In today's data-driven landscape, having a complete and accurate CRM database is critical for success. From ZIP codes to job titles and phone numbers, businesses must capture and maintain a wealth of information about their customers and prospects for quality segmentation, reporting, lead scoring, and general operations.
However, obtaining this information can be time-consuming and costly, especially for companies with many customers, deals, and opportunities in their database.
To plug the gaps in customer and company profiles, many companies turn to data enrichment services, which fill in missing data or update outdated data for important fields. Data enrichment services can be expensive and rarely give companies control of the data they invest in on a field-by-field basis, forcing them to pay for data that may not be helpful to them. Luckily, it’s not always necessary to enlist the help of such a service.
Many businesses can forego the expense of outsourcing data enrichment by leveraging the data they already have in their CRM system. That data can be used to infer key information about contacts and companies. For example, it may be possible to infer a contact’s state, country, region, or city based on their ZIP code. Other CRM data fields can also help a company fill in data in another field. Data privacy regulations that prohibit the collection of IP addresses also complicate attempts to discern location information.
By leveraging the data already contained within their CRM systems, businesses can save money on data enrichment services while still making an effort to field a more accurate and complete database.
An accurate database is critical for many business tasks and strategies. Only when the database is complete and enriched can companies effectively segment their customers and target specific groups with tailored messaging and offers.
Complete data is a critical component of segmentation. It provides businesses with the necessary information to separate customers into very specific groups and target them with messaging and offers. By segmenting its customer base based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, behaviors, or interests, a business can improve the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns and increase customer engagement and loyalty.
However, this only works when the database is complete and enriched with accurate and up-to-date information. Incomplete or outdated data can lead to inaccurate segmentation, resulting in ineffective messaging and wasted resources. A customer that is missing a key field may not be included in a segmentation list when they should be, leading to them not being contacted or not receiving vital campaigns. That’s a missed opportunity. And those missed opportunities will exist for every record in your database that is missing key information that results in them being left off of those lists.
Complete CRM records are crucial for personalization. Complete records empower businesses to tailor their interactions, marketing, and sales strategies to an individual customer’s needs and preferences. And these boosts in personalization are useful throughout the customer lifecycle, delivering enhanced customer service, improved communication, and increased customer retention.
For example, having location information about prospects allows you to segment them based on geography. Then you can deliver personalized campaigns that mention things specific to their locality. But without this information, a prospect might receive marketing materials that are more generic and less effective. Apply that across a database and it’s easy to see how reduced personalization can impact your bottom line.
Enriching data also helps to improve lead scoring. For example, a company that operates locally may favor companies in specific cities or regions and assign higher lead scores to them based on their location. Records that are missing this information may be underscored and therefore under-prioritized. By enriching your records with the information most relevant to your marketing efforts, you can improve the accuracy of your lead scores and prioritize the right activities to maximize revenue.
Complete location information in a CRM can significantly aid in identifying and managing child-parent company associations and company hierarchies. Location data provides essential context and insights into the relationships between various entities within a corporate group, helping establish links between parent companies and their subsidiaries based on shared addresses or common locations.
For example, if you had two companies in your database named “Nike,” you could use geographic information to determine which company is the US headquarters and which is the UK headquarters.
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Let’s look at some common ways companies can use the existing data in their CRMs to infer other data and enrich their records to improve segmentation.
ZIP codes and postal codes are a crucial part of the mailing system worldwide. But in the United States, a ZIP code is a five- or nine-digit number assigned to a specific geographic region, while in other parts of the world, a postal code may be a combination of letters and numbers or just numbers.
It is possible to derive the city, state, and country from a ZIP code, postal code, or full address.
Conversely, it may be possible to infer the ZIP code or postal code from the city and state. However, this process may not always be accurate. Some regions have multiple cities with the same name, and larger cities can encompass more than one ZIP code.
For businesses, accurate ZIP code and postal code information is essential for effective marketing campaigns. This information enables teams to target specific regions and demographics, tailor their messaging to the local audience, and optimize their advertising spend. Reliable address information is also critical for logistics and supply chain management; without it, companies cannot track shipments effectively, nor ensure timely delivery to customers.
The website domain is another bit of information that can be used to enrich records. Domain names can contain key indicators that provide more information about a business.
Certain domain extensions can signal a specific industry or type of organization. For instance, the .io extension is often used by technology companies, while the .org extension is frequently used by non-profit organizations.
Additionally, with custom domain extensions like .technology or .investments, it may be possible to infer other types of industries as well. For instance, a company with a .technology extension may be involved in the development or marketing of new technology products, while a company with a .investments domain extension may be involved in the finance industry.
You can use company subdomains to infer information such as a department. In universities, for example, it is common for different departments to use subdomains in their URLs, such as “engineering.university.com.” You could use this information to infer the department from those web addresses.
It's important to note that, while these domain extensions and subdomains can provide some insight into a company's industry, they may not always be a reliable indicator. Some companies may use domain extensions that don't necessarily align with their industry, or they may use a more generic extension like .com or .net.
Another factor to consider when trying to derive a company's industry from its domain is the actual domain name itself. While the extension can provide some clues, the words used in the domain name can also provide valuable insights. For example, a company with a domain name like "designsolutions.com" may be involved in the design industry, while a company with a domain name like "greenearth.org" may be involved in the environmental industry.
