What is Lead Enrichment? How to automate it?

Introduction to Lead Enrichment

In the dynamic world of marketing and sales, understanding your leads – the potential customers – is crucial. This is where lead enrichment plays a vital role. So, what exactly is lead enrichment?

Simply put, lead enrichment is the process of enhancing the basic information you have about your leads. It involves adding more details to your lead records, such as company size, industry, job title, and contact information. Think of it as filling in the blanks in a customer’s profile to get a clearer, more complete picture.

But why is lead enrichment so important? Here are some key reasons, illustrated with examples:

1. Better Understanding of Leads: Knowing more about your leads allows you to tailor your marketing and sales strategies more effectively. For instance, if you know a lead’s industry and company size, you can customize your pitch to address the specific challenges and needs of that sector.
2. Improved Lead Qualification: With enriched data, it’s easier to determine which leads are most likely to convert. For example, if you’re selling a high-end B2B software solution, knowing a lead’s role and company revenue can help you identify if they have the decision-making power and budget for your product.
3. Enhanced Personalization: Enriched data enables more personalized marketing and sales efforts. Imagine sending an email campaign that speaks directly to the lead’s industry-specific challenges, rather than a generic message. This targeted approach is likely to resonate more with the lead.
4. Efficient Lead Segmentation: By enriching leads with specific data points, you can segment them into different groups based on criteria like location, industry, or company size. This segmentation helps in creating more focused and effective marketing campaigns.
5. Increased Conversion Rates: Ultimately, all these benefits lead to a higher likelihood of converting leads into customers. When you understand your leads better and engage with them more effectively, they are more likely to trust your solutions and do business with you.

Lead enrichment isn’t just about collecting more data; it’s about making your interactions with potential customers more meaningful and successful. With a clearer picture of who your leads are, you can craft strategies that are not only more efficient but also more impactful.

Today, enabling lead enrichment for sales / customer teams has become an essential part of the workload –

• Bad lead data can be costly for sales teams, with research indicating that it can result in 550 hours and $32,000 per sales rep per year in losses. Conversely, leveraging lead enrichment can help avoid these costs and is seen as a vital part of a sales team’s process. Source
• A company named QA utilized Cognism for lead enrichment and generated $81k of opportunities in just two weeks in March 2022. They reported significant improvements in the quality of contacts and won back lost customers, experiencing a proven ROI over the year. Source

Lead Enrichment APIs

Lead enrichment APIs are crucial tools for businesses aiming to enhance their sales and marketing strategies by providing detailed insights into potential leads and customers.

They typically take a lead email and basic info as input, and provide enriched data for the inputted leads as output.

Here’s a list of companies that offer lead enrichment APIs –

1. Apollo: Apollo is a leading provider of lead enrichment services and sales intelligence. It offers a comprehensive database and tools for effective lead scoring, email tracking, and sales engagement. Apollo is known for its robust feature set, including a variety of filters for targeted lead searches and integrations with popular CRM systems.
2. Lead411: Lead411 is a sales intelligence solution offering news-driven sales leads, IT intelligence, and unlimited company contacts. Key features include unlimited downloads, fresh daily leads based on territory, and a no-commitment monthly offer.
3. LeadFuze: LeadFuze allows you to find any business professional’s contact information. It’s used by salespeople, recruiters, and marketers to build their ideal list of leads and candidates, aggregating the world’s professional data to deliver fresh leads. It automates prospecting.
4. HubSpot Sales Hub: This solution aims to eliminate friction by integrating tools and data on a single platform. Features include email tracking and templates, as well as call tracking and recording.
5. Leadfeeder: A B2B sales tool that identifies companies visiting your website. It integrates with CRMs to show lead visit data in real-time and is compatible with Salesforce, Pipedrive, and other CRMs.
6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: Offered by LinkedIn, this is a sales intelligence software solution designed to leverage the vast network and data available through LinkedIn.
7. Abstract API: This API enriches emails or domains with precise company data, including location, industry, and headcount. It offers an ultra-fast REST API and supports data from over 175+ countries.
8. ZoomInfo: ZoomInfo’s API helps capture a comprehensive view of the market in real-time. It offers data enrichment from multiple sources, keeping CRM and marketing automation systems accurate and up-to-date.
9. People Data Labs: This API provides access to a vast company dataset, enabling businesses to enrich their company data. It offers on-demand data generation and targeted leads, supporting strategic decision-making and competitive intelligence.
10. Clearbit: Clearbit’s API focuses on real-time data enrichment, offering over 100 B2B attributes from more than 250 data sources. It updates records instantly upon data changes and integrates seamlessly into existing business tools.
11. Lusha: Lusha’s enrichment API allows for easy connection with systems, apps, or databases, providing detailed contact and company information. It offers a simple setup and secures data transfer with SSL encryption.

For more detailed information on each company’s offerings, you can visit their respective websites.

Lead Enrichment Workflow

Lead enrichment was typically done manually. This was somewhat automated with the advent of lead enrichment APIs, but the rest of the workflow except the data retrieval part was still manual. Now, with the advent of workflow automation platforms that integrate lead enrichment APIs within their automated workflow, this process has become touch-less and fully automated.

1. Manual Workflow

Step 1: Gathering Initial Lead Data

A sales rep attends a trade show and collects business cards, gathering names, companies, and contact details.

Step 2: Researching Additional Information

The rep manually researches each lead on LinkedIn and company websites to find job titles, company sizes, and industries.

Step 3: Data Entry into CRM

The rep enters the collected data into a CRM system like Salesforce or HubSpot, a process prone to human error and time-consuming.

Step 4: Lead Scoring

Using criteria such as company size and potential product fit, the rep manually scores each lead in the CRM.

