Most enrichment runs from a name to a contact. This runs the other way
An enquiry arrives from a personal address with a first name and no signature. A mobile number sits in the missed calls. A CRM import left a few hundred records holding an email and nothing else. In each case you have the contact detail and are missing the person.
Fewer providers can do this than can find an email from a name, and they bill differently. Two take an email address and charge only when they return someone. One takes an email or a phone number and charges for every request, found or not. So the order matters, and so does being choosy about which phone numbers deserve a lookup.
The match is also less certain than ordinary enrichment. An address can be shared, a number can be recycled, and a provider's record can be years old. That is why every row is graded, and why two possible people are shown as two possible people.
This is for identifying business contacts who got in touch with you or who are already in your database. It is not a way to trace private individuals. The providers hold professional profiles, so a purely private address or number usually returns nothing, and that is the right result.
What you get back
Your rows, in your order, with name, current employer, title and LinkedIn profile added where a match was found. Each match carries a grade, the provider that supplied it and what the row cost. Confirmed means the returned person agrees with something you already held, such as the first name in the message or the company behind a work domain. Ambiguous rows list every person who fits. Unmatched rows say which lookups were tried.
Nothing is written to your CRM until you have seen the proposed changes and approved them.
Variations worth knowing
Emails only. Leave the phone numbers out and the reverse lookups bill only when they return someone.
Then fill the rest. Once a record has a name and an employer, fill the missing emails and mobiles in your CRM can complete it. If a match came back without a profile link, add the LinkedIn profile URL to a list of names and companies.
Where this goes wrong
Shared mailboxes. An address such as info@ or jobs@ belongs to a company, not a person. These are set aside before anything is spent.
Switchboards and recycled numbers. A number can lead to a reception desk or to whoever held it before. A phone match with nothing else to support it is graded probable at best.
Stale employers. Reverse records lag job moves, which is why the current employer is checked separately.
Personal addresses are thin. They resolve only where a provider has tied that address to a professional profile. Expect gaps.
Overwriting good data. The write-back fills empty fields only, and you approve it first.
