👻 RevOps & GTM Strategy Lead @ Vector. Alum: SFMC Champion, Marketo Fearless50, LeanData OpsStar of the Year 🏆 Sharing everything I learn here + newsletter. ex-Cloudera, Slack
A lot of people screw up data enrichment. And not in small ways...in big ways. I've walked into instances where: 😱 Recent sales-entered data was being overwritten by stale enrichment data 😱 Instead of setting up an integration, a massive file was imported all at once, into standard fields, without a data back-up....leaving no audit trail and losing historical data 😱 Enrichment was set up to trigger every time a record was created or updated in Salesforce, creating a situation where only 1,000 records or less could be updated at one time without hitting the Salesforce API limits 😱 Enrichment data wasn't standardized, so each vendor was entering in different formats for fields like employee size So, how do you set it up correctly? Here's what it should look like... Typical steps included: 1. Input Stage: Define the entry points for raw data (e.g., web forms, imports, email captures). 2. Cleaning Stage: Build workflows to: 🔺 Standardize formats (e.g., phone numbers, dates, addresses). 🔺 Correct invalid or missing data (e.g., normalize country names to ISO codes). 🔺 Remove duplicates based on unique identifiers (e.g., email or account ID). 3. Enrichment Stage: 🔺 Match records with external datasets to fill gaps. 🔺 Append metadata (e.g., confidence scores, enrichment source). 4. Output Stage: Push cleaned and enriched data back into your CRM or database. Example washing machine flow: 1. Input: New leads enter from web forms or imports. 2. Cleaning: 🔺 Deduplicate by email or company domain. 🔺 Standardize phone numbers to E.164 format. 🔺 Normalize country names to ISO codes. 3. Enrichment: 🔺 Call Clearbit API to append industry, company size, and LinkedIn URL. 🔺 Validate emails with an email verification tool. 4. Output: Push cleaned and enriched data back to CRM, tagging it with the enrichment source and date. Things to consider: 🔻 Typically, you want to enter enrichment data into separate custom fields. This is duplicative, but if you don't have really strong audit trails and strong enrichment rules, you shouldn't write into a default field because you could cause confusion and frustration with sales, if you overwrite their recently entered data. 🔻 You need to understand all of the fields you're enriching very intimately...what is their purpose, at which stage do they need to be enriched? Don't be lazy and enrich every field at every record edit, it'll harm your systems and speed-to-lead. 🔻 Make sure any enrichment automation takes race conditions into consideration -- what other automations could be triggered, and how would that impact the API limits/system performance? 🔻 How will you monitor results? Set up reports and audit trails, whether through Snowflake or field history in Salesforce. 🔻 Don't forget about consent management fields! Running out of room....what else? Did you find this helpful? #marketing #sales #marketingoperations #revenueoperations