ZoomInfo's "Free" Waterfall Enrichment Is a Completeness Tool, Not a Sales Tool. Here's Why That Matters.

ZoomInfo just bundled waterfall enrichment into GTM Studio at "no additional cost." The marketing is loud: simultaneous vendor evaluation, zero credit burn, 25+ third-party data sources.

If you run RevOps or lead a sales dev team, this probably sounds like a massive win.

But if you dig deeper, it isn't the win you might think it is.

We've spent years building our own enrichment waterfall at TitanX — benchmarking dozens of data vendors against actual call outcomes, not marketing claims. We've powered enrichment insights for companies like Clay and ZoomInfo themselves. So when a new waterfall product hits the market, we don't look at the press release. We look at the architecture.

And ZoomInfo's architecture tells a very specific story.

The "Wide vs. Deep" Problem

To understand why ZoomInfo's waterfall is odd, you need to understand how a good enrichment waterfall actually works.

A standard waterfall — the kind you'd build in Clay or FullEnrich — is built for depth on a single data point. Usually a mobile phone number.

The logic is simple: Check Vendor A. No result? Check Vendor B. Still nothing? Check Vendor C. Stop when you find a valid match from a specialized mobile data provider.

ZoomInfo's waterfall does something fundamentally different. Their list of 40+ providers is wide, not deep. Instead of stacking 10 specialized B2B mobile data vendors, they've assembled what can only be described as a lazy susan of disparate data types:

• Statara (political/voter data)
• NPI_CMS (healthcare registry)
• Bloomberg (financial markets)
• Datanyze (technographics)

This isn't a waterfall built to find the best phone number for a VP of Sales. It's a fact aggregation machine.

They can absolutely claim "we check 25 vendors simultaneously." But if you're looking for a mobile number and 23 of those vendors specialize in voter files, doctor registries, and stock tickers — the "simultaneous evaluation" is marketing theater. You're searching a library for a wrench.

"Free" Means Bundled. Bundled Means Locked In.

Let's be precise about the word "free."

To access this waterfall, you need a GTM Studio subscription. That's ZoomInfo's premium orchestration tier — contracts that typically start around $15,000/year and regularly exceed $30,000–$40,000 for enterprise teams.

This is a defensive play. The real threat to ZoomInfo isn't another data vendor. It's tools like Clay that let you bring your own API keys and build your own enrichment logic. Clay's whole model says: "You don't need a bundled monolith. Pick the best vendors for your use case."

ZoomInfo's response? Bundle a "free" waterfall to make leaving feel expensive. Give away the commodity (data) to protect the margin (the platform fee).

If you're already paying for GTM Studio, use the waterfall. You've paid for it. But don't confuse "included in my contract" with "free." And definitely don't confuse it with "good enough to skip everything else."

The "First Match" Problem That Nobody Talks About

Here's the engineering issue that matters most for anyone who actually cares about connecting with prospects.

Most enrichment waterfalls — even the good ones — stop the moment they find the first result. Vendor A returns a phone number? Done. Waterfall complete. Move on.

But what if Vendor A returned an old number? What if Vendor C had the current one? You'd never know, because the system quit early.

This is the first-match problem. And it's baked into the architecture of nearly every enrichment tool on the market, including ZoomInfo's new waterfall.

We built TitanX's enrichment engine to work differently. We don't stop at the first result.

Our waterfall queries every top-tier mobile data provider we've identified — vendors selected after years of benchmarking against real-world call outcomes, not marketing decks. The goal isn't to find a number. It's to find every possible valid number for every contact.

Why? Because if your data provider gives you 1.5 numbers per contact on average, your odds of finding the right number are limited by that surface area. If we can find 3 or 4 numbers for that same contact, the probability of finding the one that actually works goes up dramatically.

But finding multiple numbers is only half the equation.

The Layer That Changes Everything: Phone Intent Scoring

Having four phone numbers for a contact is better than having one. But it still doesn't tell you which one to call.

This is where TitanX diverges from every data provider and every enrichment tool on the market. Once we've harvested every possible number from every provider, we run each one through our proprietary Phone Intent model.

We're not checking if the number is "valid" the way a basic verification tool would. We're determining whether a human actually answers this specific line.

