---
name: sales-enrich
description: "Enrich contacts and companies with verified emails, phones, and firmographics: single-record, batch, auto, and waterfall enrichment with credit budgeting and compliance checks. Use when records lack emails or phones, a list needs enriching before a campaign, credits burn too fast, or one provider's coverage is thin. Not for CRM dedup and ongoing hygiene: use sales-data-hygiene. Not for building lists from scratch: use prospecting. Not for send-side reputation: use sales-deliverability."
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: TechTide AI (Alex Cinovoj)
  provenance: rewritten from patterns in sales-skills/sales (MIT)
  category: Sales & RevOps
---

# Contact and Company Enrichment

Credits are money. Dedup first, enrich only records you will actually contact, verify before you send, and never assume a provider's "verified" email will not bounce.

## Workflow

1. **Scope the job.** What is needed: emails, phones, firmographics, or all. How many records: under 100 is manual, 100-10k is batch, ongoing flow means auto-enrichment rules. Which providers are available, and is there a credit budget? Which regions are the contacts in (drives compliance)?

2. **Pick the strategy.**

| Strategy | When | Watch |
|---|---|---|
| Single-record | High-value ABM targets, execs | Fine to use premium providers here |
| Batch | List prep before a campaign | Estimate credits first: records x cost per field |
| Auto-enrichment | Steady lead flow, keep CRM fresh | Requires a monthly credit cap and ICP filter |
| Waterfall | One provider's coverage is thin, niche or international personas | Order providers cheapest-first, premium last |

3. **Run the pre-enrichment gate, in order.**
   - Dedup first (route real cleanup to sales-data-hygiene). Never pay to enrich the same person twice.
   - Filter to ICP-qualified records you will actually contact.
   - Skip records that already have verified data.
   - Scope fields: email-only is cheap; phone reveals typically cost 5-10x more. Reveal phones only for contacts someone will call.
   - Estimate total credit cost and confirm it fits budget.

4. **Check compliance before bulk operations.** EU contacts: documented lawful basis, provider with a compliant sourcing policy (check the DPA), erasure requests honorable, opt-out in every touch. US: physical address and working unsubscribe in every email, opt-outs honored promptly. California: disclosure and do-not-sell handling where applicable. Global rules: an unsubscribed contact is suppressed forever, never re-enriched back into a list; log which provider supplied each record and when.

5. **Score and verify the output.** Verified deliverable email: ready. Found-but-unverified email: run through a verification service before any campaign. Not found: try the next waterfall tier or manual lookup. Direct/mobile phone: ready for calling. HQ switchboard number: not useful, keep hunting.

6. **Report.** Fill rate by field, cost per verified contact, records promoted to ready-for-outreach, and the next batch trigger.

## Good vs Bad

**Bad:** "Bulk-enrich all 50,000 CRM contacts with email plus phone so everything is complete." Burns a quarter's credits on duplicates, dead records, and people nobody will ever call.

**Good:** "Dedup the 50k, filter to the 6,200 ICP-qualified contacts with activity in 12 months, enrich email-only in batches starting with the active pipeline segment, phone reveals only for the 400 accounts in the call plan, verify all emails before the sequence." Sequenced, scoped, budgeted.

## Verification

Before any send, run every enriched email through an independent verification service. Expect a projected bounce rate under 3% on the accepted set. Higher: cut the unverified and catch-all addresses; provider-reported "verified" status alone still bounces at 5-10%.

Spot-check 20 enriched records against LinkedIn or the company site. Expect 90%+ of titles and companies current. Below that, the provider's data is stale for this segment: switch the waterfall order before enriching the rest.

Recheck credit spend after the first batch. Expect actual cost per filled field within your estimate. Overrun means scope creep (phones or firmographics enabled where email-only was planned): fix the scope before batch two.

## Footguns

- **Enriching before deduplicating.** Double-pays for duplicates. Fix: dedup, then enrich the survivors.
- **Trusting provider "verified" flags.** They still bounce enough to hurt reputation. Fix: independent verification before every campaign; feed bounces back to re-enrich or remove.
- **Whole-database enrichment.** Credits gone, mostly on records never contacted. Fix: ICP filter plus activity filter, highest-priority segment first.
- **Phone reveals for the whole list.** 5-10x credit cost for numbers nobody dials. Fix: reveal only for the call plan.
- **Auto-enrichment without a cap.** A broad rule drains a month of credits in days. Fix: monthly cap, ICP-only trigger, weekly usage alert at 80%.
- **Re-enriching opted-out contacts.** Compliance breach that also poisons suppression. Fix: suppression check is part of the pre-enrichment gate.

## Completion checklist

- [ ] Dedup and ICP/activity filter applied before enrichment
- [ ] Field scope and credit estimate confirmed against budget
- [ ] Compliance checked for every target region; suppressed contacts excluded
- [ ] All emails independently verified; bounce projection under 3%
- [ ] Spot-check sample passed for freshness
- [ ] Fill rates and cost per verified contact reported

Any box unchecked: not done. Fix or say so.