B2B data provider

How a B2B data provider works

A provider does three jobs. It collects raw inputs, turns them into clean records, and delivers those records to buyers.

Collection draws on several kinds of input. Common ones are company websites, public professional profiles, business registries, job postings and press releases. Some providers add data that users contribute, partner feeds and signals from their own software. The mix decides what a provider is good at. A provider built on website scans tends to be strong on technographics, and one built on profiles tends to be strong on titles and employers.

Processing turns those inputs into records a buyer can use. The provider matches each data point to the right company or person, merges duplicates, normalizes job titles and industries, and checks emails and phone numbers. The output is B2B contact data for people and firmographics for companies, often with a confidence label or a verification status on each field.

Delivery comes in four common shapes. A web app lets reps search and export lists. A CRM integration fills records inside the sales system. A bulk file serves data teams that load a warehouse. An API returns one record per call, which suits product builders and automated workflows. Pricing tends to follow the shape, from annual seats for apps to per-record or per-call credits for APIs.

Many teams use more than one provider, because no single source covers every region, industry and seniority. Waterfall enrichment automates that by sending a request to providers in order until one returns a result. RichAPI runs its waterfall lookups against third-party providers and returns the name of the provider that answered in the response 3.

How to evaluate a B2B data provider

Database size is easy to quote and hard to test. Six other checks predict more about what a team will get.

• Coverage on your own list. Send a sample of your real targets and count the records that come back filled. That is the provider's match rate for your market, which can sit far from any headline figure.
• Accuracy. Verify a slice of the returned emails and call a slice of the phones before you trust the rest.
• Freshness. Ask how often each field is re-checked and whether records carry a last-checked date, since data decay starts the day a record is collected.
• Sourcing. Ask where each record came from. A provider that names the source on each response makes audits and privacy notices easier 3.
• Billing on misses. Find out whether a lookup that returns nothing still costs money, and whether a sparse record bills the same as a full one.
• Compliance. Check whether the provider must register as a data broker in California, and whether it is on the state registry 1.

Buyers carry duties of their own. The ICO says a business that obtains personal data from another source must give people privacy information within one month at the latest 2. A provider that can say where a record came from makes that notice possible to write.

Example of vetting a B2B data provider

A RevOps team needs a few thousand new contacts a month and wants to test providers on its own market instead of a vendor's demo list. It exports a sample of real contacts from its CRM, removes the emails, and sends the same rows to each finalist. It judges each one by the price divided by the addresses that pass verification.

Here is that arithmetic for one finalist. Suppose a 200-row sample returns 130 addresses from RichAPI's Email finder, which bills 5 credits per call that finds an address 4. A waterfall response with success false bills zero credits, so the 70 misses cost nothing 4. The 130 hits cost 650 credits 4. Checking them with Email verifier costs 2 credits per call 4. Suppose 124 of them pass, which puts the whole test at 910 credits, or about 7.3 credits per usable address 4. Run the same sums on each finalist's price sheet, including whether it bills rows that return nothing.

The team then checks sourcing. It asks each provider to show, for five sample records, where the email came from and when it was last checked. It also searches the California Data Broker Registry for each provider, since a business that meets the state's definition must register every year between January 1 and 31 1.

The last check is the receipt. RichAPI's data transparency page says every waterfall response names the provider that answered in its provider field 3. RichAPI's waterfall responses, including the email finder's, also carry an execution_log array that lists which providers ran and what each returned 4. A team that keeps those receipts can answer a person's question about where their record came from without opening a support ticket.

B2B data provider vs data broker

The two terms overlap, but only one is a legal category. B2B data provider is a market label for anyone selling business and contact data to sales and marketing teams. Data broker is a defined term in some laws. California defines it as a business that collects personal information about consumers and sells it to other companies, even when those consumers never dealt with the business 1. A B2B provider that sells personal information about people it has no direct relationship with may meet that definition, and each company has to check its own case.