Date-a-vendor Evaluation Playbook #5: 'We Need Better EMEA Data'

“It’s not you, it’s EMEA… I’m looking for the right match in Europe”

You’ve been ghosted in Germany. Your ABM in Spain is going nowhere. Your French campaigns just aren’t feeling the spark.

If your data provider only shows up for US leads, it might be time to see other people…

Whether you’re expanding into the DACH region, scaling ABM in the UK, or struggling to reach decision-makers in France, this playbook is for you. 

Poor European data coverage is one of the most common reasons companies look to supplement or switch providers.

This guide will help you evaluate data vendors specifically on their EMEA capabilities, avoid common regional pitfalls, and choose a provider who can deliver accurate, compliant, and complete data across key European markets.

Finding ‘the one’ in EMEA 💖

EMEA might be more complex than your last relationship: lots of languages, strict boundaries, and different expectations depending on where you are.

But the payoff?

Totally worth it - if you find a partner who understands the nuance.

Compared to North America, the EMEA region is:

• More fragmented: Dozens of languages, privacy laws, and local sourcing limitations.
• Harder to verify: GDPR compliance adds complexity to consent and enrichment workflows.
• Less saturated: Fewer public data sources or phone verification systems,

This leads to:

• Incomplete contact records (especially mobile numbers),
• Lower match rates in data enrichment.
• Poor performance in campaign execution.
• Rep hesitation due to compliance concerns.

Antoine Cornet, Cognism's Head of RevOps, said: 

"You can't just copy-paste your US strategy into Europe. Germany isn't the UK. France isn't the Netherlands. You need vendors that understand the nuance."

Red flags, mixed signals, and the search for a real connection 💌

Do we need a regional provider or a global one with EMEA depth?

Global vendors may offer scale but not depth in all European markets.

If you’re targeting specific countries like Germany, France, or Benelux, regional specialists often outperform.

How do we know if our current provider is underperforming?

Start by mapping your ICP coverage in Europe. Check mobile number availability, enrichment rates, and bounce rates by country.

If your CRM shows patchy data for DACH or high bounce rates from France, it’s time to test alternatives.

What does “good EMEA data” look like?

• Accurate, GDPR-compliant contact data.
• High mobile number availability (especially for sales outreach).
• Localised job titles and company segmentation.
• Recency indicators or “last verified” fields.

Swipe right on the right fit: Who’s truly EMEA-ready? 🌹

Green flags to look out for (when dating in EMEA) 💚

When evaluating data vendors for EMEA performance, focus on these:

• Country-level match rate: Especially for key countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, UK.
• GDPR compliance: Do they provide a legal basis for processing? Are mobile numbers collected compliantly?.
• Fill rate for email + mobile: Especially in local languages and less digitised industries.
• Localised job titles: Can they distinguish between a “Vertriebsleiter” and a “Sales Director”?
• Bounce rate by region: Under 5% for net-new data is ideal.
• Data recency & source transparency: Can they show last updated dates or sourcing logic?

How to date EMEA data providers 💞

When you’re evaluating data providers for EMEA coverage, your testing process needs to go deeper than a standard volume or enrichment test.

Europe is not one market - it’s a patchwork of languages, laws, job title conventions, and sourcing challenges.

This section walks you through how to structure a regionally sensitive evaluation that ensures vendors are not just GDPR-compliant, but actually campaign-ready.

1. Segment your ICP by region: Know what you’re looking for, country by country

Too many evaluations treat “EMEA” as a single block.

But success in this region depends on local nuance. That’s why your first step is to break your ICP down into country-level segments and test each one independently.

Focus on high-impact subregions like:

• DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).
• UK + Ireland.
• France.
• Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).
• Nordics (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland).
• Southern Europe (Spain, Italy).

Ask each vendor to provide:

• 1,000 net-new contacts per subregion.
• Breakdowns by persona, industry, and seniority.
• Language metadata (e.g., is the contact based in a German-speaking region?).
• Job titles in local language, or a tag to indicate if they’ve been anglicised.

