What Is CRM Data Enrichment and How To Do It Right?

Having plenty of prospects in your CRM platform doesn’t guarantee marketing or sales success. Sending out a bunch of generic cold emails to them is almost certain to backfire, no matter how good your product or service is.

What you need is abundant data that tells you everything you should know about a prospect—and that’s why CRM data enrichment can make a world of difference to your outreach results.

We’ve helped countless teams enrich their CRM data with plenty of useful prospect information. In this guide, we’ll teach you how this is done with the help of a capable enrichment platform. After going through the basics of data enrichment, we’ll discuss some of the most effective tools on the market. 🚀

What Is CRM Data Enrichment?

CRM data enrichment is the process of updating your existing lead data with additional data points. It’s an essential aspect of an effective GTM or sales strategy because it lets you understand prospects on a deeper level and form closer relationships with them from the get-go. 🤝

For example, if someone entered your CRM through a web form, your lead list might contain basic data like their name and email. To get additional data points, you can take either of the following approaches:

1. Asking for additional data in the web form
2. Enriching data internally

The former option might seem simple, but it comes with a significant caveat—web forms with too many fields might put off your prospect, so they might not complete it at all.

It’s better to get at least some data through a simple form and use data enrichment to obtain information such as:

• 👤 Demographics (age, gender, etc.)
• 💻 Technographics (hardware, apps, etc.)
• 🏢 Firmographics (size, annual revenue, etc.)
• 🗣️ Behavioral data (keyword searches, website views, etc.)
• 📨 Contact data (email, phone number, etc.)

If performed well, this approach can give you several advantages that uplevel your sales process.

5 Major Benefits of CRM Enrichment

Enriching CRM data boosts the effectiveness of your outreach campaigns and sales cycle as a whole. Specifically, you can enjoy the following benefits:

Keep in mind that not every data enrichment process can yield these benefits—you need to opt for the right approach.

How To Enrich CRM Data

While there are various data enrichment techniques, two methods are particularly common:

1. Manual enrichment 
2. Software-supported enrichment

With manual enrichment, you’d take the information you have and start researching the prospect to get additional data points. For example, you may visit their LinkedIn profile to look for skills, experiences, posts, and interests, which you can then write down in a spreadsheet.

While this approach may seem the cheapest because you don’t need to pay anything, it costs a lot when you look at another currency—time. Manual enrichments can be tedious, and they’re surely not the best use of your SDRs’ time. 😮‍💨

That’s why many teams opt for a capable data enrichment platform instead. It can automate virtually all aspects of data enrichment and provide robust data based on simple input like someone’s name and email.

That being said, there are plenty of data enrichment tools, each coming with unique selling points. Finding the right option can be overwhelming, so we’ve decided to give you a shortcut.

Best CRM Data Enrichment Platform—4 Options To Consider

To ensure you don’t need to waste hours or days looking for the right CRM enrichment solution, we scoured the web for the latest and most popular tools and reviewed them to understand their features, benefits, and drawbacks.

We also consulted our network of industry experts and influencers to get their opinions and looked at each solution’s customer reviews to assess the user experience. Our research resulted in four tools you’ll want to check out:

1. Clay
2. Apollo
3. Kaspr
4. FullContact

Below, you’ll see concise reviews of each solution so that you can find the most effective one without extensive research.

1. Clay

Clay is a comprehensive data enrichment platform that lets you make the most out of every contact in your CRM. It seamlessly integrates with various CRM solutions, such as:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Pipedrive

When you connect your CRM to Clay, you can leverage the platform’s integration with over 75 data providers to obtain the data you need effortlessly. Here’s how it works:

1. Choose the data you need (emails, phone numbers, etc.)
2. Select your data providers
3. Let Clay scour the selected data sources one by one until all your chosen information is found

This process is known as waterfall enrichment, and it’s the most efficient and cost-effective way to enrich your CRM data. You don’t need to create accounts with data providers or juggle a bunch of apps—everything is done within Clay. 🙌

When your data is found, you can push it to your CRM directly without manual work. You’ll have enriched contacts in no time so that you can kick off your campaigns. 

Want to see Clay’s CRM enrichment in action? Check out this quick demo:

You can explore Clay’s features first-hand with its rich free plan. If you end up enjoying them as much as hundreds of other sales and marketing teams, you can upgrade to one of the following paid plans:

1. Starter—$149/month
2. Explorer—$349/month
3. Pro—$800/month
4. Enterprise—Custom

Users have been leaving rave reviews for Clay, praising the platform for its data accuracy, AI implementation, and the positive effects it had on users’ workflow. 😍

2. Apollo

Apollo is a feature-rich sales intelligence platform that offers several impressive functionalities. The first one is the so-called “Living Data Network,” which encompasses two million contributors making sure Apollo’s data is accurate and updated.

As for the specifics, the database includes the following:

• 275 million global contacts
• 156 million personal and business emails
• 120 million mobile numbers and direct dials

Besides a robust database, Apollo offers useful buyer intent data and scoring features that let you focus on the warmest prospects. You can target them with the right messaging thanks to the platform’s handy functionalities like conversation intelligence and behavioral fit checks. ✅

Another useful feature is outbound automation. Apollo lets you set up automated workflows to reduce manual work, helping your SDRs focus on meaningful tasks.

