List company American List Counsel has created PerformanceLink, an open-source multichannel co-op database.
The database, which officially launched June 5, offers users capabilities such as segmentation, transactional data, product-level detail and customizable data.
PerformanceLink gives mailers “a dependable, huge source that will virtually have numbers of names for any offer, always,” said Mark Hammar, database project director for ALC, Princeton, NJ. “Moreover, the lists that make up PerformanceLink are from elite, blue-chip-type companies, merged together into one unique file.
“It provides a broker with an opportunity to answer their mailers’ questions they always have about databases, and that is, ‘I won’t test it unless I know who’s in it,'” he said.
Brokers will be encouraged to use PerformanceLink in their modeling proposals.
PerformanceLink participants’ data are combined and then sorted into common high-level and niche areas, Mr. Hammar said. The database is then updated with information like professional licenses, consumer and business demographics and multicultural and multichannel data.
Participants include Artistic Direct, Barron’s Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Broderbund Software, JC Whitney, Outside Magazine, Managing Your HR and Dental Economics Magazine.
Niche target markets include nurses who read; tech-savvy Hispanics who like the outdoors; lawyers who have moved recently; multichannel-shopping doctors; and construction workers with children.
PerformanceLink contains 30 million records at present, from customer files of more than 80 direct marketers.
“This is both a consumer and BTB database and will be at close to 50 million names by the end of June,” Mr. Hammar said. “It will continue to grow so that it services any offer from any mailer.”
