Newton Square, PA-based Naviant Inc. has formed a Canadian subsidiary in a bid to boost sales of its precision marketing services to Canadian firms.
In particular, the company is interested in promoting its Canadian “High-Tech Household” file, which contains more than 700,000 records, with anywhere from 16,000 to 30,000 new names being added each month.
The file is assembled from the product registration information people send in over the Internet after making a purchase.
“About 20 percent of our product registration business comes from outside the U.S.,” said Naviant’s senior vice president, Raymond Butkus. “And Canada is Naviant’s largest market outside of the U.S.”
Naviant Canada, based in Kanata, Ontario, is also the first international office Naviant has opened, Butkus said.
To manage and help promote the file, Naviant has entered a partnership agreement with Toronto’s Compusearch Micromarketing Data & Systems.
The two companies have signed a five-year contract under which Compusearch’s Prospects Unlimited division will provide neighborhood segmentation using its demographic and PSYTE cluster codes.
Compusearch also will serve as a licensed reseller of the Canadian High-Tech Household file and market the list though its direct sales force and indirectly through its sales agency and list broker channels.
Naviant sent roughly 1.3 million Internet-enabled Canadian registrants to Prospects Unlimited, which eliminated duplicates and cleaned and standardized the information.
Edward Myers, general manager of Naviant Canada, said “Canadian marketers have lacked a direct marketing list which offers them a wide array of demographic and high-tech selects.
“Compusearch’s geo-demographic data will significantly enhance the value of our Canadian HTHH file offering to marketers. And by managing and reselling Naviant’s Canadian HTHH file, Compusearch will offer its customers the ability to target Web-enabled households.”
Jan Kestle, president of Compusearch, said the growth of the Internet has created demand among marketers for a product like Naviant’s HTHH file.
She said that the partnership between the two companies will “enable us to provide Canadian direct marketers with the ability to precisely reach the increasing number of online households.”
Since 1996, Naviant has processed more than 45 million electronic registrations for more than 300 technology products sold by over 60 manufacturers and service providers.
Butkus said it’s the dominant provider of outsourced electronic registration with over 80 percent of the market.
To acquire names for its HTHH file, Naviant negotiates to obtain the rights to data collected on behalf of its clients. One of the company’s biggest Canadian clients is the Royal Bank of Canada. In the United States, clients include Cannon, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.
Naviant also counts Corel, the Ottawa-based software developer, as a client; although, Corel doesn’t grant Naviant access to its data.
In 1999, Naviant did $32 million worth of business in Canada.
