How WebFootprint uses Hunter's API to power their CRM

Meet WebFootprint

WebFootprint is a software development agency that builds custom CRMs, sales tools, and automation solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Over time, its founder, Mark Grenville, carved out a niche in the automotive industry - building a vehicle configurator tool that lets buyers explore cars from every angle, with every finish and accessory option, before they walk into a showroom.

That product took them into conversations with OEMs: Toyota and a growing list of manufacturers entering the South African market.

The challenge that came with the configurator was the sales motion. Unlike general software services, where leads come from all directions, the audience for this product was fewer than 200 relevant decision-makers across the country.

Getting in front of them required a more targeted, more informed, and more persistent approach than WebFootprint had needed before.

The challenge

Before Hunter became a core part of the WebFootprint workflow, prospecting meant grinding through LinkedIn - searching manually, tracking people across spreadsheets, and transferring data through a chain of disconnected tools before anything useful could happen with it. 

For a five-person agency with a narrow target list, that friction doesn't just slow things down, it creates a psychological barrier that makes sales feel like a chore.

"If you feel like you have to grind out LinkedIn for an hour every day, it's too much."

Mark Grenville, Founder, WebFootprint

With lean resources, a deeper problem emerges - information gaps.

When you manually research companies, you only know what you can see at a given moment. 

People change jobs, teams restructure, and new hires join organizations - and unless you're actively monitoring all of it, your CRM data goes stale without you realizing.

The solution

WebFootprint integrates Hunter entirely through API. 

Hunter's data flows directly into WebFootprint's custom-built CRM, where it becomes the foundation of every company and contact record.

• When WebFootprint targets a new automotive manufacturer, Mark loads the company's domain into his CRM. Hunter populates the company profile - logo, employees, contact details - and then the system enriches each contact individually with additional Hunter data, including each person's LinkedIn ID.
• The LinkedIn IDs from Hunter feed a second enrichment layer that pulls in profile information directly from LinkedIn: current role, seniority, career history, and connections. That full picture then gets passed to an LLM, which uses the combined context to help draft personalized outreach messages tailored to where each person sits in the organization.
• The three decision-makers WebFootprint targets - Head of Marketing, Head of New Car Sales, and Head of Parts and Accessories - each receive messaging tuned to their specific priorities. 
  • The marketing manager wants more leads. 
  • The sales manager wants to move more cars. 
  • The accessories head wants buyers choosing manufacturer options over third-party alternatives.

Mark also uses Hunter to stay current on organizational changes. Because the data is refreshed through the API, any new hire or role change at a target company surfaces automatically.

"You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that maybe there is another person who's just joined the company... Hunter allows us to have that information easier and more top of mind."

Mark Grenville, Founder, WebFootprint

The results

WebFootprint is saving one hour a day thanks to the API, but for Mark, that number undersells the real value.

The more meaningful shift is in how the outreach feels. 

When you're not buried in research, you're not stuck in the grinding half of the job - you're in the conversation half. Deals still close between people, not between systems. But when the information is already there, those conversations start from a much better-informed place.

"It helps you unlock a level of progression and momentum that makes sales feel like humans talking to humans rather than trying to do research and getting stuck on analytics."

Mark Grenville, Founder, WebFootprint

WebFootprint has used Hunter for a decade, and whether it was using the platform directly, or the API today, the underlying reason for choosing Hunter has stayed the same: it works, and it makes the rest of the process easier.

The takeaway

For a small agency selling a highly specialized product to a particular pool of buyers, the margin for wasted effort is thin. 

Hunter's API gives WebFootprint a live, accurate view of a target company's entire relevant hierarchy - so when someone stops responding, there's always a next step, and when an organization changes, the team already knows.

Mark Grenville signed up to Hunter in 2016 and still uses it today as the data backbone of a custom-built outreach system. His perspective on what makes it worth keeping hasn't changed:

"Even today, Hunter still feels like a bit of a secret weapon."