Performance Data and Retail Resources formed an alliance this month to offer retailers the ability to build customer and loyalty databases.
Retail Resources, Lyndhurst, NJ, uses the target marketing and credit databases compiled quarterly by Performance Data, Chicago, to construct databases for retailers such as Bruno Magli, Donna Karan, Restaurant Associates and Royal Doulton. Performance Data, the list division of credit bureau Trans Union, formalized the relationship to provide its retail list customers with a database vendor.
“Retail Resources tends to work with small and mid-sized companies; we don't pretend to do anything else but sell data,” said Jan Davis, Performance Data executive vice president.
Retail Resources can tap into a retailer's sales transactions to help them identify who is shopping in their stores and then segment and rank those customers by recency, frequency, dollar value and product preferences for targeted mailings, said Christine Foschetti, Retail Resources senior vice president of marketing. The firm also has a division that operates frequent shopper or loyalty programs for retailers.
Both firms become the preferred but nonexclusive providers of list and database services to their respective clients. Retail Resources will receive increased exposure for its services through the Performance Data national sales force.
“The [database] concept has been out there for a really long while,” Foschetti said. “A lot of retailers have come to realize that a database is much more meaningful than signing up for a mailing list.”
Ken Mizel, president of high-end women's apparel retailer Designer Connection, Rutherford, NJ, said the national chain of 10 stores uses a database managed by Retail Resources to communicate more often with its best customers and uses modeling services to build a customer profile for prospecting.
“I'm sure [the alliance] will be able to enhance what [Retail Resources] has been doing with more and better information,'' he said.
