Boost B2B Sales with Waterfall Enrichment Strategies

Your team isn't underperforming. Your data is.

Every bounce, every ignored email, every lead slipping through the cracks… it usually starts with missing or outdated contact details. No job title, wrong email, no LinkedIn—how do you expect reps to close deals with that?

Waterfall enrichment solves this at the source. By pulling lead data from multiple sources in sequence, it fills every gap in your CRM and ensures you always have the best available information. No more guessing, no more time-wasting. Just clean, enriched, usable data that helps teams close more, faster.

What is Waterfall Enrichment?

Waterfall enrichment is a sequential data enrichment strategy that queries multiple providers one after the other to fill in missing contact details like emails, phone numbers, job titles, and LinkedIn URLs.

If the first data source fails to return the information, the request automatically moves to the next, and so on, until a match is found or the provider list is exhausted. This ensures higher match rates and better accuracy than relying on a single vendor.

Unlike traditional enrichment, waterfall logic doesn't waste time or budget on failed queries—it's optimized for completeness and cost-efficiency.

Why Waterfall Enrichment Matters?

Bad data costs businesses time, money, and pipeline.

• 30% of B2B contact data decays annually (SalesIntel, 2023)
• Poor data quality wastes 21% of sales reps' time, equivalent to 1 day per week (Salesforce Research, 2024)
• Companies with enriched CRM data generate 44% more SQLs than those who don't (Clearbit, 2023))

If your contact database is full of holes, your outreach fails before it even begins.

👉🏼 Try folk now to boost B2B sales with automated waterfall enrichment that fills missing emails and titles and reduces bounces

Waterfall enrichment fixes this by:

• Increasing enrichment coverage to 85–95% (vs. ~60% with single-source vendors)
• Reducing bounced emails and fake names
• Improving segmentation and scoring
• Making cold outreach and workflows way more efficient

When to Use Waterfall Enrichment

Use waterfall enrichment if:

• You're running outbound campaigns and see bounce rates above 5%
• You rely on LinkedIn scraping tools that often miss emails or phone numbers
• Your CRM or sales engagement tool has hundreds of incomplete profiles
• You want to enrich contacts without paying twice for failed lookups

It's especially useful for SDR/BDR teams, RevOps, and anyone managing large lead lists or inbound pipelines.

Waterfall Enrichment Tools Compared

1. folk CRM

Type: Collaborative CRM

Best for

‍Startups, agencies, sales teams managing multi-channel outreach

folk CRM natively integrates waterfall enrichment into its contact records. It pulls from multiple sources, de-duplicates entries, and keeps profiles automatically enriched and up-to-date. The enrichment happens in the background—no manual imports or API work needed.

Pros

• Native CRM + enrichment combo
• Real-time enrichment and deduplication
• Great UI, shared contact lists, automated workflows
• Affordable and scalable

Cons

• No free plan
• Best suited for small to mid-size teams

Pricing

‍From $20/user/month

2. Clay

Type: Data enrichment + outreach platform

Best for

‍Ops-heavy teams, power users, growth hackers

Clay connects to over 100+ data sources and lets you build custom enrichment flows using drag-and-drop logic. Their waterfall system is powerful and flexible—but it has a learning curve.

Pros

• Extremely customizable
• Huge number of data sources
• Enrichment, scoring, and outreach in one tool

Cons

• High starting price
• Overkill for simple enrichment use cases
• No built-in CRM

Pricing

‍From $134/month

3. Surfe

Type: Chrome extension for LinkedIn enrichment

Best for

‍Reps working on LinkedIn every day

Surfe (formerly Leadjet) turns LinkedIn into a data-enriched CRM. It uses a waterfall model to find emails and phone numbers, showing results in real time. It integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, and others.

Pros

• Fast and lightweight
• Great UX for LinkedIn-based prospecting
• Triple-verified emails

Cons

• Requires Chrome and LinkedIn
• Per-seat pricing

Pricing

‍From $29/user/month

4. FullEnrich

Type: API-first enrichment

Best for

‍Developers, product teams, large-scale enrichment

FullEnrich offers a clean API that lets you pipe in data and get waterfall-enriched results. It's great for platforms that need enrichment baked into onboarding, scoring, or lead qualification.

Pros

• Clean documentation
• High enrichment rates
• Works at scale

Cons

• No user interface
• Technical setup required

Pricing

‍From $29/month

5. BetterContact

Type: Lightweight enrichment platform

Best for

‍Solo founders, budget-conscious teams

BetterContact connects to 20+ enrichment sources and supports waterfall sequencing. It's simple to use and cost-effective—perfect for low-volume enrichment.

Pros

• Straightforward interface
• Cheap and effective
• Bulk CSV uploads

Cons

• Not built for automation or scale
• Limited integrations

Pricing

‍From $15/month

6. Lemlist

Type: Outreach tool

Best for

‍Users already running cold email campaigns

Lemlist added waterfall enrichment inside its campaigns to boost reply rates. It integrates basic enrichment during lead import, pulling emails and LinkedIn URLs.

Pros

• Embedded into outbound campaigns
• Reduces manual prep
• Seamless with cold email flows

Cons

• Limited to email data
• Less control over sources
• Expensive compared to focused tools

Pricing

‍From $55/month

FAQ

What is waterfall enrichment?

Waterfall enrichment queries multiple data providers in sequence to fill missing fields (emails, phones, titles, LinkedIn). If one source fails, the next runs, raising match rates and accuracy while controlling cost.

Why use waterfall enrichment over a single provider?

It boosts coverage (often 85–95% vs ~60% single-source), reduces bounces, improves segmentation, and avoids paying for failed lookups by only advancing when needed.

How does waterfall enrichment work in a CRM?

The CRM runs providers in order, writes verified results to contact records, and deduplicates updates. Some CRMs, like folk, automate this so profiles stay complete without manual imports.

What are the 5 stages of the waterfall model?

In software development, the waterfall model has five phases: requirements, design, implementation, verification, and maintenance. This differs from data waterfall enrichment, which sequences providers to complete contact data.

Conclusion

Waterfall enrichment is the fastest, most effective way to clean, enrich, and scale your contact data. It increases coverage, boosts deliverability, and eliminates the blind spots that kill outbound performance.

Here's what matters:

• Use multiple providers—never rely on one
• Enrich inside your CRM or sales workflows
• Choose tools that balance quality, automation, and cost

For teams looking to combine enrichment, CRM, outreach, and automation in one smart system, folk CRM offers one of the most compelling options in 2025.

👉🏼 Try folk now to bring enrichment, CRM, and outreach into one workflow and keep every contact up-to-date automatically

It's fast, collaborative, and built for real-world sales workflows.

‍