Phone numbers can provide valuable information about the location and identity of the caller. Analyzing the digits in a phone number makes it possible to infer the country code, country, state, and area code.
The first few digits in any phone number format are the country code, which is a unique set of digits assigned to each country. If you have a contact’s full phone number, you have their country code and know which country they call from. For example, a phone number starting with "+1" is from the United States, while a phone number starting with "+44" is from the United Kingdom.
The next set of digits in a phone number comprise the area code, which is a unique code assigned to each geographical area within a country. Examining the area code makes it possible to infer the state or region from which the call originates. For example, a phone number with the area code "212" is from New York City, while a phone number with the area code "310" is from the Los Angeles area.
It's important to note that, while the area code can provide some information about the caller's location, it may not always be accurate. Some phone numbers may be registered in a different state or region than where the caller is located, and some area codes may cover multiple regions or even states.
Email addresses contain valuable information about the sender, including their name, company, and industry. By analyzing the email address's domain, it is possible to infer the company name and, in some cases, extract the sender's name.
The domain name in an email address typically follows the "@" symbol and provides information about the sender's company or organization. Examining the domain name makes it possible to infer the sender's employer or industry. For example, an email address with the domain "@google.com" indicates that the sender works for Google, while an email address with the domain "@engineering.washington.edu" indicates that the sender works for the engineering department of the University of Washington.
Or, just as you did with the website domain, you could potentially extract the industry from the email domain as well.
In addition to inferring the sender's employer or industry, extracting the sender's name from the email address may also be possible. Many email addresses follow a standard format of "firstname.lastname@domain.com" or "lastname.firstname@domain.com." By analyzing the email address and looking for these patterns, extracting the sender's name may be possible.
This can be helpful for personalization. However, it's important to note that not all email addresses follow this format, and some individuals may use pseudonyms or aliases in their email addresses. Additionally, some companies may use generic email addresses that don't necessarily provide insight into the sender's name.
Job titles provide valuable information about an individual's role within an organization, including their department, seniority, function, and whether or not they are a decision-maker for an organization. By analyzing the job title, it is possible to derive insights into the contact's position and responsibilities within the organization.
You can often determine an individual’s department from their job title. For example, a job title like "marketing manager" indicates that the individual works in the marketing department, while ”finance director" indicates the finance department.
The job title also provides clues to a contact’s seniority level. For example, a chief executive officer will hold a high-level executive position, while a junior account manager holds a more entry-level position. Seniority levels of contacts can impact lead scores and help salespeople to discern who to spend their time with.
Job titles also provide information about a contact’s function within an organization. A human resources manager is involved in HR functions, while an IT director will be involved in technology-related functions.
The job title may also indicate whether or not a person is a decision-maker who has influence on potential deals, which is a custom attribute that many companies track. By analyzing the job title and looking for keywords and phrases related to different functions, it may be possible to infer the individual's specific role and responsibilities within their organization.
Using Insycle, you can build templates for enriching records in many of the ways outlined in this article.
Using the ZIP code field:
Insycle has some built-in functions that can help you to populate fields based on the ZIP code.
Populating the State/Region field based on the Postal Code field in Insycle
The “Map US ZIP Postal Code to US State” function lets you automatically populate the state abbreviation into the state field.
Using this, you could easily populate the "State/Region" field, in bulk, for any subset of data in your CRM database.
Using the postal code field:
You can also build custom templates to populate a city, county, or country based on the contents of your postal code field. Here’s an example:
Populating the City field based on the Postal Code field using Insycle
While this requires that you build templates to account for all cities that you would like to populate based on the Postal Code, which would be a lot of work, it is a viable option for critical territories.
Using the email domain and email fields:
In Insycle, you can also build templates that derive the industry from a contact’s email domain.
Populating the industry of a record based on the email domain in Insycle
Additionally, Insycle features a pre-built template that allows you to extract the first and last name from an email address that is formatted like firstname.lastname@company.com.
Insycle template for inferring the first and last name of contacts from email addresses
Or, in another advanced example, you could determine the country of a contact or company based on their email domain.
Using the phone number field:
You can create a template to assign a country to contacts and companies based on their phone numbers.
Populating the Country/Region field using the phone number country code in Insycle
You can also build templates that will assign a state to a record based on the area code.
Populating the State/Region field based on phone number area codes in Insycle
Using the job title field:
In Insycle, you can create a template to derive an industry from a contact’s job title.
Populate the industry based on job titles in Insycle
These are just a few of the many ways in which you can use Insycle to populate one field based on the data contained in another field. With some creativity, Insycle can be a key tool in enriching your records, facilitating a full and complete database that helps you to improve segmentation, personalization, lead scoring, and other tasks such as child-parent association management.
A complete and enriched database is critical for effective segmentation. It allows businesses to target specific groups of customers with tailored messaging and offers. By leveraging the data contained within their own CRM system and using that to infer other data, businesses can achieve accurate and complete segmentation without incurring unnecessary costs.
But maintaining data quality can be a significant challenge for organizations without the right tools and processes. By leveraging a comprehensive customer data management platform like Insycle, businesses can automate critical data tasks, address data quality issues in bulk, and establish documented processes for their organizations.
Learn more about how companies use Insycle to achieve an accurate, clean, and enriched CRM database that benefits their businesses.