Revenue teams often face high costs and inefficiencies with traditional “waterfall” enrichment setups, where multiple vendors are used sequentially, leading to ballooning data expenses. Instead, starting with a reliable provider like Lusha can cover most enrichment needs upfront, significantly lowering costs by reducing wasted lookups and ensuring cleaner data. This streamlined approach allows RevOps teams to enhance their CRM processes efficiently, resulting in a 40-60% reduction in expenses while maintaining data integrity. The benefits extend to sales, marketing, and finance, offering predictable costs and improved performance metrics, ultimately driving a more effective pipeline.
Revenue teams often rely on “waterfall” enrichment setups: send a record to Provider A, then Provider B if A can’t fill the fields, and so on until the record is complete. While this ensures coverage, it’s expensive. Every lookup burns credits across multiple vendors, even when most of the information could have been resolved up front.
For RevOps, this means ballooning data costs, unpredictable invoices, and wasted effort managing multiple providers.
Why a single trusted provider saves more
Instead of defaulting to a waterfall of vendors, many teams are finding that starting with a high-accuracy data provider like Lusha covers the majority of enrichment needs immediately. Lusha’s verified emails, direct dials, and firmographics resolve the common gaps—which means fewer records get passed downstream to secondary tools.
This approach lowers costs in two ways:
- Fewer wasted lookups: If 80–90% of your records are already enriched at step one, you’re only paying for a fraction of waterfall passes.
- Cleaner data, less rework: Verified data reduces bounce rates and manual cleanup, cutting indirect costs.
A workflow example
Here’s how RevOps teams set up a cost-efficient enrichment process in their CRM:
A new lead enters the CRM (via form, import, or integration).
Lusha runs first enrichment pass, filling in job title, phone, email, and company details.
If any fields are still blank, only those are routed to a secondary provider.
Normalization ensures titles, industries, and company size follow consistent values.
Sync and notify so reps always see complete, reliable records.
Because most leads are resolved at step 2, teams reduce waterfall expenses by 40–60% while still maintaining coverage.
Benefits for GTM teams
- RevOps: Predictable enrichment costs, better reporting accuracy.
- Sales: Higher connect rates with fewer wasted dials.
- Marketing: Stronger segmentation and fewer campaign bounces.
- Finance: Cost discipline with no surprises in data spend.
Best practices
- Always benchmark accuracy of your primary provider before building multi-vendor workflows.
- Route only missing fields to secondary providers, not the full record.
- Review enrichment costs quarterly to spot unnecessary waterfall passes.
- Measure ROI through metrics like cost per enriched lead and conversion lift from verified data.
Data enrichment doesn’t need to be a runaway expense. By starting with a trusted provider like Lusha, RevOps teams fill most gaps in one pass, minimize reliance on expensive waterfalls, and give their sales and marketing teams cleaner data to act on. The result: lower costs, higher efficiency, and a pipeline that runs on verified data instead of bloated invoices.
FAQs
Waterfall enrichment is a process where leads are sent through multiple data providers until all fields are filled. While it ensures coverage, it often results in redundant lookups and higher costs.
Lusha provides verified data up front, covering the majority of records without needing secondary providers. This minimizes waterfall usage and cuts unnecessary spend.
Yes. Many teams use Lusha as their primary provider and only route missing fields to secondary vendors, ensuring full coverage while controlling costs.
Common KPIs include cost per enriched lead, bounce rate reduction, conversion lift from verified contacts, and percentage of records enriched at step one.
