Waterfall enrichment on the exports you already have

A waterfall you run on your own exports

Waterfall enrichment means asking several data providers in turn for the same contact, and stopping at the first one that finds a phone number. Tools such as Clay, FullEnrich or Zeliq sell it as a service: they query the providers for you and bill credits. We compared them in our guide to the best waterfall enrichment tools.

Many teams already pay for two or three providers, though. An Apollo plan for the volume, Lusha or Kaspr for the LinkedIn extension, Cognism for Europe. The data is there, spread across several CSV files with different columns. This tool does the last step: it matches the people across those files, keeps the best number for each one and tells you what every subscription actually contributes on your list.

Why not just merge the lists in Excel?

A VLOOKUP on the email column is how most teams merge contact lists, and it misses most of the overlap. One provider returns JSMITH@ACME.COM, another j.smith@acme.com, a third has no email at all but the same LinkedIn profile with a tracking parameter. Excel also strips the + from international numbers and turns long ones into 3.36E+10, so the phone you were trying to keep is already damaged when the lookup runs.

Then comes the real question a lookup cannot answer: when Apollo says one mobile and Lusha another, which one goes in the dialer? This tool links rows on four keys in order of reliability, refuses the matches that look like two different people, checks every number against its country’s numbering plan and ranks them. The spreadsheet afternoon becomes a few seconds, without the silent errors.

How contacts are matched across files

Each provider names its columns its own way, so the tool first reads every file by its headers: a known export is recognized from its file name and a handful of typical columns, anything else from usual column names (“Mobile Phone”, “Direct Dial”, “Phone 1 Type”…). You can correct the provider and every column before merging.

Then it links the rows that describe the same person, from the most reliable key to the least: the LinkedIn profile, reduced to its public identifier (case, “www”, tracking parameters and Sales Navigator links ignored), the email address, then first name, last name and company domain, and only then first name, last name and company name with legal forms such as Inc or Ltd removed. Shared addresses like info@ or sales@ never link two people, and accents do not matter: José and Jose are the same person.

Look-alikes are kept apart on purpose. An address carried by two people with different names (a team inbox, or a guessed tschmidt@ given to two Thomas Schmidts) links nobody, and neither does a name and company shared by two different LinkedIn profiles. Common nicknames still match: Bob Walker and Robert Walker with the same email are one person. A duplicate you can see in the dialer costs less than a mobile attached to the wrong person.

The best-number rules, in plain words

A provider’s label is a starting point, not the truth. Each number is checked against its numbering plan and against the other files.

1. 1

   A real mobile stays a mobile

   In most countries the number itself says whether it is a mobile: a French 06 or 07, a UK 07, a German 015 to 017. So an export with no labels, like Kaspr’s, still counts its mobiles. In the US and Canada the number does not say, so the provider’s label is the only clue and is kept; an unlabeled US number stays “unlabeled”, never guessed.

2. 2

   A “mobile” that is a landline is demoted

   A London 020 number labeled mobile is moved to direct line, and counted against the provider in the red flags.

3. 3

   A number shared by colleagues is a switchboard

   When the same number appears on several contacts, it rings a reception desk, whatever the provider called it.

4. 4

   One file says HQ, all files agree

   If any file labels a number as the company phone, it is treated as a switchboard everywhere, including in files that sold it as a direct dial.

5. 5

   Toll-free numbers go last

   800, 0800 and premium-rate numbers are never a person’s line.

6. 6

   Agreement breaks ties

   Between two mobiles, the one confirmed by more providers goes first. When two providers disagree, both numbers are kept and the contact is flagged.