The UK direct marketing industry is to receive a major data injection with the launch of a company offering the largest pool of mail order transactional information on the market, which will also be offered to top brand owners.

Transactis, set up by former Abacus Direct Europe managing director Chris Morris, differs from existing data pools by combining incisive transactional data with indepth demographic and lifestyle information from the likes of Consodata and CACI. Alchemetrics will provide data processing and management.

The new firm has already signed up six of the UK's leading mail order firms, and aims to have up to 50 on board by September. Consortium members will also receive additional revenue, as the data will be sold to non-competing companies, including financial services, utilities, charities and automotive firms.

The profits generated will be divided between Transactis and participating mail order firms. "Savings in list acquisition, combined with the revenue stream that will be generated for them, will deliver six-figure bottom line increments, even before they have sold their first item of merchandise," claims Morris.

Joining Morris in the start-up are commercial director Tony Laws, formerly Abacus business development director, and operations director Lynn Handy, also from Abacus, where she held a similar post. Mark Patron, previously VNU Marketing Information Europe executive vice-president, is a non-executive director.

Data-pooling has become an increasingly popular strategy for non-competing brand owners, although it has had mixed success. The Jigsaw Consortium, for instance, only recently hired OgilvyOne to run its operation following concerns over data accuracy (PM February 14).

 

For more information about Transactis go to www.transactis.co.uk

 

  
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