In April 2024 we released a commonly requested feature in all of our Nordic databases: contact data. On that day, we published a product release detailing the background and scope of this release. For a high-level intro on why we believe this update is a game changer, go check out the release notes here. In this article, we will get down to the nitty-gritty on how to actually find the data, refine the data and use the data. Let's get started!
Step 1: Where is the data?
Seasoned Vainu users might remember that basic contact data has been available on Vainu company cards for quite a while. This is still true, except the amount of contact persons has grown immensely. Just open up a company card, head on to the Employees tab, and see it for yourself!
But here come the fireworks - contact data is now also available directly on the list pages in a separate tab. By default you are viewing the usual Companies view listing all prospects that match your filtering criteria, but you can now click on the counter showing the amount of contacts to jump on the brand new Contacts view. You might also notice the new filter category titled aptly "Contacts", but we'll get into that in a moment.
Step 2: What kind of data is available?
First things first, what do you see when you open up the Contacts view on any of your lists? All identified decision-makers within all companies on your list - organized by prospect.
Starting from the left, you can first see the contact person's name and in some cases a blue star icon indicating that the decision-maker has been identified as a decision-maker based on their title.
💡 By our logic, decision makers (i.e. the ones with the blue star) are usually C-level executives or have similar responsibilities in the day-to-day business. Contacts that have not been deemed decision-makers are often specialists, board members, auditors etc.
Next up, the table lists functions and titles. Titles are self-explanatory, they are the official titles that we have identified for the contacts. But people in very similar roles might have wildly differing titles which is why we have categorized titles into broader functions encompassing a myriad of job titles. So for example under a function called Marketing you might find titles such as “Head of Marketing”, “Marketing specialist”, “Marketing coordinator” etc.
📜 Full list of available functions:
Administration
Board
CEO
Communications
Development
Finance
HR
Legal
Logistics
Marketing
Mayor
Procurement
Production
RealEstate
Sales
Technology
The next column titled Contact info is where we get to the business, literally. This section is dedicated to the three contact points that we have gathered: phone numbers, email addresses and LinkedIn profiles. Clicking on the 📞 or ✉️ icon will show you the respective contact information and you can easily click on the phone number or email address to copy them to your clipboard. Clicking on the LinkedIn logo will take you directly to the LinkedIn profile of the contact person.
The last columns on the right detail the basic information on the prospects to which those contacts are related: the name of the prospect, official industries, and the number of employees.
Step 3: How to refine the data?
Seeing all these contacts is nice, but it is usually even more efficient to narrow the list down to focus exactly on those contacts that are relevant to you. Therefore, we are happy to introduce contact filtering. Below the prospect filtering where you narrowed down the list of prospects you should find the contact filtering button which, by default, should have the word “Any” to underline that any contacts can be shown when no contact filtering has been applied.
But you probably don't need all contacts, do you? Maybe you have a preferred function or title in mind, or maybe you have your preferred contact method that you want to follow. Whatever the case may be, contact filtering gets you there.
The picture above shows you what the contact filtering tool looks like, but let's take a closer look at every section of the tool.
The first slider lets you decide if you want your contacts to be decision-makers. To remind yourself what we mean by "decision-maker" check the green callout box under Step 2.
Under Function you can choose one or several functions that your contacts should belong to. Contact persons belonging to other functions or no functions will not be shown. There is also a "Select all" option which might seem all-inclusive but it does remove all contacts without functions.
Title keyword gives you the possibility to be very specific about the exact title that you are looking for. There are two different filters in which you can either tell the filter to only show contacts with a specific keyword in their title or, conversely, exclude titles containing a specific keyword. Note that typing in a part of a longer word is enough: keyword "admin" will find all titles containing the word administration etc.
The next segment hones down on the contact methods you are looking for. This filter has two parts: a) which contact methods are you interested and b) do you want all of them to be found or are you happy with any one of them.
And that's it - click on Apply to activate the filter and see how the list of contacts narrows down to match your exact requirements. If you ever need to go back to square one, just open up the filtering tool and click on Clear to remove all criteria you have set.
👉 Note that just like the company-level filtering, contact-level filtering is set up individually to each list. If you have an elaborate list with a bunch of filters that you would need to recreate with minor changes, duplicating lists is the easy way out. It creates a perfect carbon copy of your original list making small adjustments easy.
Step 4: Getting data out of Vainu
While it's admittedly exciting to work on the data directly on our platform, your workflow just might require you to get the data somewhere else. Whether you need contacts on a spreadsheet or in your CRM, we just might have the solutions for you...
CRM exports
Exporting contacts to CRM is as easy as ever through our very own Vainu Connector. Start by selecting a set of contacts, all contacts, or just a single contact by clicking on the checkboxes on the left-hand side of the Contacts view. Once you have all your contacts selected, just click on the Send contacts button on the top-right of the table.
Alternatively, you can do the same on a company-level. Return to the Company view, select any number of companies, and finally click on Send companies.
🧑🏫 You don't actually have to click on the "Select all" checkbox if you want to export all contacts or all companies on the list. By default, if no boxes have been checked, Vainu will export them all. The "Select all" might be useful in situations when you just need to exclude a few companies or contacts from a larger set.
No matter which way you choose, clicking on Send contacts/Send companies should always take you a screen that resembles the one below. This gives you a chance to fine-tune your export, select the elements you wish to see exported and even double-check your data mapping settings.
CSV exports
If CRM doesn't cut it, there is nothing that beats a good ol' spreadsheet. Whether you prefer Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets or any other spreadsheet tool - our CSV exports are a great way to get data out from Vainu.
When you are on the Contacts view, just click on Download in the top-right corner (right next to Send contacts) to start the export process. In the first screen, you can decide which data points you want to include on your export. Note that when starting the export through the Contacts view, Contacts is already selected and locked as one of the data points alongside the two other default data points: business ID and business name.
📁 It's worth noticing that contacts are delivered on a separate sheet if you add any data points to the default selection. Your export will then be packaged in a zip folder containing a file called base.csv (company data) and contacts.csv (contact data) + possibly other separate sheets as well depending on your data selection.
The next view seen above serves two purpose, it allows you to choose between the available file types (CSV being the more common and default selection) and take a quick look at a preview of what the data will look like. It's also worth verifying that the number of companies and datapoints matches your selection to avoid erroneous exports.
Epilogue: A few additional remarks on contact data
While automated detection from company websites plays a big part in this, we take great pride in having a dedicated data research team actively collecting and validating the contact data to make sure we are as accurate and up-to-date as humanly possible.
Another thing we pride ourselves on is the level of privacy and transparency that we adhere ourselves to. Data security is pivotal when dealing with personal data, even when that data has been gathered from public sources in the first place.
And that's it. After reading this article you are a true master of Vainu Contact data. If however you do have any questions, our support team is here to help. Just reach out to us through the chat window in the bottom-right corner or by sending us an email to support@vainu.io.