Acxiom, D&B Set Marketing Alliance
Acxiom Corp., Conway, AR, and Dun & Bradstreet, Murray Hill, NJ, agreed to a partnership this week in which Acxiom will market certain information from D&B's business databases and use it to rationalize its own data. In addition, D&B will expand its database by including Acxiom's data on small businesses and will have the opportunity to make use of Acxiom's consumer data and data-linkage technologies.D&B's marketing database contains information on 11 million U.S. businesses, which includes more than 200 data elements associated with each. Acxiom, meanwhile, has a reservoir of less-detailed business data, mostly on smaller businesses. It has primarily focused on consumer household information, which it has compiled within its vast InfoBase list of demographic and lifestyle characteristics.
"We often have opportunities for business-data applications, so the alliance with D&B makes a real nice fit," said Don Hinman, data content group leader at Acxiom.
Andre Dahan, president of Dun & Bradstreet U.S., said his company expected it would expand its business file by 25 percent with the addition of the Acxiom data.
"For us, the complementary aspect to the Acxiom relationship is that it broadens our relationship to small-business data," he said.
Both companies will receive royalties from the sale of each other's data to their customers and from the use of that data in the development of new products. One expected benefit of the partnership is the ability for Acxiom to use its linking technology to marry D&B's lists of business executives with the household data from InfoBase.
"A lot of marketers want access to the people at those businesses at home," Hinman said. "D&B has had a strong product there, but taking some of the consumer data that Acxiom has, together with the linkage technology that Acxiom has, we'll be able to link some of this data -- and that's an advantage for both of our businesses."
Dahan stressed that D&B was not entering the consumer-database business, although he said the company "may in the future see that as an opportunity, mostly in the context of helping businesses get to their target market."
