Data Axle names Wayne Townsend CPO and Natalie Cunningham SVP of Marketing to speed product innovation and go-to-market focus
Dallas-based Data Axle appointed Wayne Townsend as chief product officer and Natalie Cunningham as senior vice president of marketing. The move supports the firm's push to help brands meet rising expectations around generative AI, customer experience, and data privacy.
Data Axle provides B2B and B2C data, data management services, and omnichannel marketing solutions. The company said the two leaders will accelerate innovation and connect product with go-to-market across its portfolio.
Context and signal for product teams
"For more than 50 years, clients from SMBs to Fortune 500s have trusted Data Axle to help forge meaningful connections with their customers and promote growth," CEO Andrew Frawley said in a late September announcement. "That trust is built on a foundation of accurate, well-governed data. But the challenges and opportunities facing marketers today-privacy, personalization, and now generative AI-require more than a strong foundation."
Founded in 1972, the company operated for decades as Infogroup before rebranding to Data Axle in 2020 to reflect broader data and technology offerings. Frawley said both leaders bring fresh vision to turn data into "smarter decisions, stronger loyalty, and measurable business outcomes."
Townsend's product mandate: relevance over volume
Townsend, formerly chief strategic growth officer at Epsilon, brings three decades across data-driven marketing, SaaS, adtech, and martech. He will lead product strategy, development, and innovation to help brands unify and activate data for intelligent marketing and responsible AI enablement.
"Brands don't have a data availability problem today. They have a data relevance problem," Townsend said. "A single snapshot of a buyer isn't enough; marketers need to connect personal and professional profiles-combining what people do, what they care about, and how they engage-to create a unified view that powers more intelligent, relevant omnichannel campaigns."
He added a caution: more data without strategy can backfire. "More volume can create confusion instead of value." What stands out to him at Data Axle is the speed from insight to coordinated action-using AI to accelerate results, not complexity.
Cunningham's focus: make marketing an engine of relevance and growth
Cunningham is a career B2B marketer and two-time martech CMO with leadership roles at Terminus, Conga, and other high-growth SaaS and services firms. As SVP of marketing, she will oversee brand, communications, product marketing, and demand generation-clarifying how Data Axle connects with customers and expands influence with modern marketing buyers.
"Marketers' realities are always shifting. That's nothing new-we're always evolving. But today's CMOs are facing a once-in-a-generation transformation: Generative AI has flat-out changed the game," Cunningham said. She noted that Data Axle is "uniquely built to deliver that advantage," helping marketers drive results with confidence.
"Using AI to operate with leaner teams, increase productivity, and reduce budgets is table stakes. The brands that win know that's not enough. Top-performing marketing teams are leaning on clean, connected data as their ultimate differentiator in a world full of 'AI slop.'"
What this means for product development
- Define "relevance" in your data layer. Decide the minimum viable attributes, freshness, and identity links needed to trigger outcomes (e.g., conversion, expansion, retention). Avoid collecting noise.
- Unify identities across consumer and professional profiles. Evaluate identity resolution to connect B2B and B2C signals and reduce fragmentation. See background on identity resolution.
- Govern for privacy by design. Codify consent, data minimization, and access controls. Align models and features to policies and an AI risk framework such as the NIST AI RMF.
- Build activation paths, not just dashboards. Ship productized actions (audience syncs, triggers, journeys) with measurable lift and feedback loops for continuous learning.
- Instrument outcomes, not activity. Tie features to loyalty, LTV, CAC efficiency, and cycle time. Track the ROI of data enrichment and AI-assisted flows.
- Tighten product-marketing collaboration. Share a single ICP, message map, and experiment backlog. PM and PMM should co-own learning agendas and weekly deal/postmortem reviews.
Momentum: identity and partnerships
In May, Data Axle launched ProfileFuse, an identity resolution solution that links business and consumer identities for omnichannel engagement. The platform uses AI and verified datasets to enable deeper insights and audience activation.
The company also expanded partnerships, including a July collaboration with Dynata to improve identity resolution, data enrichment, and media activation. Earlier this year, it was named a "Strong Performer" in an industry analyst report on B2B intent data providers.
Next steps for product teams
- Run a 30-day audit: top five blind spots in your customer data, how they affect onboarding, personalization, and attribution.
- Pilot identity resolution on a bounded use case (e.g., ABM warm-up or churn save) and measure lift end-to-end.
- Review AI features: prune low-signal inputs, document data lineage, and add human-in-the-loop for high-impact decisions.
- Set a standing CPO-SVP Marketing sync to coordinate roadmap, experiments, and narrative for the next two quarters.
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