What is lead mining in Odoo?

It is an In-App Purchase service that generates leads from filters such as country, industry and company size. Each generated lead costs one credit, and generating contacts costs extra credits.

Do I need the Leads setting to use lead mining?

No, but it changes the result. The documentation says that if Leads is not enabled, lead generation creates opportunities instead of leads.

Is lead enrichment the same as lead mining?

No. Mining creates new leads. Enrichment adds company data to an existing lead, based on the email domain, and uses its own credits.

Lead Generation in Odoo CRM: Inbound Sources and Lead Mining

Short answer: Odoo 19 CRM gets leads from five kinds of source: an email alias per sales team, the website contact form, manual entry, lead mining (bought, using credits) and enrichment of leads you already have. The first three cost nothing beyond setup. The last two use In-App Purchase credits, so decide who may spend them before you tick the boxes.

Applies to

Odoo version: 19. I read the lead mining, lead enrichment, email and web form pages under 19.0 and again under 20.0, and the text matched.
Edition: the 19.0 repository contains the crm_iap_mine and crm_iap_enrich modules, but the credits are a paid service. The documentation says Enterprise users with a valid subscription get free credits to try IAP features, so check how your plan treats them.
Apps: CRM, and Website for the contact form.

Which sources are free to run?

There are three, and they cover most small teams.

Email aliases. Each sales team has an Email Alias on its form under CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Sales Teams. Mail sent there becomes a record with the subject as its title, and the message goes into the chatter. If the Leads feature is off, the record is an opportunity.

The website contact form. In the web editor, the form’s Action can be set to Create an Opportunity, with a Sales Team and optionally a Salesperson. With Leads on, it creates a lead instead. Because the form is editable, the fields on the resulting record depend on how you built it.

Manual entry. CRM ‣ Leads ‣ New for leads, or New in My Pipeline for an opportunity. Boring, but phone calls and business cards still arrive this way.

From a developer’s angle, all three are the same shape: something creates a crm.lead, with a team and a type. The sources differ only in who fills in the fields.

What does lead mining do?

Lead mining generates leads straight into your database. Activate it with the Lead Mining checkbox in CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings. A Generate Leads button then appears on My Pipeline and on CRM ‣ Leads, and requests are also listed under CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Lead Mining Requests.

In the pop-up you choose Companies or Companies and their Contacts, then filter by Countries, States, Industries and Filter on Size. For contacts you can filter on role or seniority. You also pick the Sales Team, Salesperson and Default Tags, so the new records arrive already assigned.

Each lead costs one credit, and each contact costs an additional credit. The request model in the 19.0 source computes and shows the credit total in a tooltip before you submit, which is a good habit to check.

Two cautions from the documentation. Credits for different IAP services are not interchangeable, and the page tells you to be aware of EU data protection rules when collecting contact information.

What does enrichment add?

Enrichment works on leads you already have, based on the email domain. Enable it in CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings as either Enrich leads on demand only or Enrich all leads automatically.

The automatic option runs through a scheduled action, which the docs say fires every 60 minutes. It appears as “CRM: enrich leads IAP” under Settings ‣ Technical ‣ Automation ‣ Scheduled Actions in developer mode, with a minimum interval of five minutes. If the database has no credits, only the website and logo are provided.

I prefer on-demand. Automatic enrichment spends a credit on every lead, including the ones nobody will ever call.

When it fits and when it doesn’t

Mining fits a team with a clear target market, a person who will actually work the leads, and a qualification step so that bought leads do not mix with warm enquiries.

It does not fit if your market is small and well known, since you probably have the names already, or if inbound enquiries are already more than the team can answer. More leads do not fix a response problem. I would fix the leaks first, which the post on where leads get lost covers.

Worked example: a regional IT support firm

The firm wants small businesses in two cities that have more than a handful of staff. They switch on Leads, so mined records land for review, and assign mined leads to one team. They request a small batch first and read what arrives, because the quality of a filter is only visible in the results.

They tag every mined lead with a Default Tags value such as “Mined”, and keep the email alias and contact form for inbound. A month later, filtering by that tag gives a fair comparison of how the two sources convert.

Common mistakes

Switching on automatic enrichment before anyone has seen what it returns.
Mining without a team that owns the follow-up.
Mixing sources with no tag or UTM source, so you cannot compare them later.
Treating every mined company as a qualified prospect.

Start with the setup in how to set up a sales pipeline in Odoo 19 CRM, then decide what you want to feed it. If the team resists logging activity, read getting your team to use the CRM. A plainer overview is on sajjalbajaj.in.

Official references

How this article was checked: I read the 19.0 documentation pages above, compared them with 20.0, and looked at the lead mining request model in the 19.0 source. I did not spend any credits or run a live database.

If you want help deciding which lead sources suit your business, see my work and get in touch.