Leads, data and signals
Lead enrichment: what to enrich and what it costs
By Asen Levov, co-founder of Sellinger. Reviewed by Viktorio Shopov. Published . Last updated . 8 minute read.
Lead enrichment adds missing details to a lead: a work email, a phone number, company size, a job title. Enrich only the fields you will use. In Sellinger an email, company or person lookup starts from $0.01 and a phone reveal costs more, paid from a prepaid wallet that starts with a $10 credit. Contact details are charged only when found.
A list with a name and a company is a start, not a campaign. To write to someone you need a channel, a reason to write, and some confidence you have the right person. Enrichment fills those gaps. It is also an easy place to overspend, because data is cheap per row and large in total. This guide explains what to enrich, in what order, what it costs in Sellinger and how to keep the bill proportional to the result.
What can you enrich?
Four groups of fields, in rising cost and falling usefulness for a first message.
| Group | Examples | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Contact | Verified work email, mobile phone | Reaching the person on a channel |
| Role | Job title, seniority, department | Choosing the right person |
| Company | Size, industry, location, technologies | Segmenting and writing a relevant line |
| Context | Recent news, hiring, funding, posts | A reason to write now |
Context is where outbound is won, and it is usually the least available from a database. Our post on intent signals worth acting on covers how a trigger, such as a funding round or a hire, becomes a reason to write.
What does it cost in Sellinger?
Enrichment is a pay as you go lookup against a contact database of 700M+ contacts, drawn from a wallet balance in dollars.
| Lookup | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Email, company or person | About $0.01 each | Listed on the pricing page |
| Phone number reveal | About $0.05 | Current price table |
| People search | Per profile returned | Refunds the unused part of the amount it reserves upfront |
| A company only result with no contact | Not billed | |
| Starter credit | $10 on a new account | The code sets no time limit on it |
Contact details are charged only when they are found. A search shows its cost before you confirm it. There is a daily fair use limit per team on people search, and when you reach it the page says it resets tomorrow. The details are in enrichment credits explained.
Two things the lookup is not. It does not try several outside providers in turn, and it is not an accuracy guarantee. We have not published an accuracy percentage because we have not run a labelled test, and our post on email finder tools shows how to run one on your own sample.
A worked example of the cost
Suppose you want to reach 2,000 heads of operations at logistics firms.
- Search and import 2,000 people. Search cost is shown before you confirm.
- Reveal a verified email for each, at about $0.01 per lookup, charged when found. If 1,400 come back with an email, that is about $14.
- Reveal a phone number only for the 200 you will call or message on WhatsApp after a reply, at about $0.05 each, about $10.
The total is around $24 on top of the search. The numbers are arithmetic on list prices, not a promise about hit rates, which depend on the audience. The point is the order: pay for the cheap, universal field for everyone and the expensive field for the few who need it.
What should you enrich first?
Work from the channel you will use.
- Email if the first touch is email. Without it you cannot start.
- LinkedIn profile if the first touch is LinkedIn. You may already have it from the search.
- Phone only when the next step needs it, such as a WhatsApp conversation after interest.
- Company details only if you will use them to segment or personalise.
Enriching everything up front is the common waste. In the Green Shield Logistics campaign, the decisive step was not more fields. It was writing to named heads of quality, ESG, procurement and logistics instead of generic inboxes: 8.2% replied, against 2.2% for generic clinic and laboratory inboxes. The right person mattered more than any extra column. See the case study.
When should you enrich: before or after the reply?
Before, for email, because you cannot send without an address. After, for phone numbers and anything else that serves a later step. A rule of thumb:
- Enrich before sending what the first message needs.
- Enrich on interest what the second step needs.
- Do not enrich what nobody will read.
Auto enrich new leads in Sellinger is off by default. Turn it on only when you know every new lead needs the same fields, for example when all your leads arrive from a form.
How do you keep the data honest?
- Check the source. Where did this field come from, and when? A title from two years ago may be wrong.
- Label confidence. Valid, risky, unknown. Keep the label on the lead.
- Verify before a big send. A small live batch tells you the bounce rate before you commit the list. Keep bounces below 2% (Instantly's 2026 advice).
- Respect opt outs. Enriched or not, a contact who has opted out stays on the suppression list.
- Know the law. A found address is not permission. See whether cold email is legal.
What should you ask any enrichment provider?
Whether you use Sellinger's database or another source, ask these before you buy volume.
- Where does the data come from? Public pages, a licensed database, user contributed contacts? The answer affects both quality and your obligations.
- How fresh is it? A date per record beats a claim of "updated monthly".
- How do you charge for misses? Paying only when a detail is found, as Sellinger does for contact details, aligns cost with result. Paying per lookup regardless means you pay for empty answers.
- What do you do with a person's request to be removed? Sellinger has an erasure function that anonymizes the matching leads in a workspace and adds the identifiers to the suppression list, so the person cannot be imported and contacted again.
- Can you export what you paid for? Data you cannot take away is a lock in. See the help page on exporting your data.
A provider that answers these plainly is worth more than one with a bigger number on its homepage.
What does enrichment not fix?
- A wrong list. More fields on the wrong people cost more and do no good.
- A weak message. An enriched first name in a generic email is still a generic email.
- A missing reason to write. Data says who and where. It rarely says why now.
What should you check on the invoice?
After the first month, open the usage list on the Enrichment page and add up three numbers: lookups run, lookups that returned something and leads that reached a conversation. Divide spend by conversations. If that number climbs, you are paying for fields nobody uses. Cut the fields, narrow the list, or move a field to the "enrich on interest" step.
A short checklist
- [ ] I know the channel for the first touch and enrich the field it needs.
- [ ] Expensive fields wait until interest.
- [ ] Auto enrich is on only when every lead needs the same fields.
- [ ] I verify a small batch before a large send.
- [ ] I divide enrichment spend by conversations every month.
Common questions
What is lead enrichment?
What does enrichment cost in Sellinger?
Does the $10 starter credit expire?
Is enrichment automatic?
Does it run several data providers in turn?
How Sellinger helps
Read how it works on See lead enrichment, or see a real campaign in Read the Green Shield Logistics case study.
