Tag: Data Axle

Data Axle Expanded Universe

This is part II of my discussion of Data Axle. On Monday I covered the launch of its Audience360 cloud-based data management platform.

B2B data vendor Data Axle announced expanded US content coverage, including additional depth for federal contractors, startups, nonprofits, and medical professionals.  Organizational counts grew five percent, with Data Axle “adding hundreds of thousands of sought-after businesses and millions of new or updated contacts,” with “new attributes [that] are incredibly accurate and reliable,” explained Senior PR Manager Courtney Black to GZ Consulting.  “Businesses can use this data to effectively identify prospects, which is particularly important in the current economic climate.”

New coverage includes 20 thousand more startups, 100 thousand federal contracting businesses, 100 thousand medical professionals, 35 thousand restaurants and bars, 500 thousand nonprofit organizations, and two million other US-based companies.

The medical professionals dataset spans 44 medical occupation titles and 124 specialties.

The federal contracting coverage has long offered ownership flags for veteran, minority, and women-owned businesses.  Data Axle added Unique Entity Identifiers (UEI) alongside the expanded coverage.

Startup profiles include names, address fields, phone numbers, industry codes, corporate email addresses, websites, Twitter, and other social media handles.  The firm recently added a source of technology startups but did not disclose the name.

Nonprofit profiles include EINs (federal tax ids).  As most nonprofits do not earn revenue, the data set focuses on modeled machine-learning employee counts.  Board members are included in the coverage.

Data Axle publishes data on 16.8 million US and 1.1 million Canadian businesses.

Data Axle content spans nearly 18 million US and Canadian verified businesses and 150 million business contacts.  Data Axle also added or updated 10.3 million contact records, with “superior coverages of firmographics, such as industry type, professional specialty, cuisine, and geocoding.”

“All our products benefit from the extended datasets,” explained Data Axle Marketing SVP Kara Alvarez to GZ Consulting.  “Business data is added to Data Axle’s platform in real time as we identify updates, and each of our products and services leverages this central fulfillment platform as do many clients.”

Among the benefits listed by Alvarez were:

  • B2C Link connections offer more contact-to-consumer connections, tying together business and consumer profiles.
  • Data Axle products, including Genie (formerly Sales Genie), USA, Exact Data, and Reference, etc., enjoy expanded business data.  For example, Genie contains “attributes specific to the use cases Genie clients focus on as opposed to the more extensive set available in our data platform.”
  • Data Axle’s standard and custom programmatic audiences “are always current” in any channel.   Partner ecosystem audiences “also benefit as they ingest those updates.”

“At Data Axle, we are constantly seeking to expand the number of records available to our clients while simultaneously ensuring that the quality of our premium verified data remains at the highest level possible,” said Data Axle CEO Michael Iaccarino.  “Our clients count on us for data at scale but also accuracy.  We focus on carefully integrating machine learning into our processes.  However, we will never cease leveraging human verification.  We make over 20 million calls yearly to ensure details and key information are correct.”

Data Axle also gathers consumer data, so its B2C Link dataset benefits from the increased breadth of businesses and medical professionals.

“As a leading provider of consumer data in addition to business datasets, Data Axle plays a vital role in establishing a crucial connection between businesses and consumer profiles,” stated the firm.  “The recent addition of business contacts in Q2 further strengthens this connection.  Data is available separately for organizations looking to build insights between the two datasets or as a prebuilt set of audiences.”

Data Axle Audience360

Marketing and Business Intelligence vendor Data Axle unveiled Audience360, its suite of data management capabilities that consist of front-end data capture, data management, and data distribution.  Enterprise data is ingested via APIs or FTP and then processed through a suite of cleansing, standardization, enrichment, identity resolution, and deduplication modules.

Data Axle offers US and Canadian business, consumer, and B2C linked datasets for enrichment and identity resolution.  Data Axle also announced significant improvements to its reference databases.  That announcement will be covered in tomorrow’s post.

Audience360 supports multi-source data ingestion, data management, and data distribution.

