Direct Media Teams With Equifax, Blue Hill
Direct Media Inc. has partnered with Equifax and Blue Hill Data Services to offer a new suite of model-driven lists.
Believed to be the first of their kind, the lists, called DataMarts from LifeFiles, are built from Equifax data to which recency/frequency/monetary models have been applied. DMI clients are now testing them.
The objective is to “help business look at data in a different fashion,” says Direct Media’s chief marketing officer Rosemarie Montroy, who put the three-way deal together. It’s been in the works for two years.
Two main DataMarts have been created to date: Health and Beauty (6.2 million names) and Home Decor (5.9 million names). Also available are two DataMarts that run across all product categories: Spanish-speaking (97,505 names) and young grandparents (511,531).
But more are on the way. The team plans to add apparel, children, collectibles, gifts and gardening by yearend.
The main files have been broken down into three subcomponents, each constituting a DataMart unto itself. In addition, each list can be chosen by life trends or life phases.
These are postal lists, but e-mail match-backs will be available in January. Ethnic and religious selects are also on the way.
The base rental price for each of the files is $80/M.
To build the DataMarts, Direct Media took 1 million names from response files and overlaid them with Equifax psychographic and demographic data, achieving a match rate of 80%.
Blue Hill then built category-driven RFM models on the response files, which were applied to the Equifax data to create individual lists.
In a limited-time offer, a new DataMart user will be provided with a free mirror-image model in three days for each selection rented, according to Montroy. Custom models can be created for a fee, also in three days.
That model would then be applied to the DataMarts, producing a final count of names reflecting the mailer’s best customers.
Counts and orders are turned around within minutes, using IQ.Net, an automated list-count and fulfillment system. All models are built by Blue Hill, based in Pearl River, NY.
The Equifax data consists of self-reported information from The Lifestyle Selector and compiled material from its TotalSource database.
Each file has numerous demographic and psychographic selections. Names also can be selected by high ticket, midticket or low ticket, and mailers can pick the female or male names in household.
IQ.Net allows users to change counts right up to the last minute. Also available is prior use suppression and radius selects.
The models can handle up to 50,000 variables without clustering.
Where will Direct Media make its money? All revenue will be split evenly among the partners, says Montroy.
