Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Do This Not That, and we have a, a big deal guy here. We have an incredible guest here today. So who is here? Andy Frawley is here. Now, Andy is the CEO of Data Axle. If you don't know what Data Axle is and you're in marketing, I don't know what you're doing for a living because I'm not just saying this, and Andy didn't tell me to say this, I don't think there's another company on the planet that is more important, more relevant, more critical as it relates to data that is powering marketing campaigns in all things, whether you're a business-to-business marketer, a nonprofit marketer, a consumer marketer.

Jay Schwedelson: They are a beast. They have over 40,000 businesses that use all their information. They have over 3,000 employees. They're huge. I've been working with Data Axle for a zillion years. The data quality is ridiculous, and Andy is himself is a big deal. I'm not gonna tell you how long I've known Andy, 'cause that's gonna embarrass both of us, but he's been doing this for a minute, all right?

Jay Schwedelson: He's not just the CEO of Data Axle. He was the CEO of Epsilon. He's founded companies, one of the earliest martech companies that has existed. The guy has really helped to shepherd in how data can be used for all marketers, and we're gonna dig into data, data quality, AI, all the things. Andy, welcome to the show, man.

Andy Frawley: Hey, it's great to be here, Jay. Should be fun

Jay Schwedelson: It's gonna be fun. Um, so let's, I wanna jump right into it, because you're sitting in, y- in the seat that you sit in as relates to the data that we are all using for our marketing campaigns, no matter how big or small you are as a marketer, Data Axle, people don't realize it, you're probably fueling a lot of the campaigns that people are even doing out there, and one of the things I'm curious about is data quality.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, if it was 10 years ago, it was like, okay, data quality is important, and then it seemed like we had it all fixed and data was getting improving, and now there's AI and now data can be perfect. Is data quality no longer an issue for marketers? Is this no longer a hot topic?

Andy Frawley: Well, it's interesting, Jay. Uh, it's actually becoming a hotter topic now. So if, if we think back to our shared, uh, long history together, uh, you know, 20, 30 years ago when people were doing a lot of direct mail, data quality was really important because direct mail's really expensive. Um, but over the last, you know, 10 years or so as the digital activation channels have really become very prominent, there w- we went through a period of time where, you know, brands were like, "More data is better than less, and I don't really care about the quality as much."

Andy Frawley: Um, and we've seen a big shift over the last two years as people are trying to build a, a real, what I call data, data fabric, but a, a standard set of data that they use to operate their business on that, uh, is gonna empower AI, that data quality is, becomes very important because AI can make a lot of really good decisions really fast, or it can make a lot of really bad decisions really fast if the data foundation is weak.

Andy Frawley: And so, you know, as, as we work with companies of all sizes, um, 'cause again, we work with Fortune 100 brands and we work with, you know, the dry cleaner down the corner from your house, uh, they're all focused on, you know, are the, you know, are these really the right people? Do we have the right information to actually contact them?

Andy Frawley: Do we have permission to contact them, et cetera?

Jay Schwedelson: So as it relates to data quality and AI for a second, 'cause I'm curious about something. Everybody's like, "Okay, let's figure out how to bring AI into our business. I don't care big or small. Yeah, we gotta use AI," right? And is AI, and how really, how can you use AI to improve the data quality in your database regardless of how big or small, uh, you are?

Jay Schwedelson: Is that something a lot of companies are doing now? Is AI becoming that, that extra layer to, to deal with data quality?

Andy Frawley: Uh, it's a piece of it. Uh, so, you know, uh, certainly as we, you know, construct our, you know, foundational data assets, so a business to business set of data or a business to consumer set of data, uh, we use AI to validate that data to go out and get a sort of a, a checkpoint and say, you know, "Is this attribute right?

Andy Frawley: Is this address right still?" Now we also, uh, do human verification still too. So we call twenty-five million businesses a year, uh, and verify that they're open and at that address, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so we use sort of a AI human assist model in the data construction, um, uh, which again, is how we get, we get high quality.

Andy Frawley: But I think the, the other interesting place is, you know, AI can democratize access to the data. So I think everybody's sort of been through the cycle where you ask a question of data, um, you get an answer back, and that creates five more questions. Um, and if, you know, you're not a data analyst, um, and you have to have somebody go do that work, you know, for you, which is, you know, the case in a lot of organizations, it slows the process down and you're forced to make a decision before you have the complete answer.

Andy Frawley: Um, and so, you know, the ability for, you know, uh, you know, people to have access to data, have access, you know, through a human language interface to get prompts around maybe what you're missing or not missing, uh, that's where we, we see the, the really big thing going forward

Jay Schwedelson: So, all right, every time I go into a marketing meeting these days, I get... This topic comes up of, uh, something like we're trying to get a 360 view of our customer, okay? And my- I wanna bang my head against the wall. I know that that's important. I know everyone wants to know everything about every customer, whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: But, but is that, are, is that what businesses are doing? Are they really, uh, what, what does that even mean? Should we care about that? Should that be something marketers should be focused on, this, this total view of the customer? Am I living in the dark ages that that annoys me?

