Waterfall Enrichment Guide: The Secret To Sales Success in 2024

You must have heard the phrase “going downhill fast.” It’s a familiar feeling for many sales teams.

Imagine this

You worked hard to build an ideal list of prospects and tailored personalized messages for each and every one of them.

But things don’t go the way you expect as you start your campaigns.

Your emails are bouncing, your calls are not connecting, and your messaging is falling flat because it is irrelevant to the prospects’ current scenario.

What could be the cause of all this?

The culprit – incomplete or inaccurate data.

But don’t worry!! We have a powerful strategy to solve this problem – Waterfall Enrichment.

Our guide will teach you how to get the most accurate data with waterfall enrichment and patch your leaky sales funnel.

So read without skipping!

Waterfall Enrichment: Table of Content

• How Incomplete and Inaccurate Data Hurts Your Sales Funnel
• What is Waterfall Enrichment? (The Ultimate Solution)
• How Waterfall Enrichment Works
• The Benefits of Waterfall Enrichment for Lead Generation
• Top Waterfall Enrichment Tools You Should Know
• Generate More Revenue for Your Business With Waterfall Enrichment
• FAQs

How Incomplete and Inaccurate Data Hurts Your Sales Funnel

Have you ever wondered why your sales funnel is not quite always full?

A common reason is that you do not have updated contact details for your prospects.

If your information is outdated or inaccurate, you risk missing opportunities to connect with potential customers.

This is especially true if you are using B2B sales strategies like cold emailing or cold calling.

So, how do you end up with outdated or inaccurate contact details in the first place?

Often, it’s because, like most businesses, you rely on one or two database tools to source your prospects.

This can limit the accuracy and completeness of the prospect information you get.

Even the best B2B Data Providers cannot guarantee more than 60 to 80% data accuracy.

Here’s how this outdated data can affect your bottom line –

1. Without accurate information about your prospects, you will not be able to personalize your messages as much. This can make your cold emails or calls sound impersonal and generic, making it harder to engage with prospects.
2. If your prospect list has wrong contact information, then all efforts you took to do research and create those messages are wasted, as your emails and calls won’t reach them.
3. You and your team could have spent all this wasted time on converting potential leads into paying customers.

The solution for all of this is the waterfall enrichment technique.

You’ll see about this in the next section.

What is Waterfall Enrichment? (The Ultimate Solution)

Here’s what you have been eagerly waiting for (and what we have been hyping up!)

Waterfall enrichment is a process where you take basic prospect data and run it through multiple data sources to make sure it’s accurate and complete.

Each step improves the data, so by the end, you have the most reliable information. 

Here’s an example to help you understand better.

If you have a prospect’s name and company, you might first verify their email through one source.

If it’s not valid, you check another source, and so on, until you find the correct contact details.

This ensures your outreach is consistently hitting the right target.

Let’s see how it works in more detail in the section.

How Waterfall Enrichment Works?

Waterfall enrichment is not a new concept that has emerged recently. In fact, it has been around for quite some time.

It was considered impractical by most businesses as it used to be a tedious and expensive process.

But, with the advancements in automation and integration capabilities, waterfall enrichment has become more accessible.

This is how it works.

1. First, you create your ideal list of prospects along with their basic details – First and last name, company name, and company domain.
2. Next, your first data vendor would use this basic information to find relevant information about your prospects, such as phone numbers, updated email addresses, achievements, etc.
3. The contact information will then be passed to a verifier to check its validity. If it is valid, the process stops here, and you will have accurate, up-to-date information for your outreach.
4. But, if the email address or phone number turns out to be invalid, then the prospect details will be sent to the second data vendor to find the correct information.

This process is repeated till you get a valid email address and phone number.

A Waterfall Enrichment tool can do the whole process you just saw without manual intervention.

You’ll get to know more about such tools later in this blog.

Next, let’s see some benefits in detail.

The Benefits of Waterfall Enrichment for Lead Generation

Like most businesses, even you will be interested in what you’ll get in return for introducing waterfall enrichment into your lead generation process.

Here are some of the benefits you get:

1. Up-to-date, verified contact information of your prospects.
2. This information will help you connect with all the prospects on your list. There will be no more email bounces or unconnected calls.
3. As you connect with more prospects, you can generate more leads than before implementing waterfall enrichment.
4. This will lead to more opportunities being generated and, ultimately, more deals closed.

Waterfall enrichment in your lead generation strategy = no more leaky sales pipeline = more sales = more revenue for your business.

That’s a clear win if you ask us!

Now, let’s look at some of the best waterfall enrichment tools on the market today.

Top Waterfall Enrichment Tools You Should Know

If you are planning to take your lead generation efforts to the next level, then these waterfall enrichment tools can help you.

1. Clay
2. Persana.ai
3. BetterContact

Let’s look at how each one can help you close more sales in 2024.

1. Clay

First on our list is Clay.

It’s a game changer as it helps you find much more than just the basic contact information of your prospects.

In fact, Clay is more than a waterfall enrichment tool.

It is a complete data enrichment tool that integrates with 75+ data providers, giving you access to vast information about your prospects.

Moreover, it also integrates with various other tools like CRMs, cold email software, and more.

Key Features of Clay

• AI Research Agent: Claygent, which is the AI agent, can help you with research about any company on the web. You can use this feature to find detailed information about your prospects’ customers, office locations, etc.
• Waterfall Enrichment: This feature pulls data from over 75 sources to make sure you have the most accurate and up-to-date prospect information, boosting your lead generation efforts.
• Chrome Extension: You can use the Clay extension to prospect directly from sites like Crunchbase, Yelp, and even search engines like Google (basically anywhere on the internet).
• Cold Email Outreach: After you have finished enriching your prospect list, you can start immediately sending cold emails with the native integrations available in Clay. 