What to assess in each sample:

• Job title localisation: Are job titles native (e.g., “Leiter Vertrieb” vs. “Sales Director” in Germany)?
• Mobile and email fill rate: Aim for 60–70% mobile coverage in outbound-relevant roles.
• Bounce rate: Run a test send or validation—target <3%.
• Language suitability: If you’re running campaigns in French, German, or Dutch, can the vendor segment by preferred language?
• Opt-in markers or privacy policy references: For France and Germany especially, can the vendor show proof of source and compliance method?

One-size-fits-all doesn’t work in EMEA. You’ll get junk leads in France and nothing usable in DACH if you don’t test regionally.

2. Validate compliance and sourcing: Is this a trustworthy partner, or just saying the right things?

Europe has some of the strictest data privacy regulations in the world, especially under GDPR, and not all vendors have evolved to meet them.

Some rely on outdated or ambiguous sourcing practices that might pass a volume test but fail when legal or ethical scrutiny arises.

Here’s how to validate a vendor’s compliance posture:

Ask these critical questions:

• How do you collect mobile numbers in Germany?
  
  Germany has specific opt-in requirements, especially for phone outreach. Vendors must source responsibly, often from public registries or business directories.
• Are job titles translated/localised or anglicised?
  
  This affects both relevance and segmentation. Some vendors convert all roles into English, which can distort seniority or job function mapping.
• Can you show the legal basis for enrichment under GDPR?
  
  Reputable vendors should cite legitimate interest, include privacy notices, and provide data subject access mechanisms.
• Can you provide documentation or audit trails on sourcing?
  
  Ideally, ask to see sourcing methodology, sample privacy notices, and any third-party audits or certifications (e.g., ISO 27001).
• Do you support DSRs (data subject requests)?
  
  A vendor who can’t support deletions or access requests puts you at risk.

📌 Bonus tip:

Have your legal or compliance lead review the vendor’s privacy documentation and terms of service before contracting.

Antoine Cornet, Head of RevOps at Cognism, said:

"In EMEA, compliance is part of usability. If you can't legally reach someone, it's not a lead - it’s a liability."

3. Score for campaign readiness: Are they ready for a real relationship?

Once you’ve validated regional coverage and compliance, the next step is assessing campaign readiness.

This is where you move beyond theoretical accuracy and test whether the data can actually support GTM strategy in-market.

Ask yourself:

• Can your SDRs launch a call campaign in France, Germany, or the Netherlands with:
  • 60%+ mobile coverage?
  • Phone numbers validated for deliverability?
• Can your marketing team run nurture sequences by language, with:
  • <3% bounce rate on emails?
  • Language tagging that enables localisation?
• Can your RevOps team map full buying committees, with:
  • Correct department tagging (e.g., “Marketing,” “Finance,” “Revenue Operations”)
  • Job titles that reflect seniority (Manager, Director, VP) and aren’t mistranslated?

What to measure:

• Fill rate of key fields across languages and regions.
• Job function match by country.
• Mobile validation success in France, Germany, and Benelux.
• Language segmentation accuracy for multi-country campaigns.

If your team can confidently run email, phone, and multi-channel campaigns across EMEA using vendor data - with no extra validation steps - you’ve found a true fit.

Real-world EMEA testing example: A European love story 💒

Let’s imagine you’re a RevOps leader at a high-growth B2B SaaS company planning a strategic expansion into EMEA - specifically DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), the UK, and the Netherlands.

Your sales and marketing teams are under pressure to launch campaigns that convert, and they need reliable contact data to drive that motion.

Your type on paper (ICP) 👤

• Industry: SaaS and Technology.
• Company size: 200–1,000 employees.
• Personas: Revenue Operations, Demand Generation, Marketing Leaders.
• Seniority: Director-level and above.
• Regions: DACH, UK, Netherlands.

Your goal is to find a provider that can:

• Accurately enrich your existing CRM data across these regions.
• Deliver net-new contacts who match your ICP, are locally compliant, and campaign-ready.
• Handle language localisation, GDPR transparency, and field consistency.

