MOpza Session Spotlight: Get more out of your data enrichment budget with multi-vendor enrichment

At MOps-Apalooza, some of the brightest minds in marketing operations came together to share insights on maximizing ROI with multi-vendor data enrichment. Experts including Mitch Janning, JD Nelson, Megan Crone, Phuong Pham, and Alec Tse, explored a structured approach to data enrichment.

This approach improves match rates and data quality and strategically assigns data gaps to the best-fit vendor. The result? Reduced costs and higher data completion rates. Here’s how these industry leaders are building the ultimate enrichment strategy to stay ahead in the data game.

What’s a multi-vendor data enrichment waterfall and why does it matter?

Before we dive deeper into the discussion, let’s clarify what a multi-vendor enrichment waterfall is: a systematic approach to data enrichment that uses multiple vendors in sequence rather than relying on just one. Each vendor addresses the gaps left by the previous one, resulting in higher match rates and cleaner, more complete lead and account data.

Mitch Janning, marketing ops and data insights at Vimeo, set the stage by explaining why multi-vendor enrichment is critical in today’s landscape.

“We’re not just emailing and calling people, so we have to really be conscious about the people data versus the company data and not intermingling the two. And there are a lot of vendors that do specialize in one over the other. So I think in my experience, I’ve definitely been able to discern those vendors that are better at one thing than the other. To be able to organize those and separate those into separate waterfalls in Openprise has been quite a time saver, a money saver, and just sort of a way to show that we are thinking about enrichment in a more holistic way.” 

Mitch hit the nail on the head—one-size-fits-all simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Multi-vendor enrichment allows teams to pull the best data from specialized providers, optimizing results tailored to every need.

Why one vendor isn’t enough

The challenge with relying on a single vendor is the limited match rates and coverage they offer. Megan Crone, senior manager of marketing ops at Palo Alto Networks, broke it down:

“There’s the single vendor approach where you’re using just a single enrichment provider and with this, you’re typically seeing match rates at about 50%. With the multi-vendor approach, which is something Openprise offers to its customers, you are using multiple different vendors in a waterfall approach to try to populate your minimum required fields. When we implemented the multi-vendor approach, we’re really seeing match rates at above 85%.” 

The key? Different vendors have different strengths—like international coverage, small companies, or specific data fields. With a single approach, you’re stuck with whatever that one vendor provides. A waterfall approach ensures your data gets enriched through multiple passes, combining the best of each vendor’s expertise for unparalleled accuracy and depth. A single vendor limits your potential; a waterfall approach unlocks it.

The cost conundrum

One of the biggest challenges teams face is navigating dreaded budget constraints. Balancing cost efficiency with data quality often feels like walking a tightrope—every dollar spent needs to deliver measurable value. Managing multiple vendors only adds complexity, with contracts, procurement, and integration hurdles creating a logistical nightmare. Mitch Janning captured the challenge perfectly:

“My procurement team is very, very tight right now. Any vendor that you get, they’re asking for bakeoffs for renewals, established pieces of technology. If you start asking for three separate enrichment vendors in one marketing budget, they’re going to be like, ‘This is a consolidation play waiting to happen.’ And you can’t say, ‘No, but we get X, Y, and Z from here and A, B, C from there.’ What we get to do with Openprise with the pooled credits is say, ‘I am buying enrichment from Openprise.’ They don’t need to know it’s eight vendors that I’m using. They don’t have to see those individual costs, individual contracts, all the DPAs. You get it consolidated and under one umbrella.”

Procurement teams are scrutinizing every expense, demanding bakeoffs and ROI justifications for even the most established technologies. This pressure forces marketing and RevOps leaders to think creatively about how to stretch budgets further.

JD Nelson, senior manager of marketing operations at Vimeo, described one situation from early in his Vimeo days. One of his vendors was delivering poor results—only a 4% match rate—making it impossible to justify the renewal. To address this, JD proposed a blended approach, allocating the budget across multiple vendors to improve match rates and ROI.

“We were not paying more to do something with all these vendors. We’re just paying what the top cost would be and spreading it across as many vendors as we can to get the best data that we can. And then you stitch it all together, and you complete the best profile that you can for your leads.” 

By distributing costs strategically, JD’s team achieved significantly higher match rates (60-80%) while avoiding unnecessary expenses for individual records. This approach demonstrates how thoughtful consolidation and resource allocation can balance data quality with cost-effectiveness.

The foundation: data quality before data enrichment

Phuong Pham, senior director of marketing operations at JumpCloud, highlights the importance of starting with the foundation: the data itself. “What I think about that the business doesn’t think about is structuring the data so you can get better enrichment. Openprise doesn’t just bring in the enrichment and run through five to seven different vendors to get high match rates. I’m able to cleanse the data so I can do better match rates, and segment better. That’s the important thing: get the data foundation and then bring in the data.”  By focusing on data quality and structure up front, he ensures that every downstream process—whether it’s enrichment, segmentation, or routing—delivers maximum value.

Megan echoes this focus, emphasizing her team’s effort to tackle challenges like vendor consolidation and speed-to-lead. “We’re using Openprise to enrich the leads before we’re passing them to sales. And then additionally, we are working on building out buyer groups and we’re using Openprise to make sure we have the appropriate members of the buyer groups within our dataset.”

Megan also explains that cleansing and standardizing data before enrichment significantly boosts match rates. “Something really unique about Openprise is they offer the cleansing aspect too. A lot of times, the enrichment vendors that you’re working with require your data to be in a certain format to get the best match rate. But you can use Openprise to clean your data first and make sure everything is standardized and in the different formats that each one of the vendors needs, and then you’re able to enrich the leads, which provides a way better match rate.”

Leveraging tools like multi-vendor enrichment waterfalls, organizations can:

• consolidate spending
• reduce vendor overlap
• maximize output

The approach doesn’t just save money–it ensures every investment directly supports growth and operational efficiency.

Convincing the higher-ups

After navigating budget conversations and bakeoffs, even the best ideas need buy-in to succeed. Phuong emphasizes the importance of being vendor-agnostic and data-driven when making decisions. While sales leaders might advocate for specific tools like ZoomInfo, the true responsibility lies in aligning data and strategy holistically.

He explains that, at JumpCloud, transitioning from a product-led growth (PLG) model to a sales-led motion required prioritizing outbound efforts backed by robust data to deliver quick ROI. He underscores the importance of defining a high-level strategy first and then selecting technology to support that vision rather than letting tools dictate the outcomes. ”If we want to launch this quickly and we want to see ROI fast, then we need to get these data vendors to help with that strategy.”

This clear, strategic approach was communicated effectively to both the board and GTM teams, focusing on the story behind the shift and the calculated bets needed to achieve success. By tying data, strategy, and technology together, Phuong ensured alignment and buy-in across stakeholders.

The final word: why data enrichment is worth it

Multi-vendor enrichment might sound daunting, but it’s a change for teams looking to:

• maximize their data quality
• match rates
• ROI

As Openprise product manager Alec Tsu concluded, “If you do have the right strategy and approach to be able to consolidate vendors into a single waterfall that includes things like data prep, cleansing, and standardization within it, you can absolutely streamline that data consolidation and have control with the multi-vendor enrichment in terms of which data comes from which vendor.” 

Mitch adds another perspective: ”That’s something that people understand: I can have access to so many more things for the exact same cost. That’s a pitch.”

Ready to transform your data enrichment into a competitive advantage? Take our multi-vendor waterfall for a test drive today!

Watch the full session.

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