Apollo integrates with many platforms (including Clay) and is compatible with several CRM solutions. Full CRM enrichment is available with HubSpot and Salesforce, so the platform is best suited for teams using these solutions.

You can use Apollo’s key features as a part of the free plan or subscribe to one of the three monthly tiers:

1. Basic—$59/month
2. Professional—$99/month
3. Organization—$149/month

3. Kaspr

Kaspr is a user-friendly data enrichment solution that advertises a massive database of over 500 million verified contacts. It can be a solid option if a significant portion of your prospects come from the EU because the database contains over 200 million EU contacts. 🌍

The first notable advantage of Kaspr is its CRM integrations. Besides HubSpot and Salesforce, the platform connects to Pipedrive, Zoho, and various other providers. This increases the chance of Kaspr being the right fit because you’re not limited to the most popular CRM options.

To pull data with Kaspr, you can use its Chrome extension focused on LinkedIn data collection. Open LinkedIn and perform a search, and you can find prospects’ emails and phone numbers.

Kaspr offers a free plan, though it limits the extension’s usability to LinkedIn only. If you want to use it with Sales Navigator or Recruiter, you need to subscribe to one of the following plans:

1. Starter—$49/month
2. Business—$79/month
3. Organization—$99/month

4. FullContact

FullContact is a multi-platform solution offering several products, including the following:

• Acumen Lead Identification
• Customer Recognition
• Enrich
• Verify

The Enrich product is the most useful one for obtaining additional data on your CRM contacts. It lets you uncover numerous data points, from the basics like demographic data to hard-to-find data like wealth and investment information. 📈

This makes FullContact one of the most thorough and detailed enrichment solutions. It has over 50 billion identifiers, so you can find out everything you need about a prospect to target them with precise messaging.

The Acument Lead Identification product can also be quite helpful. It lets you uncover website visitors to identify highly qualified leads, which allows you to focus your campaign in the right direction and increases your efficiency. 🏃

As for integrations, FullContact approaches them differently than other solutions we’ve covered. You need to use an API, which might be complex to set up. The good news is that the company’s team should help you get started, so it shouldn’t take too much time.

FullContact doesn’t make pricing information available on the website.

How To Choose the Best CRM Enrichment Solution

It’s easy to get lost in the bells and whistles advertised by different data enrichment solutions. To ensure you make the right decision, focus on the following criteria when comparing different options:

• 🔗 CRM integrations—There’s little point in choosing a data enrichment solution that doesn’t integrate with your CRM platform. While you might be able to find the data you need, moving it between platforms might be too tedious
• 🔢 Data availability—No platform can ensure a perfect hit rate, but empty searches are more common with single-source providers due to the limitations of their databases. Ideally, you’ll opt for a solution that lets you explore several databases
• 🤖 Automation features—Your sales cycle is most likely elaborate as it is, so avoid platforms that add more manual work. You can find various data enrichment platforms that streamline your workflow through various automations
• 💲 Cost—High-quality data shouldn’t put a dent in your budget. Besides looking at a platform’s pricing, examine its value for money to ensure your investment pays off

If you’re looking for an end-to-end enrichment platform that checks all the necessary boxes to maximize the potential of every contact in your CRM, Clay is a no-brainer. 🌟

Upgrade Your CRM With Clay’s Robust Features

Pairing your CRM with Clay creates a powerful combo. As you saw, the platform lets you find various data points across dozens of providers in one go, saving you considerable time and effort. ⏳

Clay addresses some of the shortcomings of a typical enrichment platform while keeping their best features intact. For example, Clay offers a Chrome extension similar to Kaspr’s, except you don’t need to pay for it and can browse websites beyond LinkedIn. 

It also leverages cutting-edge technologies to let you enrich data with AI. If you need to find specific data points but don’t want to bother with manual research, let Claygent do it for you. It’s a comprehensive AI research and assistant powered by ChatGPT that can find answers to virtually any question you might have about prospective people and companies. 🧠

Clay’s AI features don’t end there. If you want to scale your campaign execution, the platform’s AI Email Builder is an excellent companion. It pulls data from Clay tables to write personalized emails in minutes, automating entire sequences in no time. When the emails are done, push them to your email sequencer, and you can start drawing in leads.

Enjoy Complete Flexibility and Maximize Your ROI

Unlike many data enrichment solutions, Clay doesn’t require rigid annual commitments—you can leverage the affordable monthly plans to use the platform for as long as you want. If you do make an annual commitment, you’ll get a discount on your plan and all credits upfront. 🪙

Speaking of credits, each plan lets you choose between different credit amounts with the ability to purchase more if you run out. This way, Clay ensures cost-effectiveness and helps you get the most out of every dollar you invest.

Tighten Your Sales Pipeline With Clay

To enjoy next-level CRM enrichment and AI-powered features, you can sign up for Clay in three quick steps:

1. Visit the signup page 👈
2. Enter your name, email, and password
3. Explore Clay’s many features

To learn more about the platform, visit Clay University and join Clay’s growing Slack community. For product updates and tips for making every contact in your CRM count, sign up for Clay’s newsletter.

💡Keep reading: Want to learn more about data enrichment beyond your CRM? Check out these articles:

• Data enrichment tools for Salesforce
• Data enrichment use cases
• B2C data enrichment
• B2B data enrichment services
• Lead enrichment software