Step-by-step evaluation process

Step 1: Prepare your known data sample

Pull 500 known-good contacts from your CRM:

• These should be recently verified by your sales or marketing teams.
• Include contacts from each of the three regions: the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands.
• Ensure variety in personas and seniority levels.

Why it matters:

This forms your quality baseline. You’ll be testing each vendor’s ability to enrich and return data that matches what you already know is correct.

Step 2: Request net-new data samples

Ask each vendor for:

• 1,000 net-new contacts who match your ICP (same personas, regions, seniority, and company size).
• Full records including:
  • Verified business email.
  • Mobile/direct dial (especially for phone-based outreach).
  • Job title and department (in local language where applicable).
  • Company name, industry, size.
  • Country/region tag.
  • Optional: LinkedIn URL, last verified date, GDPR source detail.

Request vendors to tag each contact by:

• Country.
• Job function.
• Language/localisation.
• Verification metadata (e.g., last updated, source).

Step 3: Score vendors across key metrics: are they ‘the one’?

Use a consistent scoring framework to compare vendors side by side.

🧠 Bonus tip:

Ask SDRs and Marketers to do a manual check of 25–50 contacts per vendor. Would they actually use this data in live outreach?

Step 4: Overlay results onto your ICP heatmap

Once you’ve scored each vendor’s data, map the findings against your ICP across regions and personas.

This helps visualise strengths and weaknesses that might be hidden in high-level averages.

Questions to ask during analysis:

• Who has the best coverage in Germany for RevOps Directors?
• Are mobile numbers consistently missing in Benelux?
• Is one provider anglicising all job titles, making segmentation tricky in France or Germany?
• Which vendor can sustain 1,000+ usable records per month per territory?
• Do any providers have visible gaps in C-level titles or in niche personas like demand gen?

You’re looking for a provider who doesn’t just look good on paper, but can actually deliver campaign-ready contacts across Europe - with consistency, compliance, and enough volume to keep your GTM machine humming.

Jeff said:

"The best data vendors aren’t just GDPR-compliant. They’re campaign-ready. That’s the bar."

With this testing structure, you’ll be able to identify not just who has EMEA data, but who has the right data to power your next quarter’s pipeline.

First date questions to ask EMEA data providers (that save you a breakup later) 💞

When evaluating vendors for EMEA coverage, it’s not enough to know they “operate globally” - you need to uncover how deep, compliant, and truly local their data is across diverse European markets. 

These questions will help you pressure-test their regional strength, compliance maturity, and localisation capabilities.

1. Can you break down your coverage by EMEA country and persona?

Why it matters:

EMEA is not a monolith. Strong performance in the UK doesn’t mean strong coverage in Germany, France, or the Netherlands.

You need insight into country-level depth and persona alignment.

What to look for:

• Contact volumes by job title and department per country (e.g., “CMOs in France”, “RevOps leaders in Germany”).
• Coverage maps showing regional strengths and blind spots.
• Ability to provide volume estimates by seniority level (e.g., Manager+, Director+).

2. How do you ensure GDPR compliance across all markets?

Why it matters:

GDPR isn’t just about ticking a box. Each EU country enforces data privacy slightly differently, and buyers in regulated industries (finance, health, legal) face extra scrutiny.

You need a vendor that’s proactive, not reactive, on compliance.

What to look for:

• Legal basis for B2B contact processing (e.g., “legitimate interest” or consent models).
• Country-specific consent handling (e.g., Germany’s strict stance on phone outreach).
• Presence of privacy policy links, consent flags, or opt-out fields in enriched records.
• Data Protection Officer (DPO) involvement or documentation available.

3. What percentage of your records in Germany include mobile numbers?

Why it matters:

Germany is one of the hardest markets for mobile data due to strict privacy rules. Yet, for outbound teams, mobile numbers are essential for connect rates and SDR productivity.

This question reveals both depth and data sourcing methods.

What to look for:

• 50–60%+ mobile coverage for Sales/BDR personas = excellent.
• Clarity on how mobile numbers are sourced and verified.
• Carrier validation or last-contacted timestamps (not just scraped numbers).

