September 16th, 2005 8:38am EST

HCI Direct to Become Alliant Contributor

New Data Source for Alliant increases strength of predictive solutions. Alliant’s fifth new contributor in 2005.

BREWSTER, NY – Alliant Cooperative Data Solutions announced today that HCI Direct, a premier direct marketer serving the women’s market, has agreed to become a contributor to Alliant’s pioneering analytics databases. “With their 30 year history of direct-mail marketing leadership, HCI Direct is a high-value source for our growing cooperative data and analytics efforts,” said JoAnne Monfradi Dunn, President and CEO of Alliant Cooperative Data Solutions.

In a strategic move, HCI joined PCH, Reader’s Digest, and Scholastic, among other major marketers, in utilizing Alliant’s services to increase the performance of their outbound mailings. HCI established their relationship with Alliant in 2004 when they challenged Alliant to help them find more names that could be profitably promoted for membership in their continuity programs. Alliant developed a modeled solution that identifies names HCI would have normally passed over, adding millions of new prospects to HCI’s promotion plans.

Alliant maintains detailed histories of consumer response and retention patterns across thousands of direct marketing offers. Utilizing data from prior HCI campaigns, Alliant was able to develop a model that predicts the expected profit value for consumers that traditional list segmentation tools were not able to assess. In addition to expanding HCI’s universe of promotion candidates, the model is being tested in segmenting hotline names where there is neither the time nor the volume to use traditional segmentation modeling.

“We approached Alliant with the goal of identifying high-value behavior among our continuity-club customers. Their solution has helped us increase our mail volume and gain a significant number of profitable new members.” stated Marijke Bekaert, Senior Director of Database Marketing at HCI Direct, Inc.

“HCI has a great story to tell,” said Bart Surrick, Vice President of Client Engagement for Alliant. “They rolled out their new mail plan in January, 2005 with outstanding results. By leveraging our solution, they were able to significantly increase their available list universe. In some lists they were able to double the number of names they could mail profitably.”

HCI’s continued success with the Alliant solution led the company to become a contributing partner to Alliant’s cooperative databases. Alliant utilizes this information to provide direct mail and Internet marketers with a new breed of analytics-based enhancements to mail and response files. “The depth and breadth of HCI’s data and the historic strength of its market demographic will add new dimensions to our solutions,” said Ms. Dunn.

About Alliant Cooperative Data Solutions
Alliant Cooperative Data Solutions, LLC is a leader in the commercialization of cooperative databases that help marketers predict profitable consumer behaviors. Alliant represents the direct marketing industry’s largest and most comprehensive effort to combine the customer performance records of the country’s leading mailers and Internet marketers; providing services and solutions that help direct marketers manage existing and prospective customers for their profit impact. Alliant maintains information on over 116 million U.S. consumers and offers solutions from two distinct data resources. DecisionBase360™ allows marketers to target consumers based on performance histories, channel, and affinity information. TransactionBase® is a credit-decision database offering a powerful but cost-effective alternative to traditional credit scores.

Labels: Alliant analytics, Alliant data contributor, consumer response, continuity-club customers, Direct marketing, predictive solutions, retention