Understanding Data Enrichment and How It Improves Marketing Results

Data plays a key role in helping businesses find new customers, turn them into buyers, and keep them coming back. With the right information, companies can make better marketing decisions based on real facts about their customers instead of guessing.

One powerful type of data is first-party data, often called 1p or 1pd, which comes from direct customer interactions. Many marketers—about 92%—believe that this kind of data is very important for business growth.

But in many cases, businesses don’t have enough first-party data to rely on it alone. Sometimes, the data is outdated, missing, or incorrect.

That’s when data enrichment becomes important and for this most turn tohttps://go.enformion.com/. Whether you’re just starting to use customer data or have been working with it for years, this guide will walk you through what data enrichment is and how to use it to strengthen your data strategy.

This guide includes:

• What is data enrichment?
• What are the benefits of data enrichment?
• Best practices for data enrichment
• Tools that help with data enrichment

What Is Data Enrichment?

Data enrichment, also called customer or marketing data enrichment, is the process of adding third-party data to your first-party data. This helps make your customer database more complete, accurate, and useful.

Third-party data comes from outside sources. It can give you more details about your customers and help you improve your marketing strategies.

This added data may include:

• Demographics like age and gender
• Contact details
• Education level
• Marital status
• Home ownership and property details
• Whether children live in the home
• Income and net worth 
• Lifestyle habits, like magazines they read, where they shop, or causes they support

By adding these extra layers of detail, you can turn your current data into stronger marketing insights.

Data Enrichment vs. Data Cleansing

Data enrichment adds more information to your system so you can better understand and connect with your customers. On the other hand, data cleansing is about removing outdated, incorrect, or repeated data.

Both are part of keeping your data clean and useful, but they serve different purposes.

Data cleansing usually comes after a review of your database. Once you find issues, you can:

• Remove duplicates
• Fix errors
• Remove data you no longer need

After cleaning your database, you may notice missing pieces. That’s when you can turn to data enrichment. For instance, if you discover you only have phone numbers for 30% of your customers, you might add more contact information to fill that gap.

Enriching a clean database is always more effective. If your data is full of mistakes, adding more data only creates more confusion. For example, if you’re planning a luxury product launch and enrich your database with income and wealth information without cleansing it first, you might target people who no longer interact with your business or are no longer reachable.

You should cleanse your data regularly—every six months is a good rule. Once that’s done, enrichment can fill in the missing details and boost your marketing success.

What Are the Benefits of Data Enrichment?

Data enrichment gives companies a better understanding of their current customers by improving the quality of their data. This added insight comes with several key benefits:

• Better targeting. When you add details like age, income, or location to your customer records, you can send messages that are more relevant to their needs.
• Stronger segmentation. You can group customers by similar traits. For example, a packaged goods company might sort customers by area and send them store-specific promotions.
• Lower costs. Accurate data helps you avoid wasting money on people who aren’t likely to respond. In fact, poor data quality costs companies around $12.9 million a year.
• Improved customer experience. Personalized messages make your outreach more helpful. When people feel understood, they’re more likely to respond positively.
• Stronger customer relationships. When customers see that your business understands them, they’re more likely to stay loyal.

Data enrichment helps you connect what your customers want with what your business offers. This makes both your customers and your company more satisfied and successful.

What Are Some Data Enrichment Best Practices?

Like other data-related processes, enrichment should happen regularly. Data can quickly become outdated—about 30% of it each year. To avoid falling behind, follow these tips:

• Know your goals. Start by understanding what you want from enrichment. For example, if you’re moving from print ads to online marketing, you’ll want to add email addresses, mobile IDs, or social media profiles.
• Keep your data clean. Regular audits can help you spot errors and gaps. Create a routine for checking your data and set rules for how new data is entered.
• Follow privacy rules. Only use data from trusted sources that follow all privacy laws. This protects your customers and your brand.
• Work with a data provider. A trusted data provider can supply accurate third-party data and help with extra services like reports, customer profiling, and identity matching.

Taking a thoughtful approach to enrichment helps you avoid big problems down the road. With support from experts, you can keep your data accurate and useful.

What Marketing Data Enrichment Tools Are Available?

If you’re ready to apply what you’ve learned, the right tools can make data enrichment faster and more efficient. Here are some options:

Customer Relationship Management Platform (CRM)
A CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot helps you store and use customer data for marketing. These systems usually hold:

• Contact details
• Communication history
• Buying behavior
• Customer preferences

Many CRMs also include tools for automation, analytics, and connection to other business tools.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Unlike CRMs, which rely on manual data entry, CDPs pull data from many sources to build complete customer profiles. Sources may include:

• Website activity
• Mobile app usage
• Emails
• Social media
• In-person interactions

Some CDPs, like GrowthLoop, connect directly to your company’s data storage to make data processing more efficient.

Native Enrichment Apps in Cloud Platforms

Cloud systems let you handle large volumes of customer data. Some even offer built-in apps that support data enrichment.

Snowflake
Snowflake is a cloud platform that helps companies manage data more efficiently. Through its marketplace, you can use apps that enrich your customer records with data like demographics, financial status, home ownership, and interests.

Databricks
Databricks is a platform that uses AI to manage data. It allows you to enrich data, analyze it in real time, and create models to improve your campaigns.

Data Enrichment Services

If you prefer more direct help, these companies offer services to improve your customer data:

Enrichment Provider 1
Offers data in three main areas:

• Contact details – Including names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails.
• Demographics and lifestyle – Add details like age, income, job, hobbies, or family status.
• Geocoding – Attach location data like ZIP Codes, coordinates, and carrier routes to help with local targeting.

This kind of service can help you run better marketing campaigns and personalize your messages.

AlumniFinder
This provider supports nonprofits and schools by improving donor and supporter records. You can update your data with:

• New addresses
• Name changes
• Birthdates
• Wealth and donation history
• Job and social media info
• Deceased records

With more complete data, organizations can increase donations, target the right people, and improve outreach.

Make the Most of Data Enrichment

Improving your customer database can help you create more personal, targeted marketing. This leads to stronger customer relationships and better results for your business.

If you’re ready to get started, now is the time to put data enrichment to work. With the right data tools and expert support, your company can create smarter campaigns and a better experience for your customers.

For more information, check out these related resources:

• First-Party Data: A Guide to Using Customer Insights – Learn how to make the most of the data you already have.
• Using Data to Improve Direct Mail Results – Find out how data can help your print campaigns perform better.

Boosting First-Party Match Rates – Discover how to reach more of your customers online by connecting offline and online data.