Step 5: Segmenting Leads

The rep manually segments the leads in the CRM based on the scoring for targeted follow-ups.

Step 6: Personalizing Outreach

The rep crafts personalized emails or calls for each lead segment, using tools like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail.

2. Semi-Automated Workflow with Lead Enrichment APIs

Step 1: Gathering Initial Lead Data

Basic lead information is collected from events like trade shows.

Step 2: Enrichment Using Data Platforms

The rep uses data platforms like Apollo or Cognism to automatically gather additional lead information, integrated with a CRM like HubSpot.

Step 3: Data Integration in CRM

The enriched data is either manually entered into or automatically synced with the CRM system.

Step 4: Lead Scoring

Leads are manually scored in the CRM based on the comprehensive data obtained.

Step 5: Segmenting Leads

The rep uses the CRM to segment leads for targeted marketing efforts.

Step 6: Personalizing Outreach

Personalized outreach is crafted based on the detailed information, using email platforms like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign.

3. Fully Automated Workflow

A workflow automation platform like Nanonets can automate the complete process here. Let’s see how.

Step 1: Automatic Lead Data Capture

Leads are automatically captured at the point of contact using digital tools like a business card scanner app, directly feeding into a CRM like Salesforce.

Step 2: Auto-Enrichment with External Data

A workflow automation tool like Nanonets automatically obtains enriched lead data from external lead enrichment APIs whenever a new lead is created.

Step 3: Automated Data Entry in CRM

The enriched data is auto-synced with a CRM like HubSpot, eliminating manual data entry.

Step 4: Automated Lead Scoring

The CRM system automatically scores leads based on either predefined criteria and rules, or using an app for lead scoring directly.

Step 5: Auto-Segmentation of Leads

Leads are automatically categorized in the CRM based on scores and enriched data. The Nanonets workflow run handles the data analysis and segmentation tasks directly in the CRM

Step 6: Automated Personalized Outreach

Personalized email campaigns are triggered automatically using a marketing automation tool like Marketo, tailored to each lead segment’s characteristics and needs.

As we can see, in the fully automated workflow, efficiency is significantly improved, reducing manual effort and allowing sales teams to focus more on meaningful engagement with leads.

Lead Enrichment with Nanonets

Lead enrichment, an essential process in modern sales and marketing, involves enhancing basic lead information with additional details like company size, industry, job title, and contact information. This enrichment aids in better understanding leads, improving lead qualification, enhancing personalization, efficient lead segmentation, and ultimately increasing conversion rates. With advancements in technology, manual enrichment processes have evolved into more sophisticated, automated workflows.

Nanonets, with its capability to integrate with any app, database, or CRM system in order to create automated workflows transforms lead enrichment into an automated and efficient process.

Nanonets can automate each step of the lead enrichment workflow, thus making it touch-less for you and your teams-

1. Automatic Lead Data Capture: Integration with data extraction tools like Nanonets OCR and ABBYY.
2. Auto-Enrichment with External Data: Integration with Lead Enrichment APIs from companies like Apollo, ZoomInfo, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator for automatic data enrichment upon new lead creation.
3. Automated Data Entry in CRM: Integration to enrich data automatically with CRM systems, eliminating manual entry. This integration involves CRM platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, or Microsoft Dynamics, ensuring that all enriched data is accurately and promptly updated in the CRM database.
4. Automated Lead Scoring: Integration with CRM lead scoring tools like Zoho CRM’s built-in lead scoring, Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring, or HubSpot’s predictive lead scoring feature. These tools automatically evaluate leads based on enriched data, assigning scores to prioritize and qualify leads effectively.
5. Auto-Segmentation of Leads: Integration to leverage Nanonets workflows in conjunction with CRM functionalities. This process uses the scoring and enriched data from systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Marketo to categorize leads into distinct segments in corresponding CRM systems directly.
6. Automated Personalized Outreach: Integration with marketing automation tools such as Marketo, Lemlist, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Mailchimp, etc. These platforms use the segmented and enriched lead data from Nanonets to trigger personalized email campaigns, ensuring that each lead receives content tailored to their specific profile and interests.

Nanonets revolutionizes lead management by significantly boosting efficiency and accuracy. By automating the entire process, it allows sales teams to focus on what truly matters – engaging meaningfully with leads. The real-time data processing and integration capabilities of Nanonets ensure that sales representatives have the most current and comprehensive information at their fingertips. This leads to more targeted and effective marketing strategies, efficient lead segmentation, and higher conversion rates. Furthermore, by reducing manual data entry and segmentation, Nanonets minimizes the risk of human error and saves valuable time. Sales teams can now concentrate on developing relationships and closing deals rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks.

In conclusion, Nanonets doesn’t just streamline lead enrichment; it empowers sales teams to operate at their peak efficiency. By harnessing the power of automation and real-time data, Nanonets ensures that sales strategies are data-driven, personalized, and highly effective, ultimately leading to increased sales and customer satisfaction. In the rapidly evolving world of sales and marketing, Nanonets stands out as a game-changer, driving businesses towards greater success.

Try Nanonets Workflow Automation

Nanonets Workflows can be extended to tasks beyond lead enrichment. Nanonets Workflows is a versatile, secure ai Assistant designed to simplify the integration of your apps, knowledge, data and LLMs – aiding in the creation of no-code applications and workflows. It features a user-friendly interface suitable for individuals and organizations alike.

Once operational, you can employ natural language to design and execute intricate applications and workflows, integrating effortlessly with your existing apps and data.

To begin, you can arrange a consultation with an ai expert for a customized demo and trial, tailored to your specific needs.

Nanonets ai empowers your teams to develop applications and integrate data with ai-driven applications and workflows, allowing them to concentrate on core business activities.