InfoGroup launches b-to-b data product

Database marketing giant InfoGroup announced on December 7 it has launched a co-operative database called the B2B DataWarehouse. The new product combines information, such as business executives' postal, telephone and e-mail contact information, from several different lists.

The genesis of the product occurred when InfoGroup acquired Direct Media last year, said Ed Mallin, president of the services group at InfoGroup.

“When we acquired Direct Media back in early 2008, one of the initiatives we took on was to get our arms around its b-to-b data warehouse that it had been marketing for many years,” Mallin explained. “That warehouse had not received a lot of new technology and upgrades, so we took it upon ourselves to build it out.”

The platform aims to give client-side marketers and direct marketing agencies more granular data by collecting information from more than 1,500 sources with millions of business sites and executives at work addresses.

Data in the Web-based tool are updated in real time, Mallin added. He said he expects clients to use the offering for both acquisition and retention efforts.

“We have lots of clients coming to us and asking us to look at their customer files and find other executives and contacts they can reach at already existing customers,” he said.

InfoGroup, whose chairman Roger Siboni said last month that the company's management has “made no decision to sell the company,” also bought Experian's National Business database earlier this year.