Hey everybody.

Welcome back to Lee the team.

Today we're diving deep with a titan who shaped the very landscape of data driven marketing for over three decades.

From the early days of rudimentary customer data to the hyper personalized world that we now inhabit.

Our guest has not just witnessed the evolution, he's driven it.

He's led startups and billion dollar enterprises and his insights are distilled in his book Igniting customer Connections.

And today we're talking with, yes, Andy Frawley, CEO of Data Axle, a true powerhouse of information with a staggering database, over 90 million businesses and 300 million consumers leveraging AI and real time intelligence to help companies find their best customers faster than ever.

Andy, welcome to lead the team.

Great to be here, Ben.

It's gonna be so much fun.

Today we were just talking a little Celtics basketball and now we're going to dive into in this other world, but maybe we'll bring it back to the Celtics.

A little Larry Bird maybe on the way.

So what's a surprising way that data drives meaningful connections between companies and people?

So it's a little bit back to the future.

Honestly, Ben, in the, if you look back to the classic days of advertising in the 60s, it wasn't data driven, but it was all about creating an emotional connection between a brand and a consumer.

And what's really interesting now is we can do that at scale, at an individual level, digitally, by using the power of data and more impactfully over the last few years, real AI to understand how can I connect with you emotionally.

Is it over the Boston Celtics?

Great.

Is it over golf?

Even better.

And so that's really what sort of propelled data axle forward is having all this foundational data, but also being able to use our analytics to really understand at an individual consumer level or business level how do we make that emotional connection.

Yeah.

So how do you think about emotions in data?

Because they don't seem like they really go well together.

Like I'm thinking about the old Mad Men TV series.

They're like sitting in the conference room and they're just batting it around.

And now maybe you're having those conversations in the boardroom, but now you've got data.

But still, where does it go to the emotional side of the equation?

Well, it's using AI to sort of predict, you know, what is going to be an emotional trigger for band, you know, is it going to be, you know, a geography?

Is it going to be a color?

Is it going to be, you know, an affiliation with, you know, a sports team?

So if you think about Somebody who's trying to sell, you know, computers to me, you know, knowing that I'm also an avid golfer and then advertising me through connective tv, you know, while I'm watching the Masters, pretty good way to get my attention.

So you're trying to make all these linkages right to really affinity groups.

Absolutely.

And the other thing we, we do is we understand the full person.

Not just my consumer profile, but also my professional profile.

So Andy Frawley who's in Naples, Florida is the same Andy FR that runs data axle.

And so we can see, you know, professional needs, wants, you know, personal needs, wants interests and you know, and then you know, do very targeted, you know, very content, heavy communications that drive that emotional connection and you know, it works, which is what it's all about.

And at scale, like you said, it's individualized at scale versus going hey, we're all scale.

Or we're so individualized that we're just spending so much money.

Or like the super bowl, which is just mass scale right now you're able to boil the darn thing down.

What do you.

So maybe what's an example of in the future like this is.

This is not necessarily possible today, but what's something that, that could be down the road in terms of where you reach people and how you reach people?

Well, I think, you know, so the, the channels we reach people continue to evolve.

You know, I'm a big fan of CTV right now, Connected TV because it was just, you know, deliver sort of short form video content.

But do you think about all the things that Gen I can do for us?

So the historical limitation is I can know a lot about you, but it's very expensive to create content for you.

Now with Gen AI we can start with the machine, do some of that work.

I don't think it's ever going to do it by itself perfectly, but it can take a lot of the sort of labor and expense out of customized content for an individual person.

Yeah, great distinction there.

It's not just okay, now we have the data.

Wow, that's nice.

We really know who our people are.

But how do we make the content that most resonates?

And those are two different worlds in terms of tools, understanding, data teams.

You got to build who you got to partner with.

Yeah.

Such an interesting world that we're going into here.

Now you're known for one of your questions.

Building customer relationships that fuel sustainable business growth.

Can you tell us about a time where that led to a breakthrough or a period of sustained success for your company?

Sure.

So, you know, I've got some similar philosophies about, you know, how we approach our customers or our relationships as well.

