Data enrichment

A prospect record often starts small: a name and a company, or a LinkedIn profile URL. Enrichment adds what you need to act: contact details (email, phone), company information (industry, headcount, revenue, tools in use) and context (a recent role change, hiring, a funding round).

The term covers two practices. One-off enrichment, when you complete a list before a campaign. And continuous enrichment, when records update over time, because people change jobs and companies grow.

Enriched data only has value if it serves a decision: who to write to, on which channel, with which angle. Piling up fields that no message ever uses costs money and brings nothing.

Enrichment tools combine several sources: public information (company websites, registries, public profiles), databases built by specialized vendors, and inferences, such as the likely format of an email address based on the company's domain.

That last category calls for caution. A guessed address is not a verified address. Good tools test the address before delivering it and show a confidence level. Writing to invalid addresses raises your bounce rate and damages your domain's reputation.

Official company registries give reliable information about businesses, such as activity, declared headcount and address, but nothing about the people who work there.

First, targeting. Knowing that a company has 40 employees, is hiring three salespeople and just raised money lets you put it at the top of your list, or drop it if it falls outside your target.

Next, personalization. A message that mentions a precise, verifiable fact about the person or their company stands out from generic outreach. The fact still has to be right: quoting two-year-old news or attributing a post to the wrong person does more harm than good.

Finally, channel choice. A verified email or a known number lets you continue the conversation elsewhere when LinkedIn is not enough.

Three indicators are enough. Coverage: out of a hundred records, how many get the information you are looking for? Accuracy: on a hand-checked sample, how many are right? Freshness: how old is the information?

Accuracy matters most and is the least published. Check a sample of twenty records yourself before paying for a large volume. A provider that covers 90% of records with frequently wrong data costs you more than one that covers fewer records correctly.

For emails, watch the bounce rate of your first sends: a high rate points to guessed rather than verified addresses.

Enriching records about people means processing personal data. In the EU, the GDPR applies. In France, the data protection authority (CNIL) accepts B2B prospecting on the basis of legitimate interest when the message relates to the person's professional activity, provided they were informed that their details could be used and can object simply and at no cost.

In practice: make sure your provider can explain where its data comes from, only enrich what your prospecting uses, honor any objection immediately and keep a list of people who no longer want to be contacted. This is not legal advice: for a specific case, consult a legal professional.

On LinkedIn, the profile itself is the first source: role, company, background, recent posts. It is often fresher than any database, because the person updates it themselves.

MimikFlow reads each prospect's profile before checking it against your target and writing to them. It also spots dated signals, such as a new role, hiring or a funding round, and never cites a fact it cannot verify. When a prospect accepts your invitation, their email address is retrieved when it is available, and the first message starts from what their profile actually says.