A Method to the Madness

Many candidates and new customers are surprised at first by the high-contrast mix of playfulness and professionalism from the folks at People Data Labs (PDL). We are a company that brings together smart people who don’t take themselves too seriously. We throw events like the nerd olympics, have a casual (and sometimes less than casual) dress code, fully embrace remote work, go out of our way to foster “weird” people, and actively recruit unconventional candidates despite their level of experience or education.

We fully intend to keep the madness going, particularly due to two recent achievements that have proved the value in how we embrace humanity and create transformative data products here: our new strategic partnership with Drift and earning a spot in Inc. Magazine’s best workplaces of 2022.

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Drift Equipping PDL Data

We are proud to announce that after much discussion and collaboration on data used in sales/marketing automation, Drift has equipped our data, marking one of the most impactful deals in company history and the data industry at large.

What is Drift?

Drift is one of the world's leading inbound conversational marketing tool providers that welcomes inbound visitors to websites and/or provides support in a conversational style. People interact with Drift, and based on their responses in the conversation, are pointed in the right direction. Tools like Drift are often referred to as “chat bots”, but that term is now outdated as conversational marketing tools like Drift have advanced much further past simple chat bot functionality in recent years. 

As paraphrased from Drift, “We’re in the business of transforming online business. We take what’s broken, and humanize, personalize, and revolutionize them for our customers’ customers. Drift is more than just a technology company. Drift is a connection company, connecting buyers with sellers, and empowering experiences everyone loves.”

If you’ve done any internet browsing post 2018, you’ve likely interacted with a feature like Drift, if not Drift itself. In fact, PDL is also one of Drift’s customers.

Why has Drift Chosen PDL?

One benefit that brought Drift (and many of our other customers) to PDL is our high degree of flexibility. On top of the data we are building, we also apply consumption models that fit each customer’s needs, which allows us to meet them where they are. In most cases, we recommend utilizing our APIs to have highly accurate data, but we can also happily enable businesses to utilize our data on-prem in cases where they require maximum security, control, or speed.

In this case, Drift had 2 challenges:

1. The latency in time it took to enrich profiles was too high, which led to new visitors dropping off, causing their customers to miss out on potential wins.

2. Their existing data provider was operating in an adjacent market of sales and marketing, so there were heavy restrictions in place on what Drift could do with the data.  

Using PDL enabled Drift to have more freedom in both time and capabilities.

What is Drift Using People Data Labs For?

Drift was aware of PDL for a while, and finally decided to equip our data after analyzing numerous other options. 

We are equipping Drift with the ability to enrich users with their job title, company, location, etc. so they can provide superior information to their customers. In turn, their salespeople can better reach out to their customers by understanding not only a lead’s professional information, but how much of a fit they are in the first place. 

Onward

There are many companies like Drift that need our data and flexibility to upgrade their experience. We expect to interact with many more soon, but encourage you to reach out if you find your business to be in a similar situation.

Every Company is Becoming a Data Company

20 years ago, before most companies started becoming software companies, business owners would need to buy and rack servers if they wanted any type of data management. Now, we have platforms (like AWS and Google Cloud) that level the playing field and enable any company to become a software company. And now, every company is becoming a data company as a result of the high volume of software utilization. Building into the future, we like to think of what we are building as a data ecosystem, i.e., the Amazon Web Services of the data-as-a-service (DaaS) era. 

We have taken on the challenge of organizing the world’s information. We aim to build a “tool kit” of sorts consisting of a combination of our data, APIs, and utilities to empower innovative, cool, and robust data products, while having a blast along the way. We’ve made massive recent strides, such as our recent V19 release, and are excited for you to experience what we have in store.

Do you want to experience the madness? Apply here if you are looking for your next career journey or talk to us if you are a business looking to catalyze your business like Drift.

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