Edan Krolewicz - Data for customer acquisition - The light and the dark side of the global data industry - S3 Ep12

Brain-hurt scale = 8/10. We've all heard of the data breach scandals. Cambridge Analytica. Hackers holding customer databases to ransom, demanding Bitcoin payments. Platforms sharing your data with other companies who you weren't even aware of. GDPR privacy crackdowns in Europe. Senate enquiries in the US. Customer lists being stolen by employees and used to start new businesses. Data was once described as 'the new oil. But, in a world awash with data, what data is valuable and what isn't. 

So today, we're lifting the lid on the entire industry. Especially what all of this means for people who want to use data to acquire new customers and grow companies. 

If you've ever worked in B2B you know, getting your data right is often make or break - especially in the early days. Sales needs high quality, enriched prospect lists. And marketing or growth want accurate audience data to warm these people up/ They want to preserve precious funds and not be forced to rely on the default, broad (and sometimes intentionally inaccurate) targeting parameters that all the ad platforms want you to use. 

And the smaller your target market is, the more accurate these data need to be. Albeit, this is less of an issue for larger B2B brands and most B2C companies. But, regardless of whether you are B2B or B2C, large or small brand, it always pays to have high quality data instead of poor quality data. 

So how do you go about doing this? Where do you get it from? What tools can you use? How can you be sure, in a rapidly shifting employee market, that these data are even accurate? 

Today we talk with MIT grad data scientist and startup founder, Edan Krolewicz who has been working in this field his entire career. He's compiled data, sold it, architected and build systems for collection, verification, filtering and usage. And he's also used it for growth - personally. So he was the perfect person to find out all the basics we need to know. 

But we also needed to go a bit deeper. What a lot of other discussions miss, is how to use these data for the customer acquisition process. And if you know me, I'm not afraid to get a bit tactical. So this episode extends really nicely from the Willem Paling episode (s3 ep2) where we talk more generally about data for mostly business level strategy purposes (segmentation/targeting). So if you listen to this episode, it will follow on very nicely from that one. Today, we start at targeting and then follow through to execution for sales and marketing. 

And stay tuned because we're working on another upcoming episode where we will continue on from this level of execution and go deeper into cold email outreach.

So what is customer data?

How do you build lists ensuring quality (accuracy and recency)?

How do you enrich your existing data? 

How does the dark, shady side of the data industry operate? What's legal. What isn't and what's grey?

What are ABM platforms and how much can be automated? What are the tradeoffs?

How do we get the basics of email outreach right and how does everyone get it wrong?

What are typical email deliverability, response and conversion stats for these campaigns?

What should we look out for when choosing the good data providers from the bad?

In this area, you need to choose wisely. 

To make informed, world-class decisions. 

You need to first consult with an expert.

And that's just one click away!