Acxiom, Dun & Bradstreet Agreement Strengthens Small Business Data Source

Acxiom Corp., Conway, AR, and Dun & Bradstreet, Murray Hill, NJ, have inked a multiyear agreement in which the two companies distribute each others data products to their respective customer bases.

Data from D&B’s marketing information, including the D-U-N-S Number, will be uploaded into the Acxiom Data Network on a monthly basis, according to president of Dun & Bradstreet US Andre Dahan. And D&B will offer its customers Acxiom’s InfoBase, a business and consumer database.

The coverage given to small businesses by the two companies should increase by anywhere from 20%-25%, Acxiom’s group leader for data content Don Hinman said in an interview with DIRECT Newsline.

The increased strength of the data comes from Dun & Bradstreet’s verification process, which is more thorough than Acxiom’s. But Acxiom brings third party data to the table, allowing a fuller picture of the business.

Both parties declined to comment on whether this new focus of these two companies puts them into a potential bidding war with Omaha, NE-based InfoUSA, another major player in the small business data arena, preferring to point to value-added processing and campaign management functions they offer.

But Andre Dahan, president of D&B U.S. told DIRECT Newsline that his company evaluates pricing on a continuing basis. Dahan also said the alliance would provide “a much better return on investment” to customers that had formerly bought and merged data independently from the two companies, and said that the next few weeks should bring “products that will exploit the two universes of information.”