Listen to this articleOver the years, Stirista has experienced tremendous growth, evolving into an award-winning data-driven, marketing solutions company with over 50 employees across three continents. Below is our recent interview with Ajay Gupta, CEO of Stirista:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Stirista?
A: Sure. Stirista began as a two-person operation in 2009 – basically just my wife Candice and myself – working out of our apartment in San Francisco. We have worked with some of the largest companies in the world, including several Fortune 500 companies helping them enhance their first-party data.
Q: What types of services do you provide to your clients?
A: Stirista is an identity company at heart. Often, companies lack complete information on their clients. We help them fill in the gaps and then find new customers by creating repeatable, scalable marketing technology solutions faster than anyone else.
At the heart of everything we do is data — our data is triple-verified and continually updated. This includes Stirista’s vast B2C database of virtually every adult in the U.S. as well as a comprehensive B2B database of over 30MM professionals. This enables brands to identify their audience and match it to the channels that reach consumers where they spend their time. Basically, everything a client needs to contact business decision-makers, and specific consumer audiences are available with our data.
We also offer our clients a full suite of omnichannel delivery services. We utilize our deterministic audience data and inferred social insights sourced from a mix of both online and offline contributors.
We keep our data on its toes with our segmentation software, which uses more than 400 filters to mix and match for limitless combinations. Our team takes the time to get to know our clients to ensure that we present precise, customized segments or targets tailored to the needs of each client. Emails were the first service Stirista offered after opening our doors in 2009, and we’ve made it our business to be best-in-class ever since. Emails still provide our clients with fantastic ROIs and continue to be an essential part of our business.
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Our clients (including many well-known brands) have seen success in our ability to build custom B2B audiences and link them to our consumer data. This dramatically increases the scale of our clients’ digital display campaigns, as well as other forms of omnichannel outreach.
Q: How is your data sourced?
A: For B2B: We capture email, name, postal, and other relevant business card information. We then append company information based on domain. Business data is collected directly from companies through surveys and phone calls. We also have alliances with marketing agencies and research companies that also contribute.
For B2C: Data aggregated from many sources and suppliers, including surveys, sweepstakes, online purchases, tax and deed records, vehicle registrations, wedding registries, utilities, and many other reliable sources. We also have partnerships with retailers and websites that allow customers to receive opt-in third-party offers that match their consumer data. Only of data where we can verify a real postal address and IP address is included in our B2C database. We place a great emphasis on keeping our data clean and verified.
Q: Ajay, you are very committed to fighting bot fraud in the industry. Tell us more about this.
A: It truly has become a passion of mine. Sadly, it’s been going on for years. I’ve talked about it in one-on-one conversations with fellow industry execs and have even blogged about it. The New York Times’ exposé in early 2018 shed light on it in a huge way about how easy it is to buy social followers.
I was not surprised because I work in digital media and knew about this practice.
But then, not too long ago, one of our competitors shut down operations with a “ceased operations” message on its website. One of our partners shared an email they had received from them, which mentioned that the parent company had completely shut down the business after discovering inconsistencies in how email open and click-through rates were inaccurately reported to its clients. Of course, the parent company did the right thing, took immediate action after discovering the inconsistencies, then offered its clients reimbursement for payment of services it had already rendered. While I applaud the parent company for doing the right thing, there are still at least a half dozen companies out there masquerading as legitimate entities that continue the practice.
Q: Why is it a big problem for the whole industry?
A: Yes, on the digital side it costs BILLIONS of dollars, and that’s well documented. On the email side, sadly, we have no idea. What I do know is that most acquisition email campaigns are a waste of money. It costs clients money, and it also costs the industry money because many disenchanted clients don’t want to do prospect email.
Recommended: Q: What sets you apart from your competition?
A: There’s not a lot of data companies that have made the transition to being a solutions company. You either get one or the other. But combining the science of data with the art of marketing – that’s something else. Stirista was a data-driven company before it became cool to be data-driven.
Q: What can we expect from Stirista in the future?
A: In 2019, the industry is spending more on digital campaigns and pulling ad spend away from traditional media. So, Stirista will also continue to support digital campaigns with precise, intent-based digital audiences. But, more importantly, we are looking to help more brands solve their first-party data challenges by breaking down barriers and tying first-party data with our identity data. We want to break down barriers of B2B and B2C and target individuals – whether they are at home or work. Our mission is to be the Google of first-party identity data.
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