Once cleansed and enriched, data can be sent to a broad set of enterprise platforms, including:

  • CDP: Tealium, ActionIQ
  • CRM: Salesforce, MSD 365, Sales Genie (Data Axle’s Sales Intelligence service that provides a set of SFA capabilities)
  • MAP: Adobe (Marketo), Oracle Marketing Cloud (Eloqua)
  • Cloud: AWS, Snowflake, Google Cloud, Azure
  • DMP: LiveRamp, Lotame, TradeDesk, Oracle Data Cloud, and half a dozen other programmatic platforms.  Data Axle supports nearly one billion hashed emails to assist with targeting.
  • BI platforms: Adobe, HCL Unica, Alterian

“A lot of people struggle with the rigidity of some of the tools that are out there,” explained Data Axle SVP of Client Technology Solutions Sal Pecoraro.  “People think that when they buy a marketing cloud platform, it does all the data hygiene work.”

Audience360 lets data analysts and operations teams “design data capture, data management processing, and distribution into the system that they need,” continued Pecoraro.  It doesn’t matter whether the platforms are on-premise or hosted in the marketing cloud or S3 buckets on Amazon.

Pecoraro emphasized data security with encryption both in transport and at rest.  “If they need to anonymize data, we can match IDs, etc.  So, if there are security concerns about exporting their data to us, we can handle that through encryption and anonymization.”

He also positioned the solution as more flexible, quick to implement, and less expensive than other solutions, with a strong ROI.  Platform flexibility is “the most important thing, with support that goes beyond CDPs.  Furthermore, alternative platforms are expensive, ”large investments.”  This “rigidity” and high cost make it difficult to define a strong ROI and use case.

Conversely, “ours is much less expensive, quicker to stand up, more flexible to have those components that you need added.  You can add or remove things over time.  It’s not a black box or rigid solution that you can adjust as your business changes.  But I think flexibility [and] speed to market is some of our core value.”

And because the platform is service-based, companies don’t need to worry about training, upgrading the platform, or managing bug patches.  “We take requirements, we do configurations, we build automations, and we plug in on data receipt and export.”

Due to the system’s flexibility, pricing is bespoke based on volume, processes, and integrations.  Pricing is generated by the requirements gathering team, and implementation is passed to a design and implementation team.  Later, ownership is managed by a post-implementation support team. 

Audience360 offers an “iterative process” that lets clients add or remove processes, data sources, and integrations.

As Data Axle offers three datasets, a broad set of linkages are supported, including households, corporate families, business/consumer, and employment.

Audience360 is generally available. 

Clients include multiple healthcare companies and a large telco.  The service also supports retailers, financial services, and travel/leisure.

Continue to part II which covers Data Axle’s expanded US data coverage.

InfoUSA Results Launched

Infogroup launched InfoUSA Results, an SMB solution for website building.  The package includes a custom website and landing page tied to online campaigns and a dedicated toll-free or local phone number.  InfoUSA Results also supports site analytics, SEO optimization, Google Ads, local listings, and display ad remarketing.  Customers can manage the site once it is built or let InfoUSA manage it.

“We designed InfoUSA Results so businesses can easily reach more customers online. We developed this product with the time-strapped business owner in mind.  Imagine, as a business owner, you have a team working on your behalf, and new customer leads come right to you.  In fact, it can be as simple as InfoUSA Results sending a text to a business owner alerting them that they have a new customer prospect who is interested in doing business with them.  That is pretty slick.”

Mark Cullinane, President of Local Marketing Solutions at Infogroup.

InfoUSA Results designs websites that are mobile-ready and search engine optimized with metadata and structured markup.  They are optimized for fast load times.  Sitemaps are submitted to Google for speedier indexation via the Google Search Console.  InfoUSA also distributes company data to hundreds of online directory listing platforms.

The service includes multi-channel lead tracking for calls, web forms, texts, and emails with analytics delivered via a dashboard.  Voice, SMS text, and email responses are reported and logged.  Calls are displayed on a geo map with length and quality.

Call management features include call recording, call whispering, and voicemail.

InfoUSA did not publish pricing but is offering a 30% discount for the next three months.

InfoUSA Results provides website design, SEO, display ad remarketing, and site analytics.

