MaxMatch Factor: Joint venture aids SOHO market targeting

There’s a trade-off in targeting the small office/home office (SOHO) market. While it can be lucrative, prospect information has been available only sporadically or in disparate locations. As a result, such data has been difficult and expensive to collect.

To combat this, Dun & Bradstreet has linked with Acxiom Corp. to create MaxMatch, a service that provides information on small businesses and their proprietors. MaxMatch is based on D&B’s data rationalization service, which offers data on larger firms.

SOHO businesses with revenue under $25,000 do not qualify for a D-U-N-S number, an identifier that D&B assigns to businesses in its main file. MaxMatch gives these smaller firms and, in some cases, their owners, a nine-digit number that allows the company to track them. As such businesses grow, they can eventually qualify for a D-U-N-S number.

Here’s how MaxMatch works: First, marketers send their prospect lists to D&B in Murray Hill, NJ. During the initial stage of MaxMatch, the company performs several list hygiene operations before appending a wealth of business demographic data. This process organizes the information into a standard format and performs merge/purge functions. Once an identification number has been added to each record, marketers can purchase data updates.

Names of prospects that do not match D&B’s data are then sent to Little Rock, AR-based Acxiom. There, the unmatched prospect names are run through the data management firm’s AbiliTec system.

Acxiom’s consumer data gives marketers a rounder picture of their potential customers; in addition to basic information such as telephone number and geocoding, individual demographic and lifestyle data can be included as well. This potentially allows a field rep to include a target’s personal interests in a sales pitch.

The additional information lets marketers requalify targets. A CEO with a six-figure income who has a stamp dealership sideline is a prospective customer for a far greater range of office supplies, telecommunications and financial services than a stamp dealer whose household relies on that business for income.

Dun & Bradstreet/Acxiom’s MaxMatch service is not currently online, so marketers have to ship their files on magnetic tape to D&B for processing. Orders and updates are subject to the delays inherent in batch processing, even though both D&B and Acxiom’s independent systems have online capabilities.