We sat down with Kendall Tucker, Founder & CEO of Knoq, to learn more about their latest launch - Knoq Data.
What is Knoq Data?
Knoq is a technology company that encourages people to talk to their neighbors. Usually our technology recruits, trains and guides neighborhood representatives (Knoqers) to go out into their own neighborhoods and talk to people about products and services that can make their lives better.
As you can imagine, it’s been tough to do neighborhood outreach during Covid. We have been building an internal product for years that recommends to our Knoqers who they should talk to and what they should say to have successful sales conversations.
Because of our company’s disruption, we decided to open up this internal data platform to companies we believe in to help them contact people effectively during this time.
Knoq Data is our internal data platform that contains data on 270M Americans (97%). Our data is ethically sourced and verified face to face. It is based on our own outreach and on data partnerships we have cultivated throughout the years and it includes phone numbers, addresses, verified emails, behavioral information and psychographic indicators. (See more about our data here.)
What prompted you to open up your internal data platform?
Due to Covid-19 safety concerns we paused neighborhood outreach in February to ensure the safety of our Knoqers and our neighbors. Our business has been impacted and we feel for other companies struggling to reach customers in custom, personalized ways as well.
In order to support other companies and continue being neighbors helping neighbors, we decided to open up our internal data platform to groups impacted by Covid-19 that are marketing to consumers via direct mail, call centers and email. We believe that in this way we can help others while continuing to grow our business.
Who is the typical customer that could leverage Knoq Data?
Our data can be useful across many industries. We started in energy and have also done a lot of work in telecoms, home security and pest. Recently we have had the most success working directly with marketing agencies. (See our full list of industries here).
Given that our data is consumer focused, it is most valuable to companies who are selling direct-to-consumer. (However, we do have indicators on who identifies as a business owner or has a home office. Given the increasing remote work, our data is also useful for some B2B businesses trying to target the now at home workforce.)
Our typical partner uses Knoq data to better understand their own customers through lookalike modeling on their customer file. The first step is we appending our data onto their customer file and identify trends that make people more likely to buy their products. The second step is we build customer segments so that they can expand their sales and marketing efforts in more personalized and effective ways.
Our software platform is location/GIS-based so an added benefit is that our partners are able to view their data and our segments in a map view as well as in our database. This allows our partners to recognize trends and make smarter purchasing decisions. Many of our partners historically did in-person sales and are now focused on direct mail and online marketing in order to survive and thrive during covid-19.
How does privacy for consumers work with Knoq Data?
We recognize that personal and corporate data is very sensitive. We combine enterprise-grade security features with comprehensive audits of our applications, systems, and networks to ensure customer data is protected.
Our software has been used to knock 10M doors and have 3M conversations. We were able to match these 3M conversations with an 82% success rate to credit, energy and demographic consumer databases. These correlations power our back-end targeting and chat recommendation engines.
We believe that data should be a force for good so we carefully protect the privacy of individuals in our app. Our data and learnings are used to improve peoples’ sales and marketing experiences. If someone wants to be removed from our database, they can send us a note and we’re quick to comply!
Knoq's business model has been focused on building face-to-face relationships with consumers, which obviously was affected drastically due to COVID-19. What advice would you give to other founders who have also been affected on how to navigate through this challenging time?
Running a startup during Covid-19 is extremely challenging. We’ve had to make hard decisions and adapt fast in order to keep our company growing. The biggest advice I would give to other founders during this time is to stay true to your mission even when everything else feels like it is in disarray.
Our mission is about neighbors helping neighbors. Even though we aren’t creating face-to-face interactions right now, we are still focused on building a product that leads to genuine, personalized interactions. We are only partnering with companies that we believe in and line up with our mission.
Staying true to your mission will keep you aligned and focused in this crazy world!
Want to learn more about Knoq? Check out their Company Page