With pressures from falling sales to rising postal rates forcing marketers to be more accurate with their direct mail programs, geographic data service providers are competing to offer the best ZIP code and carrier route data in ways mailers can easily apply to their campaigns. Two of these companies, MarketMaps and Maponics, have launched new ZIP code data suites this month to address marketers' targeting and compatibility needs.
IBM continued its aggressive push into the analytics space Tuesday with the announcement that it would acquire predictive analytics firm SPSS and launch its Smart Analytics System in the second half of 2009. The planned acquisition, for $1.2 billion in cash, would equip IBM with SPSS' analytics software — including tools for data collection, statistics, modeling and deployment — building IBM's software portfolio as well as its business analytics offerings.
Innovation Interactive, the parent company of digital agency 360i and search engine optimization technology SearchIgnite, is raising its commitment to behavioral marketing with the US introduction of the Netmining Web site conversion optimization suite and the launch of the Netmining Evolution behavioral ad network. Netmining wants to "up the game" on behavioral marketing by going beyond simply recognizing users and segmenting them, said Will Margiloff, CEO at Innovation Interactive.
Business information and data services provider Jigsaw has partnered with Harte-Hanks to leverage its IT market intelligence. Jigsaw is an online directory of business contact information that is generated by a global community of 900,000 members. The database currently contains information on more than 14 million business contacts. Jigsaw will use data from Harte-Hanks, such as information about a company's installed technologies, to enrich the database and be able to provide more targeted sales prospecting and marketing data.
Network Solutions, a provider of Web-related services for small and medium businesses, has started reaching out to customers about a data breach that was discovered in early June. Credit card information on 573,928 individual consumers may have been compromised in the breach, which Network Solutions publicly reported at the end of the day on July 24.
A recent hack of Twitter corporate data off of the Google cloud server, combined with increasing consumer wariness, has made security "in the cloud" a buzz-worthy issue this summer.
In a crowded online retail market, Web analytics have become essential. But visitor counts alone aren't cutting it anymore for e-commerce firms looking to provide ultra-personalized shopping experiences.
Since the '90s, the sofware-as-a-service (SaaS) model has been applied to many categories of software, including customer relationship management and marketing automation tools. But applications are just part of the story for a new "network-empowered" direct marketing industry. Beyond software, marketing data and lists can also be delivered using an on-demand model.
DMNews' Essential Guide to Lists, Database Marketing & Data Services
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