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While most B2B GTM strategies focus heavily on corporate emails and phone emails, contacting someone through their personal email is sometimes essential for specific industries that seldom have work emails.
For example, I’ve ran campaigns to lawyers, psychologists, and therapists where their personal email was my golden ticket. So I decided to put Clay’s leading personal email providers to the test, to see which personal email providers were the best in terms of overall coverage, accuracy, and price.
We tested three different personal email provider waterfall combinations in this test. The Regardless of our test results, the TLDR is: Any single provider alone isn’t enough to fuel your outbound motion anymore.
If you ask me which provider to use, my answer is “all of them.” To maximize coverage and minimize price, waterfall every possible data provider with Clay.
What is a waterfall enrichment?
Waterfall enrichment lets you search sequentially across multiple tools until you find a valid match. You use multiple providers instead of just one provider.
You start with a company profile and then use Clay waterfalls to search for personal emails across multiple providers such as Rocket Reach, Mixrank, Nimbler, PDL, and ContactOut.
Personal Email Provider Test Overview
This section walks through our testing methodology and an overview of the results. Then we’ll drill into a provider-by-provider comparison, and conclude our case for data waterfalls over a single provider.
Disclaimer
These results will vary greatly depending on your industry and persona. For example, data providers probably have lower coverage for IT folks at cybersecurity companies than salespeople at sales tech companies.
It’s also important to remember that these are all great data providers. Our goal here is not to knock any one provider, but rather to show a transparent report comparing providers so you can make the most informed decision. If you must only choose one provider, we want to shed some light on the best provider for you—but really, you should be using waterfalls if you can.
Testing Methodology
First, we pulled a list of 2,354 contacts who we’ve previously emailed and could confirm the email as valid.
If the email met either of these criteria, we considered it a valid email:
- Opened
- Replied
Then, we ran the same list through six personal email data providers in Clay, and cross-referenced their output with our source list to see how often they found an accurate match.
Here are all of the providers we tested:
We followed this specific testing methodology because we wanted to start with a list of emails we knew were 100% valid, and not catchall. Even valid emails from a tool like NeverBounce can’t be fully trusted, as they can still bounce. This way, we can know for certain how accurate our data providers in questions really were.
Results Overview
We ran 2,354 prospects through five rounds of enrichment (meaning, we ran each of the 2,354 prospects through each data provider, a total of five times.) We enriched (or at least attempted to enrich) their information a total of 11,770 times.
Across all providers, data providers returned an email for 53% of our list, or 6,259 emails. However, that doesn’t mean all of those emails were valid.
After comparing our enriched personal email list with our valid source list, we were only able to confirm a personal email for 5,102 emails, or 43% of our total enrichment attempts. The rest were incorrect or missing emails.
In summary:
- We enriched 2,354 prospects across 5 providers (11,770 enrichments)
- 5,102 emails (43%) of our total attempts were confirmed valid
- The 5 providers returned 6,259 emails (~53% coverage)
One potential bias to call out here is that a person may have multiple personal emails that they use, and our study worked on the assumption of matching 1 person to 1 correct email. But we felt this was negligible due to multiple active & response personal emails being fairly uncommon.
Personal Email Provider Breakdown
Now, let’s break these emails down by provider.
Runner Up: RocketReach
RocketReach comes in close second in our overall provider list. They were the third best in overall accurate prospect coverage (50.47%) behind only People Data Labs and ContactOut, and almost the same as Mixrank in terms of returned email accuracy (80.16%).
However, when you factor in RocketReach’s relatively low cost of $0.060 per valid email (3 Clay credits on the $800/month plan), RocketReach offers an excellent mix of accuracy, coverage, and price.
Top Pick : Mixrank
Mixrank is our top overall pick for personal emails, offering a great balance of accuracy, prospect coverage, and price.
Mixrank’s returned email accuracy is 80.83%, just ahead of RocketReach. However, their overall accurate email coverage was lower in our test, coming in at 34.75%. RocketReach has ~45% better overall coverage than MixRank, but that added coverage comes at a cost. RocketReach is $0.02 more expensive per valid email, coming in at $0.060 each.
For those prioritizing accuracy and coverage over price, Mixrank should be your top pick.
Most Accurate: People Data Labs
People Data Labs is the number one provider in terms of email accuracy, but at a higher price than MixRank and RocketReach, who are close behind them in terms of Valid Email %.
You’re paying $0.089 per valid email when paying in Clay credits on our Pro plan, which is 1.5X more expensive than RocketReach, and 2.2x more expensive than Mixrank, with ~9% better email accuracy.
Again, People Data Labs has the best accuracy, but isn’t a cheap option. We recommend them as your first choice if accuracy is your top priority and you are willing to pay for that.
Best overall accurate prospect coverage: ContactOut
ContactOut is the number one provider in terms of coverage, but that comes at a high price, as ContactOut is our most expensive provider on the list.
