Adding the U.K. to the Data Pool
THE STEADY TAKEOVER of the U.K. DM industry by America continues-but it’s not just about dollars flooding in to buy upBritish suppliers. The U.K. market has also long been an export target for American DM products and services.
Now concepts are being brought across the Atlantic as well. The co-op database has been a reality in the United States for some eight years. Westminster, CO-based Abacus Direct Corp.’s Alliance co-op is the best-known and biggest in the catalog market, while publishers have a similar source in CircBase, from Direct Marketing Technology Inc. in Schaumburg, IL.
Yet the United Kingdom has had just one co-op database, introduced several years ago to qualified success.
List broker and manager Uni-Marketing and computer bureau Printronic International hope it’s time for a second effort. Last month, the firms pitched travel and leisure marketers and circulation managers on a co-op file they will jointly introduce. Uni-Marketing managing director Ruth Naylor-Smith believes the U.K. market is now ready “because of the capabilities of modeling techniques.
“Lifestyle databases are really making money over here by modeling and profiling. We have always said in the list [business that] if you can get mail order buyers and target them, they will outperform lifestyle data,” she says. That’s the major argument in favor of co-ops. You know the names on the file are multibuyers in that sector and should be highly responsive.
Major barriers to co-ops exist in the United Kingdom. In both publishing and travel and leisure, retail distribution is the dominant route to market. And in boardrooms, where such concepts have to be sold to a company, circulation and database managers barely have a voice.
“Even getting subscriptions to have a presence is a culture change. To then talk about merging your readers’ data with your competitors is one step beyond the pale,” says Naylor-Smith. There is also a powerful sense of secrecy in the United Kingdom about customer data. Oddly enough, the law is no barrier-as long as customers are given the chance to opt out of having their data shared, co-ops are OK.
The British may trail America on the co-op front, but they can take comfort in this fact: Although co-op databases took off first in the United States, the man who launched them there-Abacus’ Tony White-was born in the United Kingdom.
