In 2024, deliverability was a major problem for email outreach. Avoiding spam folders or bounces took more than verifying your mailing lists. New restrictions from email providers added another layer of technical complexity. But staying relevant continued to be the main success factor.

Relevant, engaging email outreach relies on audience segmentation, and segmentation is only possible with accurate data.

While many enrichment solutions rely on LinkedIn’s B2B database, Hunter is different. Hunter sources fresh, accurate, and GDPR-compliant data from the open web. This web-first approach to data uncovers leads you won’t find on LinkedIn, leading to deeper, more complete data to fuel your outreach and workflows.

In this article, I'll discuss your options for B2B lead enrichment, touching on LinkedIn's limitations as a data source but ultimately showing why web-based data—like Hunter's—will improve your lead segmentation.

Benefits of using web data as a primary source

Not everyone is on LinkedIn, but most databases depend on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a behemoth, boasting over 1 billion users in over 200 countries,which would make it the largest B2B database in the world. But there are still many B2B profiles it’s missing.

LinkedIn’s dataset is biased toward English speakers in the Western hemisphere working in digitalized industries where not having an online presence means not being in business.

So, if North America is your main target market and you use LinkedIn or a LinkedIn-powered B2B database, you may never notice, but you're missing tens of thousands of companies and professionals. Having an online presence is less common in many industries–heavy industry, construction, or logistics, to name a few.

In fact, I have friends running thriving businesses, even in tech-related fields, who think LinkedIn is just for recruiters and job seekers.

That’s why relying on LinkedIn for your B2B data can be limiting for your growth, both:

Outside the Western Hemisphere, and
In more traditional industries.

Little to no LinkedIn presence doesn’t mean professionals working in those industries don’t have email addresses to find and use for email outreach.

That’s why the open web is crucial for lead enrichment.

Those hard-to-find markets can be tapped into at scale because they:

Have websites,
Own Google My Business profiles, and
Get listed in local or industry directories.

This is why Hunter is a great tool for lead enrichment.

How Hunter goes beyond LinkedIn

Hunter’s primary data source is the web, meaning we find information about companies and people absent from LinkedIn.

Here’s an example: Michael Kasang, Director of Administration at education company, Catalyst.

Michael is not on LinkedIn–you wouldn’t find any information about him by searching there. However, Hunter found an associated email address and job title via Catalyst's website.

And the best part is you can find that out in multiple ways:

Domain Search

If you use the Domain Search, you can find Michael and 44 colleagues by looking up catalystschools.org. This also provides additional information about the company.

Email Finder

Using the Email Finder with Michael’s name and company name, you’d find his email address and job title.

Discover

Using Discover, you can find Catalyst and similar companies, and then find the associated email addresses.

Hunter’s Enrichment API

Using Hunter’s Enrichment API, you can get the Director’s information or all available data on Catalyst within seconds.

This is just one example from one of the millions of websites that we crawl to provide data for your email outreach.

The open web is a unique dataset

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a table stake in a salesperson’s toolset. Even if they use other B2B databases, they likely use LinkedIn as their primary data source.

This leads to an oversaturation problem for the people that can be found in those databases.

For example, I can estimate when my email address became available in Apollo.io (which, as far as I can tell, is using LinkedIn heavily to find new people leads) - when the sales emails in my inbox rocketed overnight.

This made me become desensitized to sales emails–there’s only so much attention I can pay to my inbox daily.

On the flipside, people who can’t be found in the most popular databases receive less email outreach, so your odds of grabbing their attention are higher.

That’s why Hunter users love our data. Building a B2B database sourced from the open web requires more attention to accuracy, so a portion of the companies and profiles you can find with Hunter are relatively untapped by your competitors because they aren't represented on LinkedIn or other databases.

LinkedIn data can be inaccurate

LinkedIn data is unique in that it’s self-reported. Every piece of information on company and people profiles on LinkedIn was declared by their owners. It’s logical to see it as the most accurate data source when compared to other sources.

But, much like Wikipedia, the user-generated LinkedIn database is prone to more inaccurate information.

Here is an example.

There are multiple LinkedIn users reportedly working at Hunter that… aren’t actually working at Hunter. And there is no feasible way for us to disclaim this inaccurate information.

Worse, LinkedIn-reported job titles can be incomplete, outdated, or just inaccurate. For example, Marianne Buckley is an attorney and that’s the title on the associated LinkedIn profile.

However, thanks to Hunter’s web crawling paired with natural language processing, we can enrich her job title as “patent attorney” based on just one web page.

Details like this one can be the difference between your emails standing - or fading - out.

It is worth noting that websites can house outdated or incomplete information compared to LinkedIn, even though that’s less frequent in my experience. A website is the digital home of the company. Great efforts are made to keep it accurate–this is especially true for larger companies.

Company websites provide more context about their product and/or services

Companies run LinkedIn profiles to promote themselves. They want to expose their products or services to potential leads, look trustworthy to prospects, and stay top of mind for existing or former clients.

They often present themselves in a way disconnected from who they are and what they do. Consider recruitment companies claiming to be in the software industry because they primarily work with software companies. It makes sense, but they’re still recruitment companies.

On the other hand, it’s difficult to get confused when sifting through a company website. It’s in the company's best interest to clearly state what they do because it helps potential customers understand the benefits.

Why Hunter’s data is more accurate

The open web is why Hunter’s data can be more accurate when it comes to company-related keywords and industries. It also helps you access additional metadata from their websites, like technologies used.

For companies via our Enrichment API, we show descriptions generated by AI based on company websites. I love using those descriptions to understand what a given company does.

The same is true for Discover, which can be a better choice than the API if you just want to browse a list of companies and look for matches manually.

Wrapping up

Not all B2B databases are accurate. Simply relying on LinkedIn for your data - directly or indirectly - is not an automatic recipe for success.

By using Hunter for lead enrichment, you access a wider range of potential contacts—many of whom aren't on other B2B databases or are already overwhelmed with outreach.

Hunter’s web-based data helps you find untapped leads with accurate, up-to-date info that goes beyond what LinkedIn offers. This makes it easier to segment your audience, personalize your outreach, and boost engagement.