Live from List Vision: Data Well is Not Yet Dry

List compilers have already found ways of getting around tough new privacy laws. And they are perfectly legal.

That’s the view of Harriet Heyman, vice president, senior strategic consultant for privacy for Harte-Hanks.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said Heyman, speaking at the Direct Marketing Association List Vision 2001 in New York.

Take the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act, which has effectively cut off access to credit headers, new mover information, aggregated credit statistics, reverse appends, and some mortgage data.

At first, the bill was viewed as an unmitigate disaster. Credit header data was a “huge source” of birth-date information, Heyman said. And loss of household loan information was valuable to marketers in the sub-prime arena.

But all is not lost. For one thing, vendors are still offering new homeowner files. “And compilers that do it will work even harder to be more comprehensive,” Heyman said.

Likewise, mortgage data is still available through tax assessor and deed records.

“Vendors will invest in standardized and compiling lender names,” added Heyman.

Age? One substitute source is survey data. Meanwhile, compilers are also working to glean age from every type of license, from barbers to hunters, county by county.

Finally, there are products that can substitute for the reverse append. Harte-Hanks’ Allink allows the retailer to swipe the card, a pick up the home and ZIP code. “You can identify a high match rate,” Heyman said. The company also offers Allink TeleCapture, for telephone appends.

Another blow to mailers was granted by the Shelby amendment to the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which effectively cut off driver’s license records and motor vehicle registrations. Companies can still use what they compiled before June 2000, but that data is rapidly deteriorating.

Motor vehicle lists were “a powerful lifestyle indicator,” Heyman said. And driver’s license lists included date of birth, height/weight information and use of eyeglasses.

Equifax is working on it through its R.L. Polk division. “Polk is still able to compile registration data in 50 states for recalls and market research,” said Heyman. Polk is using this legal access to build models based on current data, just as it did to cover the 15 or so states where the data was cut off prior to the Shelby Amendment, she added.

Telemarketing is another medium that has been hit hard. Fourteen states have do-not-call laws, and roughly 4 million consumers have opted out by signing up with the DMA’s Telephone Preference Service, said Patricia Faley, vice president, ethics and consumer affairs for the DMA.

But here, too, there is good news.

“We don’t see a shrinking universe that’s affected our clients,” said Heyman.

Heyman recommended calling names that may have not achieved “as tight a match on tele-append.” You can increase your names by 15%, 5% of which will be “really good,” she said.

Finally, there is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), which takes effect in 2003.

Under this law, which takes Healthcare providers and HMOs can market to patients