As a marketer, one of the most useful things you can know about a subscriber is who they actually are. Not their ID number or which province they live in, but what they engage with online and what their broader interests look like.
What do we mean?
There is a surprising amount of information about most people sitting in the public domain. Not the dodgy stuff, mostly. Think about those Facebook privacy prompts or the Twitter settings that ask how your data gets used. That kind of data is what we're talking about.
Wait, can you actually do that?
Yes, and it's more straightforward than it sounds. Those privacy settings and data-use choices people make on social platforms directly shape how they get advertised to. A lot of the information people leave public is, in practice, to their benefit as consumers. Why receive generic ads when you could see ones matched to your actual interests? For a marketer, that same logic applies in reverse: the more relevant your message, the better it lands.
How does it work?
We take each subscriber email address in your database and search for additional information the person has made publicly available online. Your marketing team then has a much richer picture to work with when building segments and planning campaigns.
The types of data typically surfaced include:
- Social network interests and affinities
- Job titles and seniority
- Location and gender
- Education history
From there, TouchBasePro's list segmentation tools let you split your subscribers into meaningful groups and speak to each one with content that fits. The goal is to:
- Build rich, personalised customer experiences.
- Create engaged audiences for multichannel campaigns.
- Find more customers who look like your best existing ones.
- Understand the different segments and markets within your database.
Is this legal?
Yes. We only use information that subscribers have already made public. On top of that, we hash exact email addresses through our security protocols to protect your customers' privacy. The process complies with both local and international data privacy requirements.
Our email marketing managed services team handles this on your behalf, so your team doesn't have to. They bring hands-on expertise in segmentation and campaign personalisation, and we also provide a full API if you want to run the enrichment process automatically and save time at scale.
Get in touch with our team to find out more.
Frequently asked questions
- What types of data can be added to my email subscriber database through enrichment?
- Enrichment typically surfaces publicly available information such as social network interests and affinities, job titles, location, gender, and education history. Only data the subscriber has made public online is used.
- Is email database enrichment legal under POPIA?
- Yes. The process uses only publicly available data and hashes exact email addresses to protect subscriber privacy. TouchBasePro's enrichment approach is designed to comply with both local South African privacy law (POPIA) and international data privacy requirements.
- Do I need technical resources to run email database enrichment?
- No. TouchBasePro's managed services team can handle enrichment on your behalf. If you prefer to automate the process yourself, a full API is available.