RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

We research all our own data by drawing up a grid of firms we require in order to ensure the sectors we cover we have the major or appropriate firms for.

Our main sectors are:

Corporate Professional (Legal, Accounting, Surveying, Consulting)
Finance & Banking
Government & General

For instance, in corporates, to cover the major manufacturing, exporting, retail and consumer industries we :

and try and ensure all the major or key players are covered.

This initial grid of companies to load or data to find was done years ago, but is regularly refreshed.

Then we research usually direct into the company's website, supplemented by any published materials we obtain. We are on the circulation list for many of the larger firms' PR releases/newsletters, and garner information from there as well. We have good relations with, for instance, the "Big 4" Accounting firms and regularly obtain their in-house lists of staff and their expertise, to focus selections properly (Tax materials only to Tax Partners etc). We have never in 12 years of business had a complaint on this score, as we never use data obtained for any other than business purposes. We do not supply it for instance for credit card mailings that are personal not business based.

Much of this data is telephone checked, but there is also a specific rolling programme of telephone verification, where we work through the sectors - Corporate, Professional (Legal, Accounting, Surveying, Consulting) Finance/Banking, Government, Public & General - on a scheduled basis.

We also have an extensive clippings program, where we check journals, newspapers, trade magazines, company reports, PR releases, web releases, to take day-by-day information on changes/updates to our data.

We also do bespoke research for clients, where we build them a file by tele-verification. Unless this is for exclusive client use, which can be the case, this verification also updates our data.

All this is endlessly fed into the databases.

We have date fields for corporate data, for contact data, and for tel no data, especially with the TPS requirement for UK tel nos. So there are a number of data controls to ensure we always know the state of a record.

We also benefit from the returns clients send to us, as we pay for all returns at 40p UK/50p EUR for each returned record. This both means we stand by our data and state - at a financial penalty to ourselves if our word is not good - that a mailing will be delivered or we will cover the whole cost of it (40p/50p is the current average for costs per 1000 of a mailing).

Unlike many companies we do not say refunds only after the first 1% or 2% of returns. Our philosophy is simple: you buy our data, you are entitled to see it will do its job and deliver your mailing. If it does not do its job, you should be fully refunded. It's that simple.

To do this we run the kind of research and updating outlined above, and over 70% of our firm's costs are research costs-mostly staff who have built up enormous experience over the years, as our main intent is to get and keep staff with what we call a "data" frame of mind.

What we try and do in all this is ensure the ability of our data to do its primary task, deliver the client's message.

A last note: over 70% of each month's orders come from repeat business. For some clients over the last 5 years we have delivered over 100 separate list selections. And the FT, and the Economist Group, AOL, Deloitte Consulting, and the BBC all allow us to quote them as clients.