Plunkett Almanacs Now Sold through ReferenceUSA

Plunkett Almanacs Now Sold through ReferenceUSA
Plunkett Auto Industry Statistics
Plunkett Auto Industry Statistics

ReferenceUSA, the library and government sales division of Infogroup, is partnering with Plunkett Research to sell their industry almanacs.  Plunkett offers three dozen almanacs including fast-growing sectors such as Green Technology; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine; and Nanotechnology.  Plunkett reports are written for the “general reader to readily access and understand the most vital trends, technologies and companies creating change within given industries—even if the reader has no current expertise in that industry.”

Jack Plunkett, CEO of Plunkett Research, said, “We’re excited to team up with the terrific people at ReferenceUSA.  Their deep relationships with librarians and understanding of libraries’ unique needs make them the ideal group to spread the word about the Plunkett Research Online industry reference platform.  At the same time, ReferenceUSA and Plunkett Research products are perfectly complementary–libraries that subscribe to both will be able to harness the full power of our deep data analyses.”

Plunkett almanacs cover both US companies and industries. They are available as online subscriptions, eBooks, and printed subscriptions. Plunkett helps close a gap in the ReferenceUSA product line. Infogroup provides a deep set of US and Canadian company and consumer files along with new companies, new households, family trees, and prospect list building. The partnership helps ReferenceUSA compete against Mergent Online which provides a company and industry research service in partnership with Dun & Bradstreet.

Subscription users can download custom industry reports as PDFs. Tables, company lists, and association lists may be downloaded to Excel.

Plunkett Online Subscription Pricing
Plunkett Online Subscription Pricing

View only subscription pricing begins at $1,295 for a single seat with downloading available for $1,995. Printed almanacs and ebooks are priced at $380.

Infogroup Establishes Copyright for “Database Compiled from Facts”; Database101 & Vin Gupta Liable for $53.6M

Infogroup LogoIt has been 4½ years since Infogroup sued its former CEO Vinod Gupta and Database101 for infringing Infogroup’s database copyright and trademarks, unfair competition, false advertising and breach of various contracts.  After leaving Infogroup, Gupta founded a set of competing companies with similar features and content as Infogroup.  These include Infofree, DatabaseUSA, and AtoZDatabases.  Database101 was held liable by a jury for $43.6 million and Gupta for $10 million.

According to Infogroup, the court held that “(i) Infogroup’s extensive processes of compiling its databases (data selection, refinement, verification, updating and user-friendly arrangement) were so sophisticated and value-enhancing, that the databases qualified for copyright protection and (ii) Gupta and DB101 had unlawfully passed Infogroup’s proprietary database off as their own.”

“The jury agreed that Infogroup’s industry leading techniques of database management qualified Infogroup’s database for protection under federal copyright law,” said Greg Scaglione of Koley Jessen, who litigated the case. “These verdicts are a testament to the extraordinary quality of Infogroup’s databases, and the company’s tenacity in protecting its databases, copyrights, trademarks and the market place from competitors’ misconduct.”

In 2008, Gupta was fired from Infogroup for leading a lavish lifestyle paid for by the then-public company.  Soon after, Gupta founded Database101 and hired thirty employees away from Infogroup.  Infogroup charged that Database101 stole the Infogroup database along with trade secrets.  They also held that Database101 infringed on Infogroup copyrights and marks, mimicked Infogroup products, and implied that the two companies were affiliated in their marketing.

Scaglione told Law360 that “Infogroup has successfully protected our database copyright and have established legal precedent that a database compiled from facts is protectable under federal copyright if the compiler uses selection, arrangement or coordination of the facts during the compilation process.”

Disclosure: I was the Manager of Strategy and Competition at Infogroup from 2010 through 2012.  Prior to that, I was a Product Marketing Manager at OneSource Information Services, an Infogroup subsidiary.

Salesgenie UI Enhancements & Platform Upgrades

The new Details / Profile page provides a combined list view and detailed profile view to expedite list analysis and qualification.
The new Details / Profile page provides a combined list view and detailed profile view to expedite list analysis and qualification.

Sales intelligence service Salesgenie released enhanced UI and platform upgrades which increase “system speeds and overall productivity.” Other enhancements include a streamlined details / profile page for reviewing prospecting lists and a file library for organizing sales and marketing content within Salesgenie and InfoUSA products.

