How I Built One of the UKs Top Marketing Data Companies in Five Years

By Adam Herbert, CEO & Co-founder, Go Live Data

For Adam Herbert, launching Go Live Data in 2020 wasn’t a canny business move it was a necessity. After years in the industry, he saw a sector in decline: noisy, volume-obsessed marketing that left recipients disillusioned and businesses underwhelmed. Alongside co-founder Tim Langley, Adam set out to do something radically different and to treat the inbox with respect. While it hasn’t always been plain sailing, he’s learned a lot on his journey. Here he discusses the highs and the lows of running a business that, five years on, is competing with the industry’s biggest players.

When we started Go Live Data back in 2020, it wasn’t because we fancied launching another martech business. It was a response to a problem that had been growing for years.

Marketing had become (and still is) a mess of noise and numbers. Everyone is chasing leads at all costs, sending the same email to thousands of people, crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. The recipient (which, lest we all forget, is an actual human on the other end) has become an afterthought. And in all of that, trust was disappearing.

So, we set out to build something better. Something that put respect, relevance, and real intelligence back at the heart of marketing.

Starting with the ‘why’

I’ve worked in data and marketing for over 20 years. But the spark started much earlier when I was 16, building a local business directory to rival Yell.com. I didn’t have the language for it back then, but what I was really doing was trying to make outreach more natural and useful.

Go Live Data was built on that same instinct – that marketing should be about earning attention, not just grabbing it. Pelting someone’s inbox is obviously annoying (I’m sure most of us have been on the receiving end) but worse than that is the fact it simply isn’t very effective. From day one, our mission was clear: put the recipient first, build the tech to support it, and prove that you can drive performance without compromising principles.

Building differently

What’s made us successful isn’t what we believe, it’s what we’ve built.

We introduced Frequency Rules: a framework to stop brands over-communicating and help them get their timing right. We built Go Track to move beyond surface-level metrics and understand how people really behave across a website – not just who clicked, but who stayed, explored, and showed signs of intent.

And because no one else in the market had what we needed, we built our own EMS (Email Marketing System) from scratch; one that respects frequency, prioritises education, and actually works in tandem with our data principles. We also refresh our data every 30 days (rather than every 12 months like the rest of the industry) because the only company that has the exact same staff in the exact same roles 12 months down the line is your local family-owned chippy.

Alongside Go Data and Go Track, we now offer nine services in total. Each works powerfully on its own, but they’re designed to work even better together, sharing insight, optimising performance, and delivering campaigns that actually land.

We take all of this, and we bake it all into a way of working that’s genuinely different. Over 80% of the content we create with clients is educational. We don’t just help them generate leads – we help them earn interest. Real, qualified, long-term interest. That’s what we call marketing with intent.

The lessons in between

It’s not all been smooth sailing. In fact, some of the hardest parts have been the most valuable. I’ve learned how hard it is to scale without losing sight of what you stand for. I’ve had to move from founder to CEO – from being hands-on in everything, to building a team that could take the vision further than I ever could alone. That meant tough decisions, like parting ways with talented people who weren’t the right cultural fit. But we’ve come out stronger.

We’ve also tried to build a business that works for real people – our clients and our team. That’s meant being flexible, listening more, and creating space for neurodiverse ways of working (my co-founder Tim being a prime example of the strengths that can bring).

What’s next

Five years later and we’re working with brands like Amazon Business and AXA Health. We’ve acquired MIB, a respected automotive data company, which has allowed us to add the best fleet data in the UK into our ecosystem. We’re live in five markets and preparing to open a US office. We’re scaling fast but still questioning everything as we go.

I’m always cautious to make sure I’m not just mindlessly chasing growth. I don’t want to lose sight of what Go Live Data is all about: showing that marketing can be smarter, data can be cleaner, and outreach can be done in a way that actually works for everyone –  the sender and recipient.