The process of data enrichment
The data enrichment process can typically be broken down into four stages: cleaning your existing data, analyzing your existing data, data collection, and data enrichment.
Data Cleansing
Before data can be enriched, your existing datasets should be cleaned to remove any duplicate data, invalid data, or out-of-date data. Invalid and expired data can include things like spam or abandoned email addresses on your mailing list, unused phone numbers in your contact data, old social media profiles, etc.
Data Analysis
Data analysis should be done both before and after enrichment, so you can measure the value of your chosen data enrichment service. Data analysis before enrichment gives you a more accurate overview of your existing data and allows you to see where the gaps are. Analyzing data post-enrichment gives you a complete data picture of demographic data points, customer needs, and customer relationships.
Data Collection
Much enriched data comes from external sources and third-party services, but that’s not always the case. In the case of a large enterprise company with a lot of interconnected teams and data houses, data may simply need to be shared more adequately across data silos, and automation may need to be put into place to ensure that data is proliferated across all vested systems.
If external data is needed, the data enrichment service you choose will source this data from its proprietary datasets, or outside databases and contact lists.
Data Enrichment
Once the data has been collected, your existing data is enriched by appending the new data to your data platform. Often, an ongoing pipeline will be established, or a data management schedule will be set up so future data enrichment happens automatically.
Benefits of data enrichment
Enriched data is valuable because it gives you more data points about your customers. You may only have a first name and an email address for a customer in your database, but with more demographic data you can better target ad messaging and marketing efforts, improve your customer relationships, and the customer experience of your apps and products, and ultimately see higher ROI on your business decisions.
The types of data you’ll be able to add to your existing data through data enrichment include things like company position, general geographic data, phone number, marital status, social media profiles, income level, and more.
Best practices for data enrichment
Data enrichment must be done responsibly and intelligently to reap the most rewards. There are privacy laws that must be adhered to, and you should ensure that you are getting good data quality and that your data enrichment process must be repeatable and scalable.
Scalability
Most data enrichment tools or APIs offer some form of real-time data enrichment that allows you to continue to leverage the power of their platform after the initial data cleansing and enrichment process has finished. Additionally, many services use machine learning to automate the process and make ongoing data enrichment more efficient.
Data Quality
When choosing a data enrichment API or tool, always make sure you get high-quality data. Most providers should be able to provide you with a list of their data sources when asked - ask to see this list, and verify that the sources on it are trusted and reliable.
Privacy Laws
It is up to you to make sure that any service you use complies with existing privacy and security laws, such as GDPR and CCPA. If a service you used is later found out to be engaging in bad data practices (selling user data without explicit consent from the user, using user data for unauthorized purposes, etc.) you will be on the hook for any damage to your customers and brand.
AbstractAPI Company Enrichment API
AbstractAPI’s Company Enrichment API is a freely available API that allows you to look up company information for any domain or email address. The information provided includes things like headcount, company location, founding year, and industry.
The API is free to use up to 100 requests/month at 1 request per second. Plans start at $8/month for 12,000 requests/year at 3 requests per second.
