Acxiom Corp. last week joined the growing ranks of online list providers catering to small businesses by purchasing an equity stake in Internet solutions provider Digital Asset Management, Inc. which is touting a new subscription-based list rental model.
While online providers List Merchant, ListsNow.com, and MyProspects.com sell lists from licenced consumer and business data providers on a per-name basis, DAMI offers list building as one of the direct marketing tools in its $40 annual subscription.
For now, that fee will entitle users to build lists from Acxiom’s White Page directory of 85 million consumers and 14 million businesses. Subscriptions will increase to $180 when DAMI debuts its new Web site in May and adds searches by Zip code, SIC code and geography. The site will eventually provide access to the Acxiom Data Network of 185 million consumers.
DAMI CEO Dean Ross Eaker aims to build a community site to educate and inform SOHO businesses about direct marketing. The site will have proprietary search tools and links to direct marketing reference, media and vendor sites. Partnership announcements are forthcoming.
“The all you can eat model is unique,” Eaker said. “We will be ramping up the annual subscription fee similar to a cable service.”
Mark Theilken, Acxiom Data Group Leader, said the DAMI site in its current form offers an entry level marketing tool for small businesses that beats the static data available from a CD-ROM. Acxiom, Conway, AR, purchased a 42.5 percent stake in DAMI to create an Internet channel for the Acxiom Data Network.
“We have a number of channel relationships, this is a channel focus on SOHO market,” Theilken said. “The idea is to get them started with telephone data and upsell them with other data products.”
The Internet has transformed the way marketing information is used by giving home-based marketers affordable access to the same names corporate marketers have always had. Theilken said DAMI will not cannibalize the services of Acxiom/Direct Media because the list management and brokerage firm markets response lists that most small and startup businesses can not afford.
Lists built from the current DAMI sites (www.digitalasset.net, www.pc411.com) can be downloaded into any open contact management software. Eaker said this allows marketers more options than a closed system like MyProspects which only works with other MySoftware applications.
A subscription-based service also takes the focus off the list and its price and lets marketers concentrate on the equally important creative process, Eaker said.
White Pages data is housed in the DAMI data center and is updated by Acxiom every 30 days. Eaker said the site has close to 3,000 subscribers.