Andy Frawley: Well, we've been talking about it for a long time, certainly. Uh, yeah, it is important. Um, and the thing that a lot of, uh, companies miss is, is understanding the professional profile and the personal profile together. So if you wanna market to a person, particularly in a, you know, post-COVID pandemic world, you know, how you talk to me, how you actually connect me, it might be on a personal device, it might be on my professional device.

Andy Frawley: You may wanna run connected TV to me for, you know, your B2B product, but if you know I like golf and I'm gonna be, you know, glued to the television watching the Masters this weekend, you know, would you like to be able to do CTV? Uh, and so adding that whole person connection is, is what I think is the missing gap in the marketplace right now.

Andy Frawley: Um, you know, we help brands do that obviously, but, uh, it, it's sort of the, you know, the next step of that 360-degree view

Jay Schwedelson: Okay, I wanna just say something back to you 'cause I don't know if everybody realizes they could do this. Um, and listen, this isn't a commercial for Data Axle but they just happen to be a really great source to do this, but there are other ones out there. Okay, great. If I'm out there and I'm a business-to-business marketer, okay?

Jay Schwedelson: And I want to run, you know, ads on Instagram or Reddit or whatever, and I know that when I up- upload my, my business-to-business email address database, uh, 'cause I've required work email address for all my contacts going into my CRM, I get a really low match rate. I can't hit these people on connected TV or on Instagram, whatever, because those are all consumer addresses that they use on those platforms.

Jay Schwedelson: It is-- Are you, are you saying it is relatively easy to partner with a company like Data Axle to say, "Here's my B2B database. Hook me up with the consumer information for these B2B contacts"?

Andy Frawley: Yeah. Uh, that's the, the perfect use case from a activation standpoint. So, you know, the linkage between andyfrawley@data-axle.com and, you know, a- andyfrawley@gmail.com, we put those two things together, and then we bring attributes as well. So if, you know, if you want to, you know, have a segmentation scheme on Facebook that is not just my business persona, but also has aspects of my personal life in it, you can create those audiences

Jay Schwedelson: You see, I don't think enough people realize that. And, and, um, I think people are, are sleeping on that. Is that one of the big motions, like, within your company that people come to you for, to actually be able to do that cross-pollination between B2B and B2C?

Andy Frawley: Yeah, it's one of the, the, uh, most unique aspects of, of Data Axle's solution. Uh, and again, it's a hard problem to solve. Like, how do you know the Andy Frawley in Boston is the same Andy Frawley that runs Data Axle in Texas, right? That's not a, it's not a, you know, easy, uh, deterministic link. And so we rebuilt all of our linkage around those using AI last year.

Andy Frawley: You know, over the last couple years we've adjusted a lot of digital signal in, um, and, you know, we've got, uh, 150 million linkages now. So w- we have that at scale

Jay Schwedelson: All right, I n- now this is gonna be totally useless to all the listeners, but I'm just, I'm morbidly curious. I don't understand. You said you still make 25 million calls to verify business data. Um, I don't pick up my phone for even my relatives 'cause everybody annoys me, whatever. How the hell do you get 25 million people to verify anything?

Jay Schwedelson: Do you have to make 8 billion phone calls to get 25 million whatevers?

Andy Frawley: Yeah. Well, so we use AI, you know, to curate the list of the businesses based on, you know, how likely we think they are to actually pick up the phone. Um, uh, um, because if you just picked a random 25 million, you know, across our data set, you, you're right, you get a lot of hang-ups

Jay Schwedelson: Wow. Do you pick up the phone? Will you verify the data?

Andy Frawley: Uh, probably not.

Jay Schwedelson: That's fair. That's fair. Um, all right, I'm, I'm totally switching gears on something else, though, because we don't get a chance to talk to somebody a lot f- that cares about direct mail. You and I both care about direct mail. Um, let's start out with some basics, because I'm losing half the listeners here, 'cause like, "What?

Jay Schwedelson: Direct mail? I don't even go to my mailbox." But I love postcards, 100% open rate. It does great. I'm a big fan of direct mail. Where does Andy fall in direct mail? Is direct mail dead? Is it working for people? What is going on with direct mail?

Andy Frawley: Oh, it definitely works. Um, you know, probably in a narrower set of use cases than it did 20 or 30 years ago. Um, but we certainly, you know, direct mail works very well in the auto industry. Um, uh, and, you know, we're seeing companies like Amazon lean into direct mail right now. Um, you know, so the, the commerce companies are saying, "Well, your point, this is 100% open rate.

Andy Frawley: Yeah, it's expensive compared to a digital ad, but it's got shelf life." You know, um, people are gonna probably look at it more than once. Uh, so, uh, definitely works, you know, definitely more, you know, the printing technology, not to really bore your listeners, but has gotten much better in terms of, you know, doing completely custom print.

Andy Frawley: Um, so it's not just a form-filled letter anymore. Um, yeah, but, but we see it very performative in nonprofit, automotive, you know, a number of industries

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, I'm a huge fan. I think that people are... They, they, they wrote off direct mail, and it's working incredibly well. And, you know, the nice thing is if you can marry up the business data and the consumer data, you can actually find... When people are always worried about, you know, remote workers, 'cause that's still a big thing, um, I get plenty of business-to-business direct mail at my home now.

Andy Frawley: So you, right, I mean, you need to cont- contact people where they are

Jay Schwedelson: A hun- a hundred, 100%. Um, okay, so let's, let's talk about where it's all going though, because you're kind of driving the industry forward in terms of data. And in certain ways, we kind of touched on it a little bit, but I feel like data has gotten commoditized, where, um, what I see in a lot of organizations is they have these KPIs, they're, they're, they have these dashboards saying, uh, how much do we grow our database?

Jay Schwedelson: You know, and is our database bigger? And they're very, very scared to remove data, remove bad data, all this stuff. Where, where is it all going? Are you seeing the same things? Is, i- is there... Should we, should we be out there saying, "Listen, your data set being smaller is okay 'cause you wanna have a clean data set, and don't use this kind of data, use this kind of data."

Jay Schwedelson: What are we getting right? What are we getting wrong?

Andy Frawley: Yeah. Well, again, I think it comes back to the, the quality issue. Uh, I'd rather have a small set of data that's high quality than a big set of data that's not reliable. And you just think about it. If, if, you know, if, uh, if you got a B2B marketer, you know, the cost of a sales call, somebody, you know, actually picking up, making a, a call, getting a connect, having a hopefully, you know, 15 to 20 minute initial conversation, that's an expensive channel.

Andy Frawley: And if you can't actually make contact, um, if you don't know anything about the person and the brand you're, you're calling, um, it's gonna be low pro-productivity. And so, um, you know, we're, we're big believers in quality, um, whether it's your client, your customer data, you know, your first party data, your customer data, whether it's, uh, prospect data, which we provide a lot of, um, you know, getting that as right as it can be is, is really the foundational capability right now.

Andy Frawley: And again, whether you're a small business, you know, cold calling to try to find new clients or whether you're, you know, the biggest insurance company in the country

Jay Schwedelson: So, all right, now I'm going on a hard 180 here, and I wanna talk on one final topic that is not even data related, but Data Axle as a company, uh, as a business, I see you all at a lot of events. I see you have booths at a lot of events, you're exhibiting, you're sponsoring in-person events. And I'm really asking you this more as the CEO of this, you know, large organization that, you know, is trying to provide services and get new clients, and I don't know what your answer's gonna be.

Jay Schwedelson: But do you w- do you get a lot of value? Do you get a lot of ROI? Should people out there that are running businesses, should they be thinking about exhibiting and participating in events still and again if they stopped? Because I think you're out there doing a lot of it, your organization is, and I'm curious is, is that a win?

Andy Frawley: It's a great question, and, you know, post-pandemic, I was very skeptical, honestly. Uh, and so I forced our teams to be very O-ROI based. You know, if they wanna go to an event, they've gotta have an ROI story, and then we're gonna, you know, close the loop on the back end. And w-what we find is they're very productive now.

Andy Frawley: Um, it might be, you know, we index a little bit more to, you know, smaller, more vertical events maybe, as opposed to the, you know, 20,000-person trade shows we used to go to and have a lot of fun at back in the day. But, um, uh, but in person works. You know, people still buy from people at the end of the day.

Andy Frawley: And so, uh, yeah, we're-- I think we doubled our event budget last year

Jay Schwedelson: That actually makes me really happy. I actually believe that, uh, in-person events are gonna be the things that outlast AI, that that's h- where our buying is gonna happen, and I love seeing you out there. I love you, you know, seeing you guys support just basically the marketing ecosystem, you know, the way that you do.

Jay Schwedelson: So all right, everybody listen. Everyone needs to go and connect and follow Andy. We're gonna put his stuff in the show notes. It's Andy Frawley, F-R-A-W-L-E-Y, and he's the CEO of Data Axle. I'm telling you, and he didn't tell me to say this, I'm not being paid by Data Axle to say this, they're awesome. Their data quality is ridiculous.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know a market that they don't serve. So if you don't know them, check them out at data-axle.com. And, uh, Andy, man, I appreciate you being here

Andy Frawley: Yeah, it's been great. It's been fun, Jay. Always good to connect

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, thanks