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What is customer data enrichment and why does your business need it?

Ashly Arndt

You can’t discuss a data quality strategy without including enrichment in the discussion. That’s why over 1 in 4 businesses plan to invest in data enrichment projects within the next 12 months. But what exactly is data enrichment and how does it give companies a competitive edge when curating their data business plans? Below, we’ll provide a high-level overview of data enrichment, outline how it works, and highlight the key benefits enjoyed by businesses who leverage this form of data. 

What is data enrichment?

Before we dive into the benefits of data enrichment and the reasons why your business should prioritize enrichment in your data management strategy, let’s start by outlining what data enrichment is and what it allows your business to do. 
 
By definition, data enrichment refers to the process of integrating new updates and information into an organization’s existing database. This process of adding or merging additional data to the current dataset that you’re already working with helps you understand more about your customers and prospects. 
 
What information can you expect after enriching your data? Enrichment provides additional data attributes that can be incredibly useful for businesses seeking greater insights into their consumers, including data that covers areas such as: 

  • Age

  • Socio-economic status

  • Consumer tendencies

And much more. Whether you need data attributes that help you understand a user’s finances, buyer propensity, or some other form of information, you can entrust this process to provide you with the greater insights necessary to execute business decisions with confidence.

Benefits of data enrichment

If you’re wondering why your business needs data enrichment, look no further. Below, we’ve compiled a list of the top 3 benefits of data enrichment that your business needs to enhance its data management strategy.

1. Optimize targeting by building out new prospect models quickly & efficiently 
 
Did you know that enrichment can help your business enhance and speed up its lead routing process? When your database is enriched, it possesses additional appended information on consumers that is incredibly useful for building out new prospect models.  
 
Let’s apply this benefit with a potential use-case scenario. Imagine an educational-based corporation, such as a tutoring business, that wants to maximize the number of individuals participating in its online courses. Enrichment can offer a set of predictive analytics, via lead scoring, that can better predict the future actions of individuals based on historical and transitional data. Essentially, this means that representatives at a business are better equipped with the insight necessary to target users within its userbase more effectively by creating prospect and marketing models with data-backed strategies. 
 
2. Foster your relationship with customers 
 
The more you know about your clients, the more likely you are to reach them with messaging and offers that are relevant to their unique needs and desires. With data enrichment services, you’ll find it easier to successfully connect with your clients after building a more customized user experience given the information enriched data provides. 
 
Imagine a clothing retailer wants to create a targeted email marketing campaign to maximize its sales in the upcoming quarter. Data enrichment allows the retailer to evaluate and understand its users individual characteristics to curate the most targeted strategy to meet these customers’ needs and preferences. When individuals receive marketing material that seems to speak to them directly, it can curate a more personalized interaction and marketing experience that in turn leads to greater brand loyalty. 
 
3. Enjoy time-saving data management with great ROI 
 
It’s more cost-effective and time-efficient to ensure accurate data at collection than it is to correct data entry errors at a future date—making enrichment services a great option for businesses centered in various different industries, such as finance, retail, healthcare, and much more. 
 
Enrichment can save your business from collecting and storing incorrect or unnecessary data that serve little to no value to your daily operations, too. Since enrichment focuses on enhancing the data you already have with added key identifiers necessary for fuller customer profiles, you won’t waste time or money evaluating data that is unnecessary for future business campaigns and marketing.  

How does data enrichment work?

Data enrichment generally works by taking the information already existent in your CRM and merging it with additional information on your customers that will be helpful for targeting prospective clients, strengthening your customer profiles, and enhancing the relationship your business has with its users. 
 
At Experian, the first part of the process is validating the contact data you already contain in your CRM. This includes information such as:

  • Names

  • Phone numbers

  • Addresses

  • Emails

After we cleanse this data and ensure its accuracy, we can then begin to enrich it with a personalized analysis process. We aggregate data from thousands of sources into proprietary databases to fill in any gaps existing in your customer profiles. Once your data is enriched, you’ll often find that previously incomplete datasets will now provide a more comprehensive customer viewa bonus that many businesses leverage to remain ahead of their competitors.

Data enrichment services powered by Experian

We offer enrichment in both bulk options for marketing and segmentation as well as via real-time solutions. This means that whether you to enrich your data at the point of collection or enrich prior data existent in your database, we have you covered. 
 
Ready to get started? Reach out to a data quality expert to get a personalized pricing quote, access to our free trial, and more!

 

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