Michael Carney, president of soon-to-be-defunct e-mail list firm DirectQlick, has launched a new company and is building an e-mail cooperative database of people who have made online purchases.
Dubbed Empirical Media Inc., the firm has signed three clients accounting for about 800,000 e-mail addresses in the database so far, according to Carney. He declined to name the companies, but said one is responsible for the lion’s share of the addresses.
Carney said he expects to have a dozen clients participating in the Online Consumer Co-op, or OCC, in the next month.
To participate in the OCC, marketers send customers e-mails asking if they want to become members of a club called The Shoppers Alliance at TheShoppersAlliance.org.
Recipients must respond to the offer in order to end up in the co-op.
Besides the obligatory special discounts, in return for giving consent to receive e-mail promotions from participating merchants, consumers get $15,000 in identity theft insurance for any ID-theft incident that happens at any of the participating merchants’ sites.
Members also get a 30-day, lowest-price guarantee, under which if a consumer buys a product at a participating merchant’s site and finds a lower price within 30 days, the merchant will refund the difference. The site also offers a consumer advisory service, which includes links to governmental and non-governmental services to help them deal with issues such as ID theft, misleading advertising and faulty products.
Carney plans to enhance members’ profiles with demographic data to help identify prospects for clients, and then plans to charge merchants $10 to $20 per thousand addresses mailed.
“We’re doing this on a low-cost basis that allows them to step in without stepping in in a big way,” he said.
He said he recognizes that others, such as iBehavior, have tried e-mail co-op databases and failed, and that his main challenge is gaining critical mass.
He added his target client base is any firm doing business-to-consumer marketing.
However, “catalogers who have a Web store will understand this concept quickly,” Carney said. He added that DirectQlick will be shuttered on Jan. 1.
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