DoubleClick To Offer Retailers Local Buyer Lists

DoubleClick on Tuesday announced enhancements to its Abacus business-to-consumer alliance, which will be aimed at helping retailers target potential buyers in their stores' areas.

DoubleClick announced the introduction of a new product, called RetailResponse, which, using the Abacus alliance's database, compiles a list of multichannel consumer transactions and allows retailers to build lists of avid shoppers. The Abacus business-to-consumer alliance includes more than 100 traditional retailers and many of the top-100 specialty retailers. Generally, retailers use resident lists, which include all local residents, or compiled lists--which add data such as age and income level--to coordinate their direct mailings.

"We've created new sets of variables that are retail-specific, and it will outperform those other types of list sources," said Eric Zilling, retail market leader for DoubleClick. "Basically, the data was there, and we've been receiving information on retail transactions from our customers." We've organized the data in a better way for retail."

In addition to unveiling RetailResponse, DoubleClick also touted the enhancements to its existing business-to-consumer alliance. These changes are focused on multichannel buyers--and helping Abacus' members to identify lucrative buyers via information gleaned from call-center and Web site data, and to direct traffic between their physical stores, Web sites, and direct mailings.

Abacus and DoubleClick had a troubled beginning, when DoubleClick ignited legal controversy in 2000 with a plan to combine Abacus's personally identifiable offline data with DoubleClick's own anonymous tracking information collected on Web surfers using cookies. DoubleClick ultimately withdrew its plan.

Since then, Abacus has expanded into international markets, including the U.K., Germany, France, and Australia. The company also launched a business-to-business alliance--using the same model as its business-to-consumer network, targeting sellers of business-to-business products and services.

Next story loading loading..