Equifax and Claritas Alliance Wins its Biggest Ever UK Contract
Unique Marketing Database To Be Built For Marks & Spencer Financial Services
ATLANTA and LONDON, March 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The strategic alliance between Equifax (NYSE: EFX - news), the $1.6 billion global information solutions provider and Claritas, the world-wide consumer information company, has just won its biggest ever marketing contract in the United Kingdom, for a three- year project to build a unique marketing database for Marks & Spencer Financial Services.
This is the most significant undertaking between Equifax and Claritas since the announcement of their strategic alliance last year. The innovative database, which will bring together data never previously available in one solution, will be used by Marks & Spencer Financial Services to create an effective dialogue with its five million-plus customers and millions more prospects.
''This exciting project is a first in the United Kingdom,'' said Rich Crutchfield, Group Executive for Equifax in Europe. ''It breaks new ground and means that ultimately, Marks & Spencer Financial Services will have a total view of its customer base from an integrated financial services perspective.''
Equifax has made significant investment in its UK marketing services in the past six years and will continue to do so. Most recently it has established Knowledge Engineering(TM), which offers significant added value for maximizing customer relationships. Equifax is also the number one consumer marketing list provider in the UK, as rated by the UK's leading marketing publication, Precision Marketing. It cited Equifax's ''Dimensions,'' the UK's most comprehensive consumer marketing database used by many leading financial services providers and retailers.
Crutchfield continued, ''This undertaking for Marks & Spencer confirms Equifax's number one status in the UK for consumer micro segmentation. It exploits data mining expertise that is at the heart of risk and marketing solutions that are already being used by five major financial services providers in the UK and many more in the US. It is proof positive that we can help businesses position themselves for the future by using enabling technologies as a competitive differentiation.''
Simon Rushton, head of credit marketing, Marks & Spencer Financial Services, said, ''This contract will, in due course, enable us to create a dialogue with our customers, by marketing to them with the right offer and at the right time. We have over five million customers who obviously have varying spending habits. By understanding more closely our customers' spending patterns we aim to keep them more informed about the products and services of most benefit to them.''
Operating in compliance with UK data protection law, Equifax will employ innovative data mining tools to bring more precise understanding to Marks & Spencer Financial Services' own customer data. By ''mining'' a wide range of information from Equifax and Claritas on consumers, distribution channels and products, the two companies aim to help Marks & Spencer Financial Services target the right marketing programs to deliver the products and services their customers want, when they want them. These capabilities will, in the fullness of time, create the fundamental knowledge for Marks & Spencer Financial Services, allowing them to better understand -- and even anticipate -- customers' and prospects' needs.
Representing an industry first for its scale and technological innovation, the alliance will create a prospect universe, a unique database comprising 44 million UK adults, profiled using the Equifax Dimensions database and data from Claritas's Lifestyle Universe database. The contract is also unique in its blend of risk and marketing data that will be used to build the most accurate picture of the customer.
''The aim of the prospect universe is to allow Marks & Spencer Financial Services to truly understand the effectiveness of its external marketing mailings'', confirmed Rich Crutchfield. ''Through the technology, data and software solutions we are building they will, over time, be able to focus more accurately on the needs of their customer base and conduct cost-effective external mailings,'' he added.
Claritas has been the American market leader in precision marketing for over 25 years and is the UK's leading lifestyle database organization. It operates across the world, from the USA to Asia, in the UK and throughout continental Europe, offering services in 20 countries. Claritas, a wholly owned subsidiary of the $2 billion Dutch publishing and information giant, VNU, employs approximately 800 people worldwide.
EQUIFAX is a worldwide leader in shaping global commerce by bringing buyers and sellers together through its information, transaction processing, consulting and knowledge-based businesses. Equifax serves the banking, financial, retail, credit card, telecommunications/utilities, transportation and healthcare industries and government. Founded in 1899, Atlanta-based Equifax today has 14,000 employees in 18 countries and sales in more than 50. Revenues for the 12 months ended December 31, 1998, were more than $1.6 billion. www.equifax.com . |
