Automating contact enrichment in your B2B workflow with Whatcms

If you spend your days wrangling B2B leads, you know the pain: spreadsheets full of half-baked contact info, sales teams pestering you for richer details, and hours wasted on manual research. Automating contact enrichment sounds great—but most “solutions” are either vaporware, overpriced, or break the moment your workflow changes. So, if you want something that’ll actually help you get more context around your leads without losing your mind, this guide’s for you.

Let’s talk about how to automate contact enrichment in your B2B workflow using Whatcms—and what’s actually worth your time.

What is Contact Enrichment—And Why Automate It?

Contact enrichment is just a fancy way to say: “Get more useful info about your leads.” This usually means taking a basic record—say, a name and email—and adding context like company size, tech stack, social profiles, or role.

Why bother? Because:

  • Sales doesn’t want to call blind. More context means better conversations.
  • Marketing wants to segment and personalize. The more you know, the better your targeting.
  • Ops folks want clean, up-to-date data. Manual research is slow and error-prone.

Manual enrichment is a slog. Automation makes it repeatable and (mostly) accurate—if you do it right.

Why Use Whatcms For Contact Enrichment?

Most enrichment tools promise the moon but deliver a handful of dusty LinkedIn URLs and maybe a company logo. Whatcms is a bit different. Its bread and butter is detecting what technologies a website uses—CMS, e-commerce platform, marketing tools, widgets, etc. That might not sound sexy, but it’s gold for B2B:

  • Tech stack signals buying intent. If you sell Shopify plugins, you want a list of sites running Shopify.
  • Segmentation. You can route leads based on what tools they use (or don’t use).
  • Prioritization. Certain stacks are higher-value or a better fit for your product.

Whatcms is best at tech stack enrichment. Don’t expect it to find phone numbers or validate emails. Use it as a puzzle piece, not a magic bullet.

Step 1: Decide What “Enrichment” Actually Means For You

Before you automate anything, get clear on what you really need. More data isn’t always better—data you’ll actually use is.

Ask yourself:

  • Are you selling a product tied to a specific tech stack?
  • Do you just want to score leads, or route them to different reps?
  • Is this a one-off project or a repeatable process?

Pro tip: List out the exact fields you want to enrich. “CMS type,” “E-commerce platform,” “Marketing scripts,” etc. Ignore the rest—don’t build a Rube Goldberg machine for vanity metrics.

Step 2: Prep Your Lead List

You’ll need a list of leads with at least a website URL for each contact. No URL, no enrichment—Whatcms can’t help you with just an email address.

  • Clean up your source list. Remove duplicates, fix obvious typos, and make sure you have a valid domain for each lead.
  • Standardize your fields. Stick to one column for “Website,” and make sure URLs are in a consistent format (ideally, just the root domain, not the full URL with paths or tracking parameters).

Sloppy input means messy output. Spend five minutes here, save yourself hours later.

Step 3: Get Access to Whatcms

Whatcms offers an API and a bulk lookup tool (depending on your plan). For automation, the API is the way to go.

  • Sign up for an account. You’ll need an API key—don’t share it publicly.
  • Check your plan limits. Most enrichment is rate-limited or pay-per-use. Figure out how many lookups you’ll need, and don’t get caught out mid-process.

If you’re just testing, start with a handful of leads. The bulk lookup tool works for small batches but won’t scale.

Step 4: Build Your Automation (No-Code or Code—Pick Your Poison)

You don’t need to be a developer, but a little tech comfort helps. There are two main paths:

Option 1: No-Code Tools (Zapier, Make, etc.)

  • Use Zapier or Make to connect your spreadsheet/database to Whatcms’s API.
  • Trigger: New row added or updated in your source (Google Sheets, Airtable, etc.).
  • Action: Call the Whatcms API with the website URL.
  • Output: Write the response (e.g., CMS, platform, detected scripts) back to your sheet.

Pros: - Fast to set up. - No coding required.

Cons: - Expensive at scale. - Limited flexibility—can’t handle complex logic or retries well.

Option 2: DIY Script (Python, Node.js, etc.)

  • Write a script to read your lead list (CSV, Google Sheet, or database).
  • For each domain, call the Whatcms API.
  • Parse the response and append the data to your original file.

Python example (very basic): python import requests import csv

API_KEY = 'your_api_key' INPUT_FILE = 'leads.csv' OUTPUT_FILE = 'enriched_leads.csv'

def get_whatcms_data(domain): url = f'https://whatcms.org/APIEndpoint?key={API_KEY}&url={domain}' response = requests.get(url) return response.json()

with open(INPUT_FILE, newline='') as csvfile, open(OUTPUT_FILE, 'w', newline='') as outfile: reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile) fieldnames = reader.fieldnames + ['cms_name', 'platform'] writer = csv.DictWriter(outfile, fieldnames=fieldnames) writer.writeheader()

for row in reader:
    domain = row['Website']
    data = get_whatcms_data(domain)
    row['cms_name'] = data.get('result', {}).get('name', '')
    row['platform'] = data.get('result', {}).get('platform', '')
    writer.writerow(row)

Pros: - Full control. - Handles big batches and custom logic. - Cheaper in the long run.

Cons: - You have to write and debug code. - Can be brittle if Whatcms changes its API.

Step 5: Interpret and Use the Data (Don’t Just Collect It)

Getting the data is only half the job. The real value comes from actually using it:

  • Lead scoring: Weight leads higher if they use a tech you integrate with, or lower if they’re on a stack you don’t support.
  • Segmentation: Route to different nurture sequences or reps based on detected tech.
  • Personalization: Mention their CMS or e-commerce platform in your outreach (but don’t be creepy).

What not to do: - Don’t blindly trust every result—API detection isn’t perfect, especially for obscure or custom stacks. - Don’t dump all enrichment fields into your CRM. Pick what matters. - Don’t use enriched data as a substitute for qualification—use it as a signal, not a decision-maker.

Step 6: Monitor, Maintain, and Iterate

Automation isn’t “set and forget.” Once your enrichment process is live:

  • Check for API changes. Whatcms might update endpoints or rate limits.
  • Spot-check accuracy. Randomly sample enriched leads to make sure results make sense.
  • Watch your costs. API usage can add up—kill jobs that aren’t adding value.
  • Get feedback from sales/marketing. If they’re not using the data, you’re wasting time.

Pro tip: Build in error handling and retry logic. Websites go down, APIs flake out, and sometimes you’ll get garbage back.

Honest Takes: What Works, What Doesn’t, What to Skip

  • Works: Enriching tech stack for segmentation, prioritization, and sales context. Works well for web-first companies.
  • Doesn’t work: Getting deep contact info like phone numbers or social profiles. Whatcms isn’t built for that.
  • Skip: Over-engineering—don’t try to enrich 20 fields if you only need 2. It’ll just slow you down and make future changes harder.

Also, don’t expect any enrichment tool to be perfect. Use it as a starting point, not the whole story.

Keep It Simple—And Keep Iterating

Automating contact enrichment with Whatcms isn’t magic, but done right, it’ll save you hours and help you focus on the leads that matter. Start small, automate only what you need, and get feedback from the folks who actually use the data. If it’s not helping your team work smarter, cut it. Iterate as you go—simple wins every time.