And, you know, unlike a lot of tech companies that like to talk about all the things that we do and how smart we are and, you know, all our bright, shiny objects of driving outcomes, you know, marketers, they want outcomes.

They want more customers, more profitable customers, customers that stay longer, buy more.

You know, they don't need to understand exactly how all of it's done.

If they want to, we're obviously happy to share that with them.

We're fully sort of transparent in all of our analytics, you know, but what we find is if we can, you know, understand the desired outcomes, create communication strategies that support those outcomes, and then wrap that all in a continuous learning and experimentation framework, that's how you, you create success and how, you know, as long as we're driving outcomes, clients going to stay with us.

If we stop, they should probably fire us.

Yeah.

So it's outcomes that are real, but also the ones they care about.

If you go and you show, hey, look, your impressions are going up.

Well, wow.

Right?

Yeah.

What does that lead to?

Something like, like, yeah.

And the number that, that they truly care about makes all the difference to be able to ask the questions up front.

And it's so funny.

I can really see, I'm curious, like, have you ever been on a sales call or you meeting with a client and you see somebody sort of going in and like presenting the information and then, you know, you're like, wait a minute, we don't really know what they care about here.

Maybe we're just data dumping and then making a twist in the moment to understand and then, and then shift the communication.

It happens all the time.

And it's, it's unfortunately something that is kind of driven into, you know, sales and client services.

People in tech companies from early on, as you know, they're, they're built to, you know, be very proud of what they have, capability, standpoint.

But again, if it can't drive a business outcome, doesn't matter.

I mean, we're working with an online travel company right now, and they provide great experiential travel.

They have a great experience, you know, when they talk to a client, you know, on the phone.

So they, they just needed to get people to call the phones.

And they knew that, you know, more than two thirds of them would convert.

And they know the ones that convert will know, take four or five trips with them over their life, lifetime.

And so it's very clear you know, we get the phones to ring, it's going to work.

In other cases, you know, we need to go further down the funnel.

So, you know, it's, that's the fun part for me is actually seeing it work.

And, you know, we're lucky at Data Axle.

We've got a lot of great brands who, you know, they'll both say, we love the work you do, the outcomes you drive, and we love how you do the work because we don't try to force people into our framework of getting work done.

We, we try to work within their framework.

Yeah, that's so good.

And it's almost like you guys have the curse of knowledge.

Like you have so much information and you can maybe even anticipate what their needs are going to be.

But if you let your mind sort of shut off on that front and you're going one direction, you might miss the thing and say what they really want.

They just want the phones to ring, gang.

You don't need to be focused on these other things.

And this goes, goes back to.

Another thing that comes up is this thing about inspiring customer loyalty, which in the data world, I mean, there's a lot of different data companies, a lot.

They're being bombarded by a lot of different groups.

What is your key strategy or key focus or thought that helps you guys retain your customers for the long haul?

Well, it, it is as simple as, you know, driving those outcomes.

You know, obviously we have to do good work.

We have to, you know, the data's got to be high quality.

Systems have to stay up.

But those are table stakes.

Like, not everybody can do that, but you need to, that needs to be sort of the baseline.

And then, you know, the question is, you know, can I drive outcomes?

Can I bring come with you every, you know, day, week, month, quarter with a bunch of new experiments to run that aren't all going to work.

But, you know, when the ones do work, we'll sort of feel fast on the bad ones and go hard on the new ones, you know, and, and we work with clients who, you know, we're doing the marketing strategy for.

We also work for clients where we're, you know, we're the data guys, but we still try to build that into all of our engagement models.

Is there an example where you guys came in and the company was maybe frustrated with like an incumbent and you're able to bring this drive outcomes philosophy and write the ship for them?

Well, the one that comes to mind is the online travel company.

So they were working with one of Our competitors.

And to your point, they were driving a lot of clicks, but couldn't connect those clicks to the booking.

So where are they coming from?

Are they people that even travel?

Right.

Yeah, it's.

It's a demographic.

It's a very specific demographic for, you know, older, mostly retired people.

The trips are, you know, two or three weeks long.

And, you know, that combined with being fully transparent about, you know, our marketing funnel.

