System segments insurance market
Equifax National Decision Systems (ENDS) has introduced Micro Vision™ - Insurance, a customer segmentation system for insurance marketers. The system enables insurance marketers to segment and quantify current customers and prospects in terms of nine groups based on a combination of household characteristics, insurance product usage and potential insurance product needs. The system integrates aggregated financial services survey data with over 140 demographic, socioeconomic and housing characteristics to define customer segments at the ZIP+4 level of geography. Micro Vision-Insurance uses insurance purchase and usage information gathered from Financial Forum, an Equifax survey of consumer opinions and practices, to identify and define 37 segments.
These segments are then grouped according to similar insurance needs and purchase behavior to form the nine key groups: Estate Planners, Equity Builders, Cautious Investors, Money Managers, Mainstreamers, Rote Buyers, Credit Lifers, Non-Insureds, and Unclassifieds. Since each of these 37 segments is based on aggregate household characteristics at the ZIP+4 level, insurance marketers can profile their customer base and determine which segments represent prime sales potential. ENDS first classifies and profiles customer records and matches each household address with the appropriate MicroVision-Insurance segment.
Customers then have the framework for decision-making by using Equifax's Infomark PC marketing information system for desktop sales territory analysis, planning, and marketing.
Targeting product identifies credit users
MDS Decision Systems, a part of The MDS Group, and TransMark, a division of Trans Union, have developed a targeet marketing product called Silhouette which identifies people whose use of credit makes them prospects for promotional offerings. The product can be used alone to identify customers who are most likely to respond to a promition and it can also be used with pre-screen criteria or credit risk scoring products, such as Trans Union's Delphi, to help make promotions less costly and more effective. The product is based on a statistical technique known as credit clustering, which is an offshoot of cluster analysis.
Agreement makes data usable for desktop mapping
Strategic Mapping, a vendor of desktop mapping software, has reached agreements with six data companies to reformat their data for use with Strategic Mapping's Atlas software. Data on everything from the locations and sales of all fast-food outlets, to disease incidence rates, to purchasing potential for 4,000 specific products are available now for use with Strategic Mapping PC and Macintosh software packages.
Every major data supplier will now provide its data to Strategic Mapping to convert to Atlas format, including CAC Donnelley Marketing Information Services (Dun & Bradstreet), Equifax National Decision Systems, Etak, Geographic Data Technology, and National Planning Data Corp. (VNU). In addition, Strategic Mapping is offering data and computerized maps from the U.S Geological Survey and U.S. Census Bureau. The combined databases represent more than 75 gigabytes of data converted to Atlas format. Here are some examples of the data and base map files found in Strategic Mapping's new library: business locations, retail trade, health services, financial services, 1990 Census, specialized databases, international.
Along with the data, the company offers up-to-date computerized maps, organized by a variety of geographies, with detail down to the street-level. Data files are pre-formatted so they can be linked automatically to the company's library of computerized base-maps which, when combined with Atlas Software, can analyze the data geographically for use in such decisions as site location, target marketing, and sales territory design.
Terra View for Mac now available
TerraView, the programmer's tool for developing mapping applications, is now available on the Macintosh platform from TerraLogics, Inc. TerraView's function library allows application developers to focus more on the development of their applications and less on the problems of displaying mapping data. Current TerraView applications range from electronic phone book to military mission planning on platforms from MS-DOS to UNIX. Custom applications may be written in C, PASCAL, or any other compatible language without knowledge of complex cartographic constructs. TerraView is optimized for rapid retrieval and display of spatial data accessed from both magnetic and CD-ROM media. In addition, user interfaces that maintain the Mac look and feel may be developed using the Terra View GUI module.
TerraView enables a development organization to utilize newly available Census data, combined with the power of a Macintosh to build applications that allow a user to visualize spatial relationships. TerraView supports a wide variety of data types and classification systems, including ETAK, TIGER/Line, USGS, GBF/Dime, and Intergraph SIF. Classification systems automatically control feature display rendition, with runtime customization of colors, patterns, and feature subsetting. Functions such as zoom, scroll, feature identification, and address geocoding are simple subroutine calls.
Merger creates larger mail panel
Two marketing research and services firms, the M/A/R/C Group and Market Facts, Inc., have agreed to enter into a strategic alliance involving their consumer mail panel operations. The alliance calls for Market Facts to purchase the mail panel facility of Marketing And Research Counselors, Inc., a subsidiary of The M/A/R/C Group. This panel will be merged with a larger one operated by Market Facts, creating a combined consumer mail panel facility which includes more than 360,000 households. Simultaneously, the two firms have entered into a 10-year service agreement giving M/A/R/C access to the expanded panel for use in its marketing research studies for clients. Each company will continue to design studies for clients and analyze panel data independently.