National Car Rental is the largest car rental company in the UK with a fleet of over 40,000 and more than 150 branches. When combined with sister brands Alamo Rent-a-Car, Europcar and Guy Salmon, the group makes up one of the world’s largest car rental companies.
National currently uses its own database of business customers and prospects to drive its call centre and direct mail activities in the UK. Issues with data quality and the difficulty in selecting accurate targeted lists from external data suppliers prompted National to contact Market Location with regards to its future business-to-business data strategy.
To begin, Market Location took in the National and Guy Salmon customer and prospect files and matched them to the Market Location Database of 2.3 million UK businesses. The files were then put through a cleansing and enhancement process, which included the identification of duplicate and gone away records. Market Location was then able to add value to the remaining National records, by enhancing with data elements such as SIC codes, market sector codes and employee numbers. National then used these variables for segmentation and profiling, and to carry out its existing direct marketing activities to customers and prospects.
National has a robust credit checking procedure for all new accounts and therefore it was important that potentially financially insecure companies were removed from its marketing activities. Using Market Location’s Risk Locator product, which identifies minimal, low, average and high-risk businesses, the high-risk businesses were flagged on the National database to allow suppression from future campaigns. Market Location also excluded this variable on any new prospect data supplied.
The next stage of National’s data strategy was to gain a detailed profile of its existing B2B customer base. The enhanced databases were loaded into Horizon, Market Location’s online analysis tool, allowing it to produce penetration reports and single or bi-variant analyses instantly via the Internet. It was then able to select new businesses from the Market Location database for future prospecting campaigns based on its existing customer profