TechBytes with Ross Shanken, Founder and CEO at Jornaya

Tell us about your role and journey into Technology. What inspired you to start at Jornaya?

Prior to founding Jornaya, I spent 13 years at a Data Intelligence company, TARGUSinfo. I always loved how data can be utilized to solve complex problems and to unlock value for customers. I was attracted to starting a company from the ground up so I could help build a company that I wanted to work for! Jornaya (fka LeadiD) happened to be a good idea that would accomplish all these goals.

What is Jornaya and how does it fit into a modern Marketing Technology stack?

I started Jornaya in 2011 to solve the pervasive problem of a lack of trust and transparency in the lead marketplace. Marketers were extremely frustrated about the cost and quality of leads; conversion rates were poor, and compliance was a challenge. The only way to truly solve this problem was to have technology live on the websites where consumers were filling out lead forms – to anonymously witness the behaviors. This required us to build relationships with hundreds of Publishers across the industries we serve, like mortgage, insurance, education, and automotive. With the support of the major players across these major-life purchase (MLP) industries, we successfully deployed our technology across thousands of websites, to witness to the consumer’s journey of becoming a leader.

We evolved as a data-as-a-service (DaaS) company broadening our view of the customer journey. Our mission is to organize and provide access to consumers’ major-life purchase behaviors to enable marketers to have the smartest and safest interactions with consumers vs. the too-often “spray and pray” Marketing methods that are still pervasive with consumers. We have helped hundreds of companies by providing early behavioral buying signals on their customers and prospects allowing for optimized timing and messaging for their retention, acquisition, and cross-sell Marketing programs. The data we have is extensive and can’t be found anywhere else.

We work with a network of partners who operate over 30,000 comparison shopping and lead generation sites, allowing us to witness over 200 million MLP journeys every month. Our platform aggregates behavioral signals exhibited by consumers across these thousands of websites as inputs into derived calculations that determine a consumer’s in-market journey status. Anonymous and aggregated visits to your website domains become one of these many inputs.

Our technology platform is purpose-built to protect consumer privacy and safeguard your business’s proprietary and unique value. “Raw data” collected from our customers’ websites is never shared or revealed to anyone, and Jornaya never collects or receives access to any personally identifiable information (PII) from consumers on your websites. Importantly, we never enable marketers to interact with consumers; we simply help marketers to engage at the right time and the right message as compared to a more random, and less relevant approach.

What is LeadiD and how Lead Gen teams leverage your technology for revenue generation?

LeadiD is a unique identifier that’s generated the moment a customer lands on a webpage where our technology is installed. As a customer continues their journey on a website, the LeadiD witnesses their interactions and collects anonymous data related to their experience in a privacy friendly manner.

Lead buyers use the LeadiD to unlock an expanded data set from Jornaya to gain transparency, performance, compliance indicators, and ultimately the ability to value the leads they buy. A trusted independent third-party solution, like Jornaya’s LeadiD, provides buyers with the facts they need to make better decisions.

What are the challenges of Data Privacy and Compliance regulations such as GDPR, California Act, etc? How do you comply with the laws? Do these impact your business negatively?

While we are not subject to GDPR, we regularly review GDPR and the ever-changing regulatory environment. Though we do not handle PII, we actively work with several outside law firms, specific privacy, and security technology consultants to ensure we are always aligned with where regulation is headed at the state, federal, and global levels. Because of how we operate, it’s important to understand that we never enable marketers to interact with consumers; we simply help marketers to engage at the right time and the right message as compared to a more random, and less valuable consumer approach.

Which geographies are you currently focusing to boost your technology innovation?

We currently focus on North America.

Tell us about your technology integrations with other Technology platforms such as CRM, Contacts, Social Media, Automation, Contracts, Email and Customer Service.

We’re on a mission to organize and provide access to previously inaccessible customer journey behaviors to help marketers enable smarter and safer interactions. Fully realizing this vision is a function of not only having access to unique behavioral data but making that data highly actionable for the marketer. Our Integrations Hub does exactly that. Marketers using Salesforce, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Ellie Mae’s Velocify, and hundreds of other platforms can now seamlessly automate the use of Jornaya data within their existing acquisition and retention campaigns.

Our mutual customers are receiving in-market signal indicators for all of their consumers on a daily basis, alerting marketers of which consumers are in-market and therefore likely to be receptive to the marketer at that time. This data is posted directly to fields on the lead form and also added as actions within the activity log, which can be used to configure status changes and trigger timely and relevant dials or emails.