The output is a score:

High Intent — High Propensity. This person answers this number. Route to your best reps immediately. These contacts connect at 25%+ rates.

Low Intent — Voice Active. The prospect pays attention to this line — they check voicemail, the number shows activity. Build a multi-touch cadence: call, leave a voicemail (think of it as an ad impression), follow up with email.

Low Intent — Unverified. It's a working number, but we can't confirm it belongs to the person you're trying to reach. Don't waste prime calling time here.

Needs Attention — Garbage. Dead lines, wrong numbers, disconnected. This is the data that "first match" waterfalls hand to your reps without batting an eye.

The difference in practice: you don't get a number (like Clay), or a random number scraped from a voter file (like ZoomInfo's wide waterfall). You get the best number — the one where someone actually picks up.

Our customers see this consistently. Harry Atkinson at ComplyAdvantage went from a 5% connect rate to 15%. Mary White at MarketLauncher tripled connect rates across every client and market they serve. Thomas Pellegrino at InvestNext watched reps hit a flow state because they were connecting every four dials instead of every fifty.

This isn't incremental improvement. It's a fundamentally different operating reality.

The Smart Play: Use ZoomInfo for Breadth, TitanX for Depth

Should you ignore ZoomInfo's new waterfall? No. If you're paying for GTM Studio, extract every ounce of value from it.

But change how you use it.

Step 1 — Ingest (Build the haystack). Use ZoomInfo's waterfall to fill in every blank spot in your CRM. Let their simultaneous engine scrape every registry they have access to. Get maximum coverage.

Step 2 — Verify (Find the needles). Do not hand that raw data to your sales team. Run the enriched list through TitanX. We'll score every number through our Phone Intent model and separate the P1s from the garbage.

Step 3 — Execute (Call the right people). Your reps now have a prioritized list. P1s get dialed first. P2s get a multi-touch cadence. P3s and P4s don't waste anyone's time.

This is the "needles in a haystack" framework we use with every customer. You build the haystack wherever you want — ZoomInfo, Clay, Apollo, Sales Navigator. We surface the needles.

The reason this works: ZoomInfo is optimized for breadth (filling empty fields with any available data). TitanX is optimized for depth (validating the specific mobile number that drives revenue). They solve different problems. Use them that way.

Is ZoomInfo Waterfall Enrichment Worth It?

ZoomInfo's waterfall enrichment is a tool for data completeness. It fills empty CRM fields with facts from 40+ disparate sources. That has value.

But data completeness and sales efficiency are not the same thing.

Only 20% of any given market will answer a cold call. Ever. That's not pessimism — it's what we see across billions of data points. The question isn't whether you have a phone number for every contact. The question is whether you know which number works, and who will actually pick up.

That's what Phone Intent solves. Not more data. Better outcomes.

Your reps don't need a bigger haystack. They need the needles.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is TitanX a replacement for ZoomInfo (or Clay, or Apollo)?

No. TitanX is not a data provider. We don't sell you contact lists or company records. You keep building your lists wherever you build them — ZoomInfo, Clay, Apollo, Sales Navigator, doesn't matter. We're agnostic to where your data comes from. What we do is take the contacts you already have and tell you which ones will actually pick up the phone. Think of it this way: they sell you the haystack. We find the needles.

If I already have Clay running a waterfall for mobile numbers, why do I need TitanX?

Clay is good at finding a phone number. Even a decent one. But finding a number and knowing whether someone answers that number are two completely different problems. Clay's waterfall stops at the first match. TitanX queries every top-tier mobile provider, collects every possible number, and then scores each one for actual human answer behavior. A number that "passes verification" in Clay might be a line someone hasn't answered in two years. We'll tell you that before your rep wastes the dial. The proof is in the pudding: what's your connect rate?

What does 'Phone Intent' actually mean? How is it different from buying intent?

Phone Intent has nothing to do with whether someone is in-market to buy your product. It answers a much simpler question: does this person answer cold calls on this specific phone number? Buying intent platforms like 6sense or Bombora try to predict purchase readiness based on web activity. Phone Intent predicts reachability based on actual phone behavior. They're solving completely different problems — and frankly, knowing someone is "in-market" doesn't help if you can never reach them.

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