Not all direct marketing services providers are the same.
So much choice. The direct marketing services space in the UK is large. It encompasses a large number of companies of varying size, capability and product offering. It's often difficult to understand what players are all about and why you should choose them as providers.
Equifax is committed to providing comprehensive direct marketing services, pulling together the necessary elements required for each distinct solution or campaign. We've got experience and expertise built over a number of years in the industry that ensure we provide you with a solution that best suits your needs.
Your One-Stop-Shop for data needs.
Get the basics right. Say you're formulating a prospect pool for your marketing department; the likelihood is you're going to need to source data in a number of areas including:
- Basic Edited Electoral Roll including any possible adjustments to compensate for opt-outs
- Credit data
- Lifestyle data
- Recency, frequency and monetary value data
- Movers data
- Suppressions data
The traditional approach in the marketplace has been to buy each element separately. In recent years however industry consolidation and strategic partnerships mean that a one-stop-shop for data is now possible and offers distinct advantages to clients; specifically reduced management time and bundling discounts. What you risk with a one-stop-shop approach is being locked into data that is inferior to other sources in the marketplace.
That's not a problem with Equifax. Our rigorous data evaluation procedures mean that the data we offer delivers top quartile performance relative to the industry. What's more is that we give careful consideration to data delivery; all the data sources we offer meet rigorous hygiene standards and are either hosted within our infrastructure or contain a unique identifier framework that allows selections to be rapidly and accurately delivered. At Equifax you can one-stop-shop for your data requirements with confidence.
Execution, execution, execution.
So you've selected your data and you're at the point where you can think about formulating marketing campaigns. You've segmented your customer base and built propensity models to come up with a shortlist of campaigns. Now there's just the matter of campaign execution.
Simple? Not really. Direct marketing these days is becoming increasingly complex, involving multiple stages such as selections, data append, refinements, screenings and suppressions. All of these steps require rapid and accurate data processing and what's more, when you've actually got a target file for the campaign, the response data needs to be appended to it.
So what happens when the plan changes? OK, so we accept that direct marketing is becoming more complex and that executing campaigns is becoming more involved. In these situations, it's how your partner can deal with difficulties, changes and the unexpected that will demonstrate their value - because then when their actions will really impact your business.
Best of breed.
At Equifax, we're a firm believer of best-of-breed when it comes to people, process and technology. It's only by applying this approach that we can guarantee our clients a proactive, efficient and flexible service as well as resilience and contingency in terms of our infrastructure. Our delivery capability is based on robust and tested workflow management processes that ensure each stage is completed within stringent service levels and to the necessary specification. Supporting our capability is a fully resilient technology architecture supported by IBM and Acxiom, our technology partners, that delivers industry leading performance.