You’re paying $0.35 per valid email when paying in Clay credits on our Pro plan, which is 3.8x more expensive than the 2nd most expensive provider, and 8.7x more expensive than Mixrank, despite only having ~3% better email accuracy and 2x better overall prospect coverage.
Again, ContactOut is the provider with the best coverage, but also the most expensive. We only recommend them as your first choice if coverage is your top priority and you have deep pockets.
Best price per accurate email: Nimbler
For those on a budget, Nimbler is the best provider when it comes to price per accurate email ($0.03). However, the cheap price comes at a cost, as Nimbler ranks fifth out of five both in email accuracy and prospect coverage.
This means you’re likely not going to find the email you’re looking for with Nimbler, and when you do return an email, odds are it won’t be accurate.
Nimbler is great for those on a budget, but isn’t recommended as the first choice for most teams (especially those who value accuracy and coverage.)
Overall Prospect Coverage vs Email Accuracy
There are two primary stats we’re looking for here: overall accurate coverage of our prospect list, and the accuracy of emails returned.
Some providers may provide an email for almost every single prospect, but only 10% of those emails are accurate. Another provider may not provide many emails, but the emails they do provide are highly accurate. The accuracy rate of emails provided is important if you don’t want your sales team wasting time reaching out to the wrong emails.
On the other hand, you also need to consider overall accurate coverage. In fact, this is probably the most important metric to consider. Even if a provider has a lower email accuracy rate, they still can have higher overall coverage of accurate prospect emails. For example, Provider A’s emails may only be 30% accurate, but they provide 1000 emails out of 1000 prospects, whereas Provider B’s emails are 100% accurate, but they only give you 200 emails out of 1000 prospects. In this case, despite Provider B having 100% email accuracy, they only had 20% overall prospect coverage, whereas provider B had 30% prospect coverage (50% more than Provider A).
In a perfect world, you find a provider that offers both… but they’re hard to come by, and often expensive.
Pricing and features of each personal email provider
Mixrank
Mixrank is the best provider that covers all the bases without breaking the bank. Mixrank is third in overall accuracy and fourth in coverage, but coverage is less important in the context of a waterfall. When you factor in Mixrank’s cheaper price of $0.0403 per accurate email, it’s a great overall choice.
Nimbler
As mentioned above, Nimbler is the best provider in terms of price per accurate email, coming in at just $0.03 per email. However, they have quite poor overall accurate coverage of just 10.75%, making them not a top choice for teams that value accuracy and overall coverage. You could use them as a first choice and fallback to other options if you don’t find a match, but they’re only ~53% accurate, which means the other ~47% of the time, you’ll have an inaccurate email on your hands. For those who can afford higher quality providers, it’s recommended to use one of the other providers above or below.
People Data Labs
People Data Labs is our top pick for those not concerned about budget. People Data Labs comes in first for accuracy and a close second in terms of overall coverage, rivaled only by ContactOut. Due to their pricing structure, you end up paying ~⅓ per accurate email when compared to ContactOut.
Since it’s such a good deal, if you want to optimize for accuracy and coverage without breaking the bank (at least, not as much as ContactOut will break the bank), People Data Labs is the best choice.
ContactOut
As mentioned above, ContactOut is the overall best provider for coverage, but also the most expensive. Considering People Data Labs is a close second at ~⅓ the price, it usually makes more sense to use People Data Labs first, and only fallback to ContactOut if PDL can’t find the right email for you off the bat.
RocketReach
RocketReach is our pick for second in the waterfall. 80.16% of their emails were confirmed valid, placing them just behind Mixrank in email accuracy. 50.47% of the prospects we checked returned valid emails, placing them a close 3rd second in overall accurate prospect coverage. Considering the price you’re paying for email and overall accurate coverage, they’re a solid choice for personal email data.
Tips to maximize accurate coverage & minimize cost
I’m running Clay-powered outbound motions for leading brands like Sendoso. I’d like to share some insights around how we’ve approached mobile data enrichment with Clay, to maximize coverage and minimize price.
Data Waterfalls
Data waterfalls are the best way to maximize coverage and minimize price. We tested several different waterfall combinations, and found the following to be the best order of providers:
- Mixrank
- RocketReach
- People Data Labs
- ContactOut
- Nimbler
We ran this waterfall against the same prospect list that we used to test each individual provider, and the results were impressive:
- Prospects Checked: 2,354
- Emails Found: 2,102
- Valid Emails Found: 1,864
- % Valid Emails: 88.72%
- % Valid Prospect Coverage: 79.18%
- Cost Per Credit: $0.016
- Cost Per Email: $0.096
- Cost Per Valid Email: $0.109
- Cost For All Emails: $202.37
As you can see, Clay’s waterfall results rival the accuracy and cost of People Data Labs, but increase coverage of your list from ~53% to ~79% .
In short, while each provider individually is a good choice, in 2024, you should be waterfalling providers to maximize data coverage and minimize cost.
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