customer data and making sure it is as complete as possible will have many valuable benefits for your business. Here are some of the reasons why data enrichment should be an integral part of your sales team’s processes.
1. It increases the likelihood of a sale
According to Nucleus Research, data accessibility can shorten the sales cycle by up to 14%. This is because the new information you have on file will allow you to personalize your proposition, making your prospective customer more likely to make a purchase.
84% of consumers say that being treated like a person and not a number is critical to winning their business, meaning personalization can be the key to making more sales.
2. It can make your existing data more accurate
CRM data can degrade by 22.5% a year. This means that if you have 10,000 records in your CRM system, 2,250 of these records will no longer be accurate over the space of 12 months.
Customer data naturally becomes less valuable over time. Job responsibilities change, contact details are updated, and people move on to new jobs. Data enrichment can help you keep the records you have in your CRM as accurate as possible for longer.
Did you know that between 10% and 30% of customer data is duplicated? Data enrichment can also help you identify duplicate records in your CRM, streamlining your database and reducing the risk of two salespeople contacting the same person twice.
3. It makes it easier to sort your data
More comprehensive data makes it easier to sort and segment your customer records, meaning you have more control over the information in your CRM.
4. It helps save you time
Data enrichment gives you more information about prospective customers, making it easier to determine whether they are a viable lead or not.
This helps save your sales and marketing team time, as they are not pitching to customers that may potentially have no interest in your products or services.
5. It helps you grow and evolve
All modern-day businesses are guided by data.
With data enrichment, you have more valuable information at your disposal. This means you can understand your target audience more efficiently, identify future market trends and stay one step ahead of your competitors.
How Outlasted Data can help boost your campaigns with improved data
As you can see, data enrichment is critical for all sales teams.
If you’ve decided that data enrichment is right for your business, there are two different ways you can go about it.
The first way is to update all your information manually. This is when a member of your sales team, or a temp, finds all the gaps in your data and updates it.
However, manual information gathering can be a long and frustrating process, and there is no guarantee that the information you need is readily available on the internet.
The second way is to use a company, like Outlasted Data, to help update all your customer information.
We will work with you to revamp your existing data, helping you reach more prospects and improve engagement. Even if all you have is a company name, our team of experts will be able to pull together a comprehensive and accurate customer profile.
We like a challenge, after all!
Using Outlasted Data to carry out data enrichment on your behalf will save your sales team valuable time, time that can be spent growing your business.
Find out more about our business data enrichment services we provide, and contact us to see how we can help boost your existing data.
