Data EnrichmentUpdated 14/02/2018

Learn how to append data to User and Account profiles from third party sources via connectors, APIs, scraping, and more.

Data enrichment is the process of appending data to a profile. This helps "fill in the blanks" and better understand leads & customers without requiring extensive data collection by users (like long forms).

Data enrichment providers gather data and package it up in profiles to access via APIs and integrations on a paid subscription.

Note: Hull is not a data enrichment provider itself.

Data enrichment is a pre-requisite for effective lead qualification, sales enablement, and account-based marketing.

Data enrichment techniques

In Hull, data enrichment involves sending an identifier (like email) to an API, and writing the response to a profile.

Hull can trigger enrichment via multiple sources.

Data enrichment by Hull connectors

Hull integrates with data enrichment tools including:

• Clearbit
• Datanyze
• MadKudu

Data enrichment by API calls

Hull can call any external API via Processor and write their response into User and Account profiles.

Here's an example calling the CrystalKnows API.

// Check if User is in the segment "Demo requested"
// Check if User has an email
// Check if User has not been enriched before
if (isInSegment("Demo requested") && !user.email && !user.crystalknows) {
const req = { 
  first_name: user.first_name,
  last_name: user.last_name,
  email: user.email,
  company_name: user.company_name,
};

// Call the CrystalKnows API
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
  request({
      method: 'POST',
      uri: 'https://connect.crystalknows.com/v1/profiles/async',
      json: true,
      body: req,
      timeout: 15000,
      headers: { 'X-Org-Token': 'XXXXXXX',
                 'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=utf-8'}
    },
    function (error, response, body) {
      if (error) { 
        return reject(error);
      }
      var ckData = {};
      ckData.request_id = body.request_id;
      ckData.retries = 0;

            // Write any returned data under the attribute group "crystalknows"
      hull.traits(ckData, {source: "crystalknows"});

      resolve();
    }  
  )}
)
}

Data enrichment via CSV import

If you have data from another source that you can compile into a CSV, you can import User data into Hull and map to new or existing attributes via the Google Sheets Importer.

Data enrichment via Google Sheets Add-Ons

You can use Google Sheets in a similar method to Processor to call external services through Add-Ons.

Data enrichment via Google Sheets functions

You can use Google Sheets functions to fetch data.

Google Sheets runs each function each time the function is created or updated, or on each Spreadsheet load. Since the results themselves update on each load, it can be more stable to copy the results and Paste Special into the sheet you want to import into Hull via the Google Sheets Importer.

Data enrichment examples

There are many forms data

Person profile enrichment

Appending data about a person to a person's profile based on a valid email.

Examples of common data include:

• Social profiles & bios
• Location
• Employer
• Job titles, roles & seniority

Company profile enrichment

Appending data about a company to a company's profile based on a valid domain.

Examples of common data include:

• Company size (employees, revenue, funding)
• Location
• Industry
• Technologies

Reverse IP lookup

Reverse IP lookup services return the company behind an IP address. These are mostly used for identifying companies since they are likely to share a common IP (more reliable to identify).

By enriching website visitors (by using reverse IP lookup), you can understand which companies are visiting your website. You can also see

Hull's Clearbit integration enables Reverse IP lookup via their Reveal API.

Prospecting

Appending new profiles based on a valid domain or search query.

There are two common types of prospecting:

1. Prospecting for people from a company (associated to the domain)
2. Prospecting for similar "lookalike" companies (to a domain)

Hull's Clearbit integration enables prospecting of people via the Prospector API and of lookalike companies via the Discovery API.