3 Overlooked Sales Benefits of Customer Data Enrichment

What is Customer Data Enrichment?

Simply put, customer data enrichment involves adding new data to existing customer information to transform it into more valuable insights.

For example, imagine you only have a list of your customers’ emails. That's it.

With data enrichment, you can learn more about them, such as their full name, their work title, where they work, how big their company is, and so on.

If that sounds useful to you, then keep reading. Because I’ll be explaining how you can take advantage of customer data enrichment yourself in this article.

3 Sales Benefits of Customer Data Enrichment

1. Prevent missed sales opportunities

Research by Gartner found that almost all B2B purchases happen because of changes within the organization, typically when new executives are brought on board. Also, existing customers are 3 times more likely to become repeat buyers.

But, did you know that many businesses fail to follow up with their existing customers or worse, aren't even aware when these customers change jobs? Those are the hottest leads!

Forbes said the chance to close an existing customer is 60%-70% compared to only 5%-20% with new customers.

Not only are existing customers easier to close than new ones, but it also opens up your chance to ask them to introduce your product to their new companies. 

This is very useful since 84% of B2B decision-makers start looking to buy after a recommendation from someone close and trusted.

So, how can you prevent those "hottest leads" from slipping through your fingers? Simple, you track them.

I work for Sapiengraph and our job change monitor feature lets you track up to 20 LinkedIn profiles, for free!

Let me show you how it works:

1. Once you have added the Sapiengraph Chrome extension and signed up for a Sapiengraph account, you will see a button on LinkedIn profiles that you can click to track.

2. Sapiengraph will monitor the profiles every week. If there are changes, you will be notified through email and your Sapiengraph account’s dashboard.

2. Improve customer relationships and service

If you’ve read many articles about improving customer relationships and service, chances are you’ve never heard this tip. 

One often overlooked metric that offers valuable insights is tracking the employee count of your customers' companies. This simple data point can give you a glimpse into where they are headed.

If they’re growing, their needs probably change too. Now you have a wide-open window to cross-sell products or upsell bigger plans that align with their growing needs.

On the other hand, it could be a sign of trouble if a company is shrinking. Even more alarming if they're one of the major revenue sources for you. They could cut ties with you at any time so by tracking employee growth, you can reach them early to offer some help or maybe tweak your deal - whatever it takes to keep them around.

As Shakespeare said,

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late

By being aware of your customers' companies' employee count, not only will your customer relationship and service improve, but you’ll also get to make more money and reduce churn.

Here's how to track employee counts of multiple companies simultaneously and refresh them monthly with Sapiengraph.

1. Set a dummy cell with a date

• In an empty cell, let's say A1, enter the current date using =TODAY().

2. Create a formula to force a monthly refresh

• In another cell, enter =MONTH(A1) & YEAR(A1). This will create a text string that changes with the month and year ("92024" for September 2024).

3. Combine the =MONTH(A1) & YEAR(A1) with Sapiengraph's "=SG_EMPLOYEE_COUNT(LINKEDIN_COMPANY_PROFILE_URL)"custom formula

• So, it becomes =SG_EMPLOYEE_COUNT(LINKEDIN_COMPANY_PROFILE_URL & "?" & MONTH($A$1) & YEAR($A$1))
• This formula will append the current month and year to the LinkedIn URL, causing the formula to rerun each month.

Here's an in-depth explanation of how the formulas work.

3. Help create a more solid ideal customer profile (ICP)

When you have a solid ICP, know exactly who to target, and keep selling to the same customer profile, you can tailor your marketing and customer service message to be more personalized.

Also, when you keep selling to the same type of customer, your customer service gets better because you’ll have enough experience to know what makes them tick and what they struggle with. That way, you can come up with way better solutions, see problems coming before they do, and just click with them on a whole other level.

Salesforce Research found that “76% of B2B buyers expect businesses to know their unique needs and expectations.” Who doesn’t want to feel seen and known, right?

However, most businesses build their ideal customer profile based on assumptions. It’s not effective at all. So, let’s build yours based on historical data.

1. Analyze your best customer

Let’s follow the Pareto Principle. The principle states that most outcomes come from small causes. For example,

• most of the country’s wealth is owned by a few people in the population
• a few shareholders own most of a corporation's stock

So, to relate to our topic, most of your company's revenue is generated by a few customers. And that few customers can be considered as your best customers.

2. Find something common

Take a closer look at your high-value customers. What do they have in common? It’ll give you a pretty good idea of what your ideal customer might look like.

They might have a similar company size, be in the same industry, have a specific employee, or maybe most of your buyers are CMOs.

For example, I have a list of our most recent Proxycurl paying customers. Here’s how I analyze and enrich them with Sapiengraph.

So, after analyzing, most of our buyers are founders, C-level executives, and senior-level employees. Most of them are also in the software development industry. Not surprised since Proxycurl is a developer-friendly product ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also analyzed Sapiengraph's recent buyers. Most of them are founders of a small technology and software development company with not more than 50 employees.

3 Important Things to Keep in Mind Before Using Any Customer Data Enrichment Tools

Data sources

IMPORTANT: Please, please make sure the data sources are legally scraped from publicly available data only, not private ones. 

You don’t want to be using a tool like Mantheos. They scraped private LinkedIn profile data, got sued by LinkedIn, and are now permanently closed.

On the other hand, Sapiengraph is powered by LinkDB, our database of over 487M+ public LinkedIn profiles.

Data freshness

The quality of your enriched customer data is only as good as the sources. Do remember that quality is better than quantity. A tool may have gazillion data but are they fresh? Are they constantly updated?

That said, here at Sapiengraph we offer a data freshness guarantee and fresh profile scraping. So have no fears.

Compliance

Also, please make sure the tool is at least CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant. Both are the standards of legal compliance in obtaining data. 

It’s even better if the tool is SOC2 (Service Organization Control Type 2) compliant too. But usually, being compliant with CCPA and GDPR is enough. 

And Sapiengraph complies with all three.

Conclusion

Your customer data is valuable. When you don’t enrich them, you might unknowingly leave thousands or millions of dollars on the table.

Not only that, but your competitors may be doing that now and catching up on you as you read this.

According to Accenture, 79% of enterprise executives said companies that don't get on board with big data are falling behind and could face extinction. That’s a huge claim! Also, 83% of them have pursued big data to seize a competitive edge.

So, start enriching your customer data with Sapiengraph now. Sign up for an account to get 100 free credits so you can explore the formulas firsthand.

Need support? Email us at [email protected].

Also, here’s an article about standing out from competitors who are building similar products. I wrote my heart out for this. Give it a read next. You never know if it might spark a new idea for growing your company.