Pros & Cons of Clay

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Free Plan: 100 credits/month
• Starter:  $134/month (24k credits)
• Explorer:  $314/month (120k credits)
• Pro:  $720/month (600k credits)
• Enterprise:  Customized

2. Persana.ai

Persana.ai is another prospecting and data enrichment tool that uses the waterfall enrichment model to help you find contact information.

It integrates with over 50 databases in the market to bring you the most accurate email and phone contact information.

Moreover, you can use Persana to create personalized cold email sequences for each prospect based on the information you have found.

Key Features of Persana.ai

• Waterfall Enrichment: This feature will help you easily enrich your prospect list with accurate and comprehensive data from multiple sources.
• Autopilot: You can use this AI feature in Persana.ai to create automated workflows for finding, engaging, and nurturing your prospects.
• Persana Playbooks: Persana.ai has various pre-built playbooks (workflows) that you can use to do your tasks quickly without going through the lengthy learning process.
• AI Signals: This feature in Persana.ai allows you to stay updated on job changes and hiring trends in your target market.

Pros & Cons of Persana.ai

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Free: $0/month (200 credits)
• Starter: $68/month (24k credits/year)
• Growth: $151/month (60k credits/year)
• Pro: $400/month (216k credits/year)
• Enterprise: Customized 

3. BetterContact

If you’re looking purely for a waterfall enrichment tool to help you find just the contact information of your prospects, then BetterContact is the right tool for you.

It connects with 20+ data sources to find and verify any mobile phone number and email address.

In BetterContact, you will have to provide the initial prospect list for it to find your prospects’ work email and phone numbers.

The required details are the prospect’s first, last, and company names.

Moreover, you can provide the company’s domain and the prospect’s LinkedIn Profile URL to increase the completion rate.

Key Features of BetterContact

• Waterfall Enrichment: BetterContact integrates with various data sources (20+) to provide up-to-date contact information of your prospects, making your outreach more reliable.
• API and Integrations: You get native integration with tools like HubSpot, Make, Surfe, and Google Sheets. You can integrate with RB2B through Webhook and even use API to streamline your work.
• BetterContact Google Marketplace Extension: You can use this extension to enrich your prospect list directly in Google Sheets.

Pros & Cons of Persana.ai

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Starter: $15/month (200 credits/month)
• Pro: $49/month (starts at 1000 credits/month)
• Enterprise: $799/month (Custom credits/month)

How Do Data Enrichment and Waterfall Enrichment Differ?

Of the three tools we talked about, two of them, Clay and Persana.ai, offer both data enrichment and waterfall enrichment.

On the other hand, BetterContact is primarily a waterfall enrichment tool that helps you get updated and accurate contact information.

So, what’s the difference?

Data Enrichment, like the kind you find with Clay and Persana.ai, helps you enhance your existing data by adding more detailed information.

Think of it as filling in the blanks with useful details about your prospects, like updated job titles, company information, and even social profiles.

This gives you a fuller picture of who you’re reaching out to, helping you personalize your outreach and connect more effectively.

As you can clearly see, there is no sequential verification process in standard data enrichment.

It simply adds more information based on available data sources without cross-checking across multiple points.

So, there is no guarantee that every piece of data is accurate.

This is where Waterfall Enrichment steps in!!

Unlike standard data enrichment, waterfall enrichment involves a sequential process where your data is checked against multiple sources, one after another.

If the first source doesn’t have the most up-to-date information, the process continues to the next source, and so on, until all data is thoroughly verified.

This method minimizes errors and makes sure the contact details you have are reliable and current.

In short, data enrichment gives you more information to work with, and waterfall enrichment makes sure that the information is as accurate as possible.

Generate More Revenue for Your Business With Waterfall Enrichment

You should now clearly understand waterfall enrichment and how it can strengthen your sales funnel.

With waterfall enrichment as part of your B2B sales strategy, you can always reach out to all the prospects on your list.

This will significantly improve your sales outreach efforts and make you more efficient.

To get started, you can try out the waterfall enrichment tools we mentioned in our blog to see the results it brings.

We are sure you will see much better results than you anticipated!

Waterfall Enrichment FAQs

1. What types of businesses benefit the most from waterfall enrichment?

If your business involves B2B sales, cold emailing, or any form of targeted marketing, using waterfall enrichment can significantly improve your results.

2. Is Waterfall Enrichment suitable for small businesses, or is it only for large enterprises?

Waterfall enrichment is much more affordable than before. For example, BetterContact provides you with 1,000 monthly credits for $49. Moreover, you are charged only when valid contact information is found. So, this makes waterfall enrichment an excellent choice for businesses of any size.

3. What types of data points can be enriched using Waterfall Enrichment?

The most common data points are work email and phone numbers, but you can also enrich other details like job titles, company size, industry, social media profiles, and recent achievements.

4. What should I look for when choosing a waterfall enrichment tool?

You should look for a tool that offers multiple data sources, easy integration with your existing CRM, and real-time data verification. Make sure it fits your budget and meets your specific needs for accuracy and data completeness.

5. How long does the waterfall enrichment process typically take?

The waterfall enrichment process typically takes a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the amount of data and the tool you’re using. Most tools are designed to quickly process and verify data, so you can have updated information without much delay.

6. How do I measure the success of my Waterfall Enrichment efforts?

A decrease in bounce rates and an increase in successful call connections indicate that your enrichment strategy is working.

7. Can I integrate waterfall enrichment tools with my existing CRM?

Yes, you can integrate waterfall enrichment tools with your existing CRM. Most tools offer seamless integration options, allowing you to automatically update and verify your prospect data directly within your CRM.