How to Choose Enrichment Intervals That Don't Waste API Credits

Enrichment pricing is usually per record, per call—so your refresh schedule is your bill. Refresh everything daily and most of your spend goes to records nobody is working. Set schedules thoughtfully and you get fresher data on the records that matter while spending less. Here's the framework we recommend.

Score every record type on two axes

Velocity: how often does this data realistically change? A startup's headcount can double in a quarter; a public utility's NAICS code effectively never moves.

Proximity to money: is a human actively working this record right now? An open-opportunity contact justifies fresh data every week; a contact last touched in 2022 does not.

The resulting cadence matrix

	High velocity	Low velocity
Active pipeline	Daily–weekly	Weekly
Nurture / dormant	Monthly	Quarterly

Three rules that catch the edge cases

1. Trigger on events, not just time

Time-based schedules are the floor, not the ceiling. When a contact opens a proposal or an account enters a new stage, refresh it immediately regardless of schedule. Event-triggered enrichment is the highest-ROI data you'll buy.

2. Let movement cool down before re-syncing

A record updated three days ago by a rep doesn't need automated refreshing this week. Respect recent manual edits—both to protect the rep's data and to stop paying for redundant calls.

3. Spend where signals surface

Market signals—funding announcements, hiring surges, leadership changes—are the enrichment data most correlated with buying windows. Accounts with active signals justify a faster cadence than their base tier; that's exactly when stale firmographics cost you the most.

A worked example

Take a 10,000-record instance: roughly 800 strategic accounts, 2,200 open-pipeline contacts, and 7,000 dormant records. A "refresh everything weekly" policy burns ~40,000 enrichments a month—four times a typical Pro allocation. The cadence matrix above hits the same coverage where it matters at roughly a quarter of the volume, because 7,000 dormant records move from weekly to monthly.

Make it configurable, then forget about it

The point of a framework is that you set it once and review it quarterly. In NowEnrich, each record type gets its own interval—companies daily, contacts weekly, leads monthly—adjustable per priority tier. See how configurable intervals work →