Data Enrichment is undoubtedly a way of unearthing the hidden opportunities lurking in your database. It also poses risks, especially with the new European data protection regulation.
Enrichment is a popular trend for companies seeking to make the most of the customer base they have, because the amount of information available is multiplying year on year, making it imperative that it is used appropriately.
The pros
Segmentation and retention
Cleaner and more accurate data improves the targeting and messaging efforts of any company while increasing retention rates.
The ability to process more crucial information about your customers, like market sector, business size and location, provides you with better means to seek out their problems and solve them in time.
Data enrichment facilitates lead nurturing by making your messaging appropriate. It can also help in converting visitors into leads by providing your sales force with the quality data they need, giving them the opportunity to rank those leads, whilst being able to use various channels to approach those visitors.
The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them.
Location Marketing Potential
From existing customer and contact data, you can build more sophisticated buyer personas. Having a deeper insight in your customers can help to improve acquisition strategies, allowing sales and marketing to be more efficient and cohesive.
Marketing and sales efforts are increasingly being focused on building a smaller, more in-depth set of leads as they have a greater chance of converting. Data enrichment allows businesses to make sure they are talking to the right people at the right time.
Organise, Validate, Segment
Enrichment helps you get your data organised, which helps you offer the product and service information to your visitors exactly when they look for it.
As businesses gain more insights about their contacts, they have the opportunity to make prospects’ experience personal. Tailored marketing reaches customers far more efficiently and effectively than bulk messaging.
Data enrichment can lead to a reduced amount of wasted communication, as its accuracy enables businesses to formulate strategy and expectations. Marketers are also able to see which visitors have looked at what pages and how often.
The Cons
Over-Personalisation
Concerning the amount of data to use, businesses need to keep the right side of the law in providing as good a service as possible while not leaving customers feeling their data privacy is being invaded.
There is an expectation that basic data shared will be used in improving the level of service. Overuse of data too early during communications can have undesirable results.
Legislators want to restrict the collection of data by businesses, which they are achieving through such measures as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Under the GDPR, customers have to opt-in instead of opting-out to receive certain communications, making it harder for companies to collect data. Businesses must also delete contact information if customers choose not to be contacted; before, they could just put them into a non-contact list in their database.
Poor Planning
Businesses need to build the correct foundations and strategy to ensure data is not used incorrectly.
Just in 2016 alone, IBM estimates that lack of data quality cost the US economy $3.1 trillion in general resources, wasted time and incorrect decisions.
To make data enrichment have its proper impact, companies need a precise data strategy if they want to direct decision-making.
The Personal Aspect
Despite the fact that most people recognise the strength of data, more is needed to win the hearts and minds of customers.
Even in B2B, we cannot win without H2H (human 2 human) communication. We should stand out by providing the personal touch, something that nowadays technology can go so far towards helping. In a B2B sales process the people we sell to matter as in marketing and sales strive to communicate on a personal level.
We need to give customers the individual touch, supplying all the communication and support necessary during their buyer’s journey.
If your company is driven by data and is hoping to improve the trust contacts have in you on their way to becoming customers, data enrichment works. It aids in filling in details and analysing leads as well as maximising the potential of the data you have.