4. Can you enrich local-language job titles with department and seniority?

Why it matters:

Accurate segmentation and lead routing depend on understanding both role function and level.

In EMEA, especially in DACH and Benelux, titles are often in the native language, and anglicising everything leads to errors.

What to look for:

• Ability to preserve original titles in native language (e.g., “Leiter Vertrieb” instead of “Sales Head”).
• Additional mapping fields like department, seniority level, and job function.
• Custom taxonomy to support your segmentation logic (e.g., grouping “Directeur Marketing” with “Marketing Director”).

5. Do you refresh all EMEA records at the same frequency as US data?

Why it matters:

Some vendors focus refresh cycles on the US, leaving EMEA data to rot.

You need confidence that update frequency is consistent globally, especially given the high rate of job change in EMEA’s senior roles.

What to look for:

• Automated job-change detection or refresh signals by region.
• Refresh cadence commitment per territory (monthly, quarterly, etc.).
• Availability of last verified or last updated date on each record.

Ask for:

Audit logs or metadata from recent updates in France, Germany, and the UK.

Antoine Cornet, Head of RevOps at Cognism, said:

"Local market depth, not database size, is what wins deals in Europe. Ask vendors to prove their boots-on-the-ground strength—not just their global story."

When you know, you know: Signs you’ve found the one 💖

When you’re evaluating a data provider to strengthen your coverage in EMEA, success is measured by regional precision, data completeness, compliance confidence, and real-world usability.

The goal isn’t just to add more contacts - it’s to unlock pipeline in markets that are traditionally slower-moving due to privacy laws, language barriers, and sparse data coverage.

Here’s how to define and measure success across four key pillars:

1. Coverage: Reach the right people in the right markets

A provider can only be considered EMEA-strong if they can consistently deliver usable data across multiple countries and ICP personas.

You’re not just buying a list; you’re buying reach into hard-to-access segments.

What to track:

• 85%+ match rate against your ICP across target markets.
• Mobile number coverage >60% for Sales- and SDR-focused personas.
• Volume consistency across regions: Are they delivering reliably in Germany, or just padding with UK data?

Your new ‘type on paper’

2. Quality: Accurate, usable, and field-rich records

In EMEA, inaccurate or stale data causes major slowdowns, especially in outbound and ABM.

Job titles must be precise, current, and localised, and emails must actually work.

What to track:

• Email bounce rates below 3% across all European campaigns.
• Accurate job title enrichment with clear seniority and department tags.
• Presence of “last verified” date or refresh timestamp on enriched records.

Benchmark goals:

3. Compliance & confidence: GDPR-proof at scale

Launching outbound in EMEA is high-stakes without clear compliance.

You need data that’s legally sourced, visibly compliant, and safe to activate, without legal review slowing down campaigns.

What to track:

• Presence of GDPR fields (e.g., privacy policy link, legal basis, consent source).
• Confidence from stakeholders: Sales and marketing should feel empowered to launch, not held back by risk
• Consistency in opt-in/legitimate interest labelling across the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Benchmark goals:

Antoine Cornet, Head of RevOps at Cognism, said:

“You shouldn’t need a different playbook for Europe. The right vendor makes it feel like any other region: connected, compliant, complete.”

4. Efficiency: Let your teams work without fixing the data first

EMEA data is notoriously messy.

Your vendor should save time, not create cleanup work.

What to track:

• Reduction in manual enrichment or deduplication before campaign launch.
• Faster time-to-campaign for Marketing, due to pre-qualified regional data.
• Higher SDR connect rates in EMEA vs. previous benchmarks.

Benchmark goals:

Final takeaway: Your data love story starts here

If you’re shopping for better EMEA data:

• Segment your test by region and persona.
• Ask for real samples - don’t rely on global stats.
• Score compliance, localisation, and campaign readiness.
• Involve your regional Sales and Marketing leaders in the test.

With the right approach, you can stop treating EMEA as a blind spot - and start treating it like a growth engine.