What is data enrichment?

Enrichment starts with a record that identifies someone or something, and fills in what is missing. A list of company domains becomes a list with headcount, industry and location. A list of names and companies becomes a list with job titles and work emails.

Everything depends on the match. A domain is a strong identifier and usually matches cleanly. A person's name plus a company is weaker, because names repeat and companies have several legal entities, so a match can be confident, uncertain or wrong, and a provider that does not tell you which is hiding the only thing you needed to know.

Pricing follows the match rather than the request. A lookup that finds nothing has still cost the provider a search, and vendors differ on whether you pay for it. Over a large list the difference is substantial, because the proportion of rows that match is rarely above three quarters and is often much lower.