ORLANDO, FL — Business information provider Dun & Bradstreet, Murray Hill, NJ, is planning to boost the promotion for its Universe Expansion File, a database of very small businesses that is too small to appear in its traditional small-business listings, said Sandra L. Stoker, vice president of information marketing at D&B, in an interview at the NCDM conference here.
The file, which was launched in January but has not received any promotional backing, contains a limited amount of data on 11 million businesses that often take in less than $25,000 annually but might still be of interest to some mailers. Stoker said the company obtains the information about the businesses, many of which are home offices or part-time enterprises, through public records.
D&B has long tracked such small operations so that it could assign them a DUNS number and an SIC code when they became large enough, but it has never made that preliminary information available to marketers until this year. Stoker said marketing plans for the file have not yet been finalized.