Okay, you know, we'll show you opens and clicks, but we're going to drive it all the way through in this case to phone calls.

And, you know, there's still a lot of companies who don't provide that level of transparency from a media, particularly from a media standpoint.

All right, let's talk about driving results in the Celtics.

Which players or which teams or coaches do you think really had that right along the way?

Obviously, there's this.

It's a storied.

It's a storied franchise, but there's some outcome driven.

Yeah, I like, you know, I've been fortunate to fan of Celtics way too long, I guess.

But, you know, I thought the, you know, the Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Aaron Celtics, it's an interesting case because they had all stars on the team and they bought Kevin Garnett in and he added, you know, the energy and the focus and the pure, you know, sort of will to win.

And it worked the first year, which, yeah, you wouldn't have thought blending all those superstars together could.

So sometimes it's just.

It's a matter of finding that special ingredient that, you know, raisins, raises, raises everybody else up.

And again, that's, you know, it's the same in business.

Right.

I mean, it's all about the people.

And if you get the right people in the right seats, you know, you give them, you know, goals and metrics to work towards and hold everybody, holds themselves accountable.

You know, you're going to have success.

Yeah.

So good.

And a good reminder for leaders to think about that when they're building their teams out in their organizations to think about what the overall outcome and who's going to be able to check their egos at the door and play a different role.

Garnett obviously had to put the team on his back when he was at the Timberwolves and, you know, playing a lot of that is a different situation.

When he came into the Celtics.

Yeah, no, Paul Pierce there, who, you know, is an all star, great player, but.

But Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, who was the other all star, had to be prepared to Take a back seat to each other to some degree.

Yeah.

Oh man, such a good analogy for, for building teams in business.

So let's, let's dial back the, the like you said, back to the future.

What was your first job and how does it influence your leadership today?

Well, my first job at a university or college was a company called Epsilon, which is still one of the leaders in the space.

And I was a guy who had some computer science background, but graduated a business major and sort of got thrown into helping implement travel companies loyalty programs.

Okay, all right, interesting to bring up your other client too.

So travel, I need some travel sponsors on here.

Yeah, I'll date myself by saying the first client ever worked on was Panam Airways.

Oh yeah.

Which is in Mad Men, which is one of the big clients that reappear, reappears over and over again.

Yeah, there's also a great TV show about it.

It's like 10 years old.

It's really, really well done.

But, and you know, got to do my basic training there.

Had the opportunity to work for a couple of really good, you know, leaders, bosses who took the time to actually teach me foundational skills, both from a sort of technical perspective, but also from a business perspective.

And I was able to translate that into my first real leadership job, which was I founded a company in the mid-90s called Exchange Applications, which was the first Martech product, commercial Martech product, every ever built.

And you know, we were able to scale that business and take the company public.

You know, during sort of the, when you said what, what was the Martech Marketing technology.

Marketing tech.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you know, technology would let, you know, business analysts, you know, understand customer data, do segmentation, you know, launch, marketing.

Campaign, click for you.

Working with Pan Am, like hey, we need to be thinking about not just what we know, but what our client needs and shifting the conversation.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean it was a time when, when data and data management capabilities were exploding so you could do a lot more, you could access a lot more data.

And that was, you know, like the first generation of what, you know, today would call a modern data warehouse or data lake.

And so you know, the, the logic that got me there was, you know, at a place like Epsilon, we had all these, you know, interesting tools you could use to do segmentation and do analysis.

But they were mostly for programmers or at least highly technical people.

And so we built a platform that let a, you know, a non programmer sort of do a lot of that work.

We're very fortunate to sort of launch into the perfect Time.

So the user group exploded with that because you didn't have to have programming.

Right.

A programming background to be able to do that.

And at that time, people remember, like the IT group you like, kind of kept in the back of the business.

Right.

They definitely didn't have a seat at the boardroom table.

No.

And they weren't as connected, you know, like they are now.

Yeah, well.

And if you think about a, you know, traditional IT person, particularly from that era, and I'm chief marketing officer, they don't really talk the same language very well.

And so part of that company, both the software and the, the people are, you know, building in those translation layers so we could go from, you know, a desired campaign into, you know, something that I actually executed in the marketplace.

