The Problem
The internet is filled with signup forms, all of which are aiming to optimize either to collect as much data as possible on sign up, or simply sticking with an email field in an attempt to increase sign up conversions.
Cutting a form from eleven fields to four has been shown to lift conversion by 120%, and even a smaller cut, four fields down to three, lifts it by roughly 50% (https://ventureharbour.com/how-form-length-impacts-conversion-rates/). But it goes deeper, the fields people do fill in during sign up aren't reliable and are inconsistent. Nobody's checking their company capitalization, a typo, some just type "N/A" to get past the gate.
So most forms go the other way: ask for as little as possible, usually just an email. The problem with this, is that every subscriber looks noisy and identical the moment they join. And this isn't just a data problem. Personalized outreach sees roughly 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through than generic sends (https://porchgroupmedia.com/blog/email-marketing-statistics/), and a one-field signup form gives a business nothing to personalize with.
But there is a third option. Keep the form at one field, and get the rest of the data after the fact instead. Many companies have figured out that you can just collect the email first, and ask for other information in subsequent pages, after the email sign up. But this approach gives up valuable real estate and clogs up the user's post-sign up flow.
So I tried to build an interesting middle ground solution.
Playbook: Don't trade signups for data. Keep the form at one field, and get the rest by looking.
The System
This approach still relies on one email field, but it leans into some backend systems that happen the second a user signs up. The instant a user signs up (for a newsletter as an example) a webhook fires to look up who's behind the address and loads in their name, job title, company location as part of the user's record. This way, the business gets the data it would have asked for on a longer form, without the form ever getting longer.
The Build
For my MVP build, I used a newsletter sign up to a Beehiiv list as an example, but this can be applied to any and all registration, payment and signup gates on the internet.
A Flask endpoint receives Beehiiv's subscription.created webhook, enriches the email, and writes the result back onto the subscriber as custom fields.
For my example, I ran enrichment as a waterfall of 2 free APIs (PDL and Hunter.io), but a true production grade system would stack tools to maximize data gathering.
def enrich_email(email: str) -> dict:
pdl_fields, pdl_likelihood = _enrich_with_pdl(email)
if pdl_fields:
pdl_fields["_enrichment_source"] = f"peopledatalabs (likelihood {pdl_likelihood}/10)"
return pdl_fields
hunter_fields = _enrich_with_hunter(email)
if hunter_fields:
hunter_fields["_enrichment_source"] = "hunter (pdl had no confident match)"
return hunter_fields
return {}Tradeoffs & Exclusions
From the architecture side, there were multiple options that would work. A real-time webhook, polling Beehiiv on a timer, or wiring it in n8n with no code at all. The webhook won because it's the version that mirrors production, at the cost of exposing a public endpoint through a tunnel to run the test. Polling would have needed zero hosting, and the n8n version would have needed no code at all. But both of those sacrifice speed or enrichment (which could matter for a welcome series) or customization (which no code tools often run into).
As far as vendors go, Apollo was the first vendor I thought of, but its API sits behind an Organization-tier plan running $350+/month with a 3-seat minimum, more than I was able to justify. People Data Labs' free tier does the same lookup (email in, name, title, company, location out) for $0. Hunter also offered a free tier. So I thought these two were strong enough as a proof of concept.
I skipped on a couple of things entirely (though they would be important as a part of the larger picture).
VIP tagging, which could flag signups whose enriched title matches a target demographic (for example CEO). This isn't a heavy lift, but I was more focused on the actual enrichment mechanism.
Tech-stack fingerprinting, which could be an interesting enrichment to show what runs a company's tech stack. Something like BuiltWith or Wappalyzer could be used here, though they were more expensive for me to justify.
If you'd be interested in seeing any of the above implemented, feel free to shoot me an email: [email protected], and I can build it out and publish a write up.
Measuring Success
It's pretty clear that this system wouldn't have a 100% hit rate (unless there is a tool that can enrich personal emails) since it focuses more on company and educational emails. But I'd argue that enriching B2B signups is even more valuable, and can lead to real revenue implications if used as a personalized outreach tool.
Future State
The VIP filtering from this version is the obvious (and easy) next step. A simple title and seniority check that turns an enriched signup into a flagged, personal follow-up instead of a filled-in field nobody reads.
Additionally, tech-stack fingerprinting opens doors for pitching certain services, or understanding a company's marketing efforts. Waterfalling multiple data sourcing providers can unlock a whole story behind not just individual signups, but who the audience is as a whole.