The new File Library provides a centralized content store for sales and marketing professionals which can be quickly accessed within email campaigns. Content is available within both personal and shared team folders. Shareable content includes logos, images, HTML, PDF, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets. Content is shared as hyperlinks.

“This is great for keeping sales quotes, pricing templates, and marketing efforts organized in Salesgenie,” said VP of Product Neil MacLeod.

The customizable details / profile page, which will be available in early Q2, allows reps to review lists more efficiently. The new view “will give you access to the same in-depth data you have today, but it will allow you to stay on the same page as your results list,” Macleod told Salesgenie users. “That means no more going back and forth between pages while working on your leads. You can easily pop out new tabs for records that you want to return to later or keep open while you move through your list.”

Salesgenie, an Infogroup offering, is designed for both SMBs and enterprise sales teams. The service offers both business and consumer files along with New Businesses, New Homeowners, and New Movers. While the service was designed as a sales prospecting database, the service has broadened its functionality over the past few years:

  • Sales Engagement: email templates, notes, tags, dialer support, File Library
  • Marketing Tools: suppression files, lead enrichment, SEO, marketing design services, best prospect identification, direct mail marketing, display advertising
  • Mobile App: search near me, research and manage leads, map leads
  • Team Tools: lead assignments, activity tracking
  • Connectivity: Salesforce and MS Dynamics integrations, API

Separately, Infogroup announced that its business and consumer files now integrate with the Adobe Audience Marketplace. Marketers will be able to access Infogroup data within Adobe and perform data hygiene and enrichment on customer profiles.

Openprise Data Market

Openprise launched a Data Marketplace to assist with ingesting and normalizing third-party B2B and B2C data. Amongst the platforms supported are Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot. The Data Marketplace, part of the Openprise Data Orchestration platform, includes built-in rules to ensure data is properly onboarded. Users can set primary, secondary, and tertiary providers with multi-vendor data normalization rules.

“We’re excited to make ZoomInfo’s 210 million businesspeople and 11 million businesses available on the Openprise Data Marketplace,” said Phil Garlick, VP Corporate Development at ZoomInfo. “Openprise’s data cleansing and unification capabilities, combined with ZoomInfo’s data accuracy, provides marketing and sales teams with an unparalleled solution to run more effective campaigns.”

Other B2B Partners include InsideView, Orb Intelligence, Synthio (FKA Social123), and Dun & Bradstreet. Additional vendors are in the final certification stages. Openprise claims that new data providers can be setup in minutes.

Customers can extend pre-existing vendor contracts or take advantage of pre-negotiated discounts.

“Earlier this year, we surveyed 175 marketing professionals to identify data marketplace trends and published our findings in the B2B Data Market Industry Report,” said CEO Ed King. “We found that companies that worked with multiple data providers were much more likely to be satisfied with their third-party data, but those same companies expressed how much they struggled with pulling multiple providers’ data into their marketing and sales system of record while maintaining a consistent set of standards. Openprise Data Marketplaces solves this problem.”

Openprise polled marketers on which B2B data providers they have deployed. Source: "B2B Data Market Industry Report: 2017"
Openprise polled marketers on which B2B data providers they have deployed. Source: “B2B Data Market Industry Report: 2017”

The B2B Data Market Industry Report also asked which vendors were being deployed. The survey of 175 B2B marketers at firms with at least 200 employees found the top three vendors were Zoominfo (40%), InfoUSA (36%), and Data.com (35%). Surprisingly Sales Genie matched D&B/Hoovers amongst all of the surveyed marketers and exceeded it amongst enterprises.  InfoUSA rates were likely higher than the other firms as it offers both business and consumer data while Dun & Bradstreet/Hoovers and many of the other vendors offer strictly B2B data.

The most common use case for B2B data vendors is identifying additional contacts at target companies (62%). Marketers also looked to B2B companies to identify additional target accounts (52%) and append missing fields (50%). Only 37% were looking to B2B data vendors to cleanse their database.

The survey participants were well distributed across B2B industries with an over weighting to advertising / marketing.