Man, what, what a interesting twist because you had your computer background and for people to think about this too, you know, when you're in.

People listening, like in their careers, maybe they're early on in their careers pursuing your interest area in computer science.

But then when you got into the Pan Am world, you're like, wait a minute, there's a marketing opportunity here.

So we don't always know where our career is going to lead.

I'm wondering for you if you were just open to that possibility or did you kind of have.

I think it's easier.

People say, hey, I've got to be computer programmer.

I was trained.

That's what I came out to do.

And you kind of made a left turn and then combined some stuff together to make it happen.

Yeah, I'd love to say it was a brilliant plan, but there was no plan.

Maybe it was just being open to the possibility.

You know, I think it was being open, you know, having intellectual curiosity, which I think is a really important thing for, you know, that's one of the pieces of advice I give to people early in their careers.

And, you know, again, I, I had some.

The innate ability to sort of link technology and business outcomes and marketing strategies that just, you know, nobody taught me that.

I just kind of figured it out.

Yeah, it.

Figured it out, worked through it.

This intellectual curiosity often, often asks the question, what's the one trait you'd instill in every employee and why is it important?

Like, is that the one intellectual curiosity that.

Yeah.

So intellectual curiosity, you know, wrapped in an experimentation framework, you know, what's working, what's not working.

Being just curious, you know, may not be the best business skill.

You got to be able to translate it.

We got to harness that energy a little bit.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you Know, some combination of work ethic, sort of grit, the ability to sort of work through hard problems because you know you're going to have them in your career.

Everybody does.

And you know, they might be just a how do I fix a problem for a client or, you know, something bigger.

So those are that.

And for, again, for people in a career, you know, get some basic training.

And so if it's technology, get a good foundation, don't worry about having the best paying job or whatever it is early in your career, you know, get that foundation that you could build off of.

Yeah.

So good.

So is there a time or when's the time in your career in the business where you're like, when I had to dial in the grill.

Like, we had the curiosity, but we really had to double down on grit to persevere and get through the thing.

Also, I mean, lots of times when you're, you know, involved in big software development, you have to do that.

Yeah, everything.

Yeah.

You know, one sort of foundational thing for me was so I started my career at company Epsilon.

I actually went back 20 years later and was CEO when it was a much bigger company.

I had a number of jobs.

I was CEO sort of, you know, towards the, my end of my tenure there.

And we were involved in a very large data breach.

And I'd never, you know, I never experienced something like that.

Epsilon wasn't a brand and anybody knew about it unless you were in the sort of marketing industry, marketing ecosystem.

And we were on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, you know, ouch.

You're like, I really hope the first time I was going to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, it was going to be for a major accolade.

Right.

I did a breach.

So it was an interesting experience.

I learned a ton over, you know, two weeks.

We were able to sort of, you know, contain it and mitigate it as much as as we could.

And then my CTO and I went and visited every customer that was impacted face to face and we only lost one customer.

Wow.

So, yeah, congratulations.

They weren't all fun conversations.

What were you doing to retain?

I mean, because painting the picture here, you're letting people like, oh, you know, the people's boards are opening the Wall Street Journal.

They see your, your company and they're like, you gotta, you guys have gotta really evaluate your relationship with these.

Yeah, no, we were under scrutiny by everybody.

And it was, you know, some of the biggest banks in the world.

I mean, it was, it wasn't small companies, but you know, by having a track record of delivering outcomes prior to the breach and then, you know, very effective, very transparent communication, like during the breach, you know, the actual period where stuff was going on and then taking the time to go out and, you know, visit with everybody, talk about, you know, what we're doing in the future and hopefully this would not happen again.

But, you know, they were understandably, clients were very upset about it.

They were hard conversations.

So you dropped everything.

Yep.

Went on the road, visit everybody in person.

I assumed you didn't have any problem getting a meeting.

Oh, no, we met with people we've met before.

Get in here, stat.

Yeah.

And if you can think back to that time, could you walk us through, like, how you approach that?

How do you, how do you approach those meetings in a way?

Because there's probably high emotions, a lot of pressure.

How did you prep, how did you go through those to have such successful outcomes?

Yeah, yeah, they were, virtually all were difficult meetings.

You know, again, our approaches, we're going to show up and we're going to tell you everything we know and, and we don't know everything, which typically in that situation you don't, you know, relatively early on in an event.

And so, you know, we just, we walked them through the facts and, you know, answer their questions as transparently as we possibly could.

I was lucky to have a CTO who was a very.

Client facing cto, you know, so he communicated, you know what, it can be pretty complicated or complex, you know, technical events very well in a way that the marketing people got to stand it.

But also we were talking to the IT people and security people and legal compliance people as well.

So, you know, I just think people really appreciate transparency.

They appreciate transparency.

And for the listeners who are sitting there listening right now on the cheap seats like us, data breach has never happened to us, y'all.

There's going to be a, an equivalent problem.

Yeah.

It's not an epic.

When in the world we live in.

The world we live in.

And, and would you as a.

Yeah, I'm thinking like you're, I'm thinking, I'm asking this.

Or hypothetically the listeners now, but you think about your, your key suppliers, if they had a big problem on your account or your data, would they show up on your front doorstep being transparent, keeping you updated?

I mean, those are the kinds of relationships that can save a career, that can save a company.

Oh, absolutely.

And I'm wondering, like, what's your advice for leaders to foster this?

Because you guys could have sort of taken the Broom and tried to sweep it up and be quiet.

Hey, we're going to keep you updated, but don't forward all this out.

We don't want your, your company to get all upset with us.

And you guys were just out there immediately on this thing.

What.

So what do you.

What's your advice?

Leaders who, who are questioning their supplier relationships right now.

They're like, I don't know if we, you know, like, if we'd had that kind of relationship.

Yeah, well, you know, if you don't have that kind of relationship, there's probably stuff going on you don't know about outside of already, so you should question it.

And, you know, again.

And the other thing is, we could have sent, you know, junior people out to have all these conversations, but, you know, we decided to, you know, that we'd do the communication right from the top.

Makes a difference.

Yep.

Makes a difference.

Over the years, what's been your biggest source of inspiration and what's been a challenging time that's gotten you through?

You know, I, I continue to be, you know, obviously been doing this a long time.

You know, I continue to be inspired by, you know, our teams creating those outcomes for clients and, and the, you know, creativity and innovation that goes into just continually producing those outcomes.

That's why I still do what I do is, you know, I sort of have a love for that.

That work.

It's that satisfaction of seeing the job done and seeing the numbers moving in a meaningful way.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, you know, when you, when you, when you really think about it, sometimes it's just easy to get bogged down in the work for work itself.

And I think we, as leaders, it's our job to remind people of what's important, the client, the customer, what they care about and keep aligned to that.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, all the money comes from the customers.

So you guys, you're.

You got, you have so many dang customers.

I mean, they're such a big company, get a lot of employees.

What are you doing to sort of beat that drum to where one, the, the customers don't feel like they're just another number.

And what do you do for the employees?

So they don't feel like that either, and they stay engaged in the game.

Yeah, it's a great question.

So for the.

And Data act was unusual in that we serve, you know, Fortune 100 brands, but we also have a division that focuses on small businesses.

And obviously what we do and how we deliver that, you know, is sort of based, you know, on the market based on our ICP ideal customer profile for each of those groups.

And you know, we try to build, you know, a customer experience that, that fits their needs.

And you know, so for a small business, you know, we can't have a lot of people working on it.

So it's through a, you know, world class SaaS platform that lets people, you know, you know, understand data and activate against it.

But even there, if they need help, we have people who can help them.

You know, all the way through our largest enterprise clients where we may have, you know, 10 or 20 people, you know, doing strategy work and analytics work and you know, custom AI work and then, and again we continue to refine it and, and my whole leadership team is out with clients all the time, including me.

So, you know, we, we like to, you know, you know, have our, you know, finger on the pulse of what's really going on, you know, in terms of the associates, you know, we, we have a great team that sort of is continually working on associate communication strategies and you know, we do all the standard things in terms of town hall meetings and content.

But you know, we're trying to keep pushing, you know, the edges on from a channel standpoint, you know, what's the right way to get the right information to, you know, Joe, who's building an AI model for, you know, customer abc.

And you know, I think it's something particularly.

And the other thing about that's, I guess not unique about Data Axle, but our reality is we're 100% virtual.

We don't have any offices anymore, so we have to work extra hard at it as well because it's really easy for people, you know, to get, you know, disconnected and just, you know, become kind of tunnel vision on a project they're working on at a point in time.

So yeah, they can sit there and work on their project, their code, whatever, all day long and not interact with a single other person.

So but yet you've got to respond to a customer.

You've got culture, you've got all these other things that's, that's complicated leadership.

It is.

Now I was fortunate when I, I joined Data Axle.

The company has an amazing culture around servicing clients.

Like our, you know, client sat data is off the charts strong.

So that, yeah, that sort of DNA that's been in the company for, I think it's all 50 years of history.

We just need to make sure it's, you know, we unleash it, you know, in this completely virtual world.

Well, any, this has been a fun one Today we've covered the salt, we've covered Mad Men, Pan Am.

Yeah.

Challenges, giant challenges.

So I'll turn this over to you.

What are some success strategies that you'd recommend to any employee or something that they need to understand here?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, it goes a little bit back to what I said earlier of, you know, build your foundational skills, you know, have a high degree of competence in some area.

It could be technology, it could be sales, could be analytics.

That's really important.

You know, people can only fake it so long if you don't really have the, you know, the chops to the foundation, ability to do good work.

And then, you know, it's the intellectual curiosity, you know, think outside the box.

You know, just because we've done it, you know, the 50 year old company like Data Axle, we have, you know, a lot of processes that have been done, maybe not for 50 years the same way, but for 25 or 30.

And so, you know, one of my jobs as CEO is to say, all right, well, I know we've always done it that way, but why?

And is there a better way to do it?

And, you know, in the last five years of doing cloud computing and AI, you know, the capabilities, you know, that we build our, you know, stuff off of have just exploded.

And so I think it's continuing to sort of get the organization to think at the edges of, you know, how can we do something differently?

So, you know, we have, I have monthly innovation meetings with all of our technology teams where, you know, it's not just bring me, you know, the report that says you delivered, you know, nine out of 10 projects.

I want to know what we're doing from an innovation standpoint.

Are we thinking about something different?

And again, I've got this, you know, blend of technology and sort of marketing expertise that I can still kind of contribute myself in that area, which is also fun for me.

Yeah, so many good tips and strategies and stories in this today.

And I think it's good to note, y'all, it's a 50 year old technology company.

There aren't that many around.

I mean, really, like figuratively.

And it's.

And I want to hear your idea on why that is.

Like, why do you think it's so hard to exist for very long as a technology company?

Well, if you don't innovate, you're going to die, you know, and companies have to be willing to cannibalize their own products because if they don't, somebody else is going to do it.

That's a famous quote from the guy who founded Digital Equipment.

Not, not original by me.

But you know, if somebody's going to build a better mousetrap.

So if you want to keep your clients, it's got to be you.

So to me I like what I hear in that.

It goes back to your intellectual curiosity and when you, and when you start to hone on something like what are we willing to do?

Like if you really believe this idea, are we willing to cannibalize our own project?

We need to make these big changes.

And I think a lot, it sounds like a lot of new technology companies have one great idea, they go after it, they're successful, but then the inverate idea behind technology is it's gonna change, there's gonna be something new.

And so yeah, there's a lot of particularly software companies that are, they're a product, they're not a company.

Like they do a really good job at solving a problem but they don't, you know, the problem's not broad enough for them to scale and then you know, they get bought by another technology company.

So you see, you know, the oracles of the world who you know, have been very acquisitive over the years and have this, you know, enormous foot, which is great but you know, particularly a lot of founder led software companies have trouble realizing that.

Well Andy, it has been a fun one today.

Y'all check out the crew over at Data Axle and if you see Andy at a Celtics game, you know, give him a high five or on the golf course.

Thanks for coming on today Andy.

Great, thanks again.

This is fun.