I had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly DeBoer recently. She is a Product Manager at Experian working in Business Information Services. Kelly leads product strategy for our business marketing products.
In this Business Q&A we talk about B2B marketing trends and how Experian is helping business clients get the most out of their marketing initiatives.
Gary: B2B marketing has changed significantly in the last five years. What are some of the important trends that you’re seeing?
Kelly: What we’re seeing in the B2B space is really what we’ve seen in the B2C space for years, and that is, our clients are really trying to gain as much insight into their not only existing clients but potential clients as well?
So you know additional firmographic information, credit information, anything that gives them a fuller picture of their clients, and then not only how to retain their existing clients and cross-sell, but also in terms of prospecting, how to best reach these targets once we’ve identified them what’s the best channels to reach those prospects to get the best response.
Gary: Kelly, most of our clients think of Experian Business Information Services as firstly business data and credit risk management. So how are we helping clients with their marketing initiatives?
Kelly: With regard to B2B marketing, Experian has a tremendous amount of marketing assets including not only our U.S. Business Database which has over 16 million businesses. We also overlay that with our credit information, so clients can come and tap into this this huge resource to help them with their targeting in terms of selecting by firmographics, employee size, sales volume, as well as credit attributes, UCC filings, bankruptcies, information that can be translated to marketing campaigns.
It can be utilized for direct marketing, for telemarketing, for digital applications – social media, email campaigns, analytical solutions, modeling. So it’s a vast amount of resources that we can tap into to help with marketing campaigns.
Gary: Can you share about some B2B marketing solutions we can look forward to from Experian?
Kelly: Experian has a lot on the horizon with regard to B2B marketing. But one thing I’m particularly excited about is our new B2C linkage business to consumer linkage. Ultimately our clients have been coming to us saying you know, we’re looking for a way to link our consumer records to any businesses that they may be associated with. So we create a customized linkage system that allows us to take in those consumer records, match them to our commercial repositories, and then provide back information that allows our clients to then not only target that consumer at their residential address but also their business address.
So it gives them a chance to cross-sell and up-sell commercial offers as well as their consumer offers.
