• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 9, 2020

On the heels of 100% year-over-year revenue growth, ActionIQ today announced the addition of two C-level executives to its leadership suite.

The enterprise customer data platform (CDP) hired the two senior executives to continue rapid expansion and adoption of the ActionIQ platform.

Leah Pope came to ActionIQ from Salesforce, where she held a dual role, covering the full suite of marketing cloud products from B2B and B2C. She served as head of marketing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as well as served as the CMO at Datorama, which  Salesforce owns.

Chris Masino joins as chief revenue officer from Act-On Software, were he served as chief revenue officer. Pope and Masino will work from New York City, reporting directly to ActionIQ CEO Tasso Argyros.

ActionIQ grew 100% in annual recurring revenue compared with Q4 2019, growing by "double-digit millions." The company had more than 100% growth in the number of clients who signed on, including two Fortune 100 companies, according to Argyros.

“COVID forced all companies to take data and digital seriously,” he said.

Brands no longer pushed out digital transformation work.

Privacy regulations and cookie deprecation also forced brands to prioritize their own data over third-party data. And brands grew tired of waiting for the big marketing cloud’s promise to build CDP, as other internal initiatives failed.

Today, CDPs unify siloed data -- offline and digitally -- to create a complete, up-to-the-minute customer profiles, and then democratize that data to business users responsible for the customer experience across the organization to orchestrate customer journeys.

A CDP helps organizations become smarter and more nimble to engage with their customers. Large companies have plenty of data, people, and technology -- but until now, nothing that can sit in the middle to connect organizations.

Next year that will change. Argyros believes CDPs will move beyond marketing into providing the tools to offer customers a “full experience suite,” like sales, servicing, and products. CDPs will break down silos across these teams/technology to unify the full customer lifecycle.

The role of data will change in 2021. Consent and privacy will remain big issues. Third-party anonymous data will become less valuable and more risky.

Brands should focus on their own customers and use data to better understand them, as well as to remain authentic and focused on trying to help versus trying to sell

What type of data will marketers begin using that they don’t use today? Customer service data and offline activity, from in-store or with agents. These are the most telling interactions on what problems a customer is having or what they are trying to achieve, but almost never make it into the customer profile used by marketing and sales, Argyros said.

Ad marketers can learn from other industries when it comes to using data.

For example, financial services such as credit cards and payments are the most mature data-driven marketers. They still struggle with operations, but they have a very good understanding of who their customers are and what they want.

“The New York Times also is a very good example of an iconic brand pivoting its business model and transforming its entire organization to focus on disrupting its primary business model, ads,” Argyros said.