Cognism Enhance updates existing contact data by matching your records against the Cognism database and enriching missing or outdated information, such as job title, company, email address, phone number, and location.
Important: Enhance only supports contacts. Company records cannot be enriched through Enhance. To enrich companies, upload them through Search instead.
Before you start
For the best results and the safest CRM update process:
- Export your contacts from your CRM as a CSV file.
- Include your CRM's unique record ID (for example Contact ID, Lead ID, Salesforce ID, HubSpot Record ID, etc.).
- Include as many identifying fields as possible, such as:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Company
- Email Address
- LinkedIn URL
The unique CRM ID is not modified during enrichment and allows you to accurately update your existing CRM records after downloading the enriched file.
Upload a CSV for enrichment
- Go to Enhance.
- Click Enhance New List.
- Enter a list name and click Next.
- Upload your CSV file (maximum size 16 MB).
- Map your CSV columns to the corresponding Cognism fields.
- Click Enhance My List.
Cognism processes your file and matches your contacts against the Cognism database.
Review your enriched data
After processing is complete, select your list.
The summary shows:
- Total contacts uploaded
- Contacts successfully matched
- Contacts with updated companies
- Contacts with updated job titles
- Updated email addresses
- Updated phone numbers
To review an individual record, click View to compare your original data with the enriched Cognism data.
Redeem your enriched list
Once you're satisfied with the results:
- Click Redeem List.
- Review the number of credits that will be used.
- Important: You cannot redeem individual contacts or select specific records. Redeeming a list redeems all matched contacts in that list, and credits are consumed for every matched contact.
- Click Yes, Redeem.
After redemption is complete, download the enriched file by clicking Download CSV.
Note: Contacts on your opt-out list are still included if they are matched during enrichment and will consume credits.
Recommended workflow (Best Practice)
We strongly recommend using Enhance as a CSV-to-CSV workflow.
The recommended process is:
- Export contacts from your CRM, including the CRM's unique record ID.
- Upload the CSV to Cognism Enhance.
- Redeem the enriched list.
- Download the enriched CSV.
- Import the CSV back into your CRM using the existing unique record ID to update your current records.
This approach ensures your CRM updates existing contacts instead of creating duplicates.
Why this is recommended
Including your CRM's unique record ID allows your CRM to match every enriched contact back to the existing record during import.
This is particularly important when contact information changes.
For example:
- A contact moves to a new company.
- Their email address changes.
- Their job title changes.
Without the original CRM record ID, your CRM may treat the enriched contact as a new record instead of updating the existing one, resulting in duplicate contacts.
Using the original CRM IDs preserves the relationship between your existing records and the enriched data, allowing your CRM to perform accurate updates.
Exporting directly to your CRM
Although Cognism allows you to save enriched contacts to a list and export them directly to an integrated CRM, this is not the recommended workflow.
Direct exports rely on the CRM identifying matching records using standard fields. If key identifying information has changed—for example, the contact has moved to a different company—the CRM may not recognise the contact as an existing record and could create a duplicate instead.
For the most reliable results, always use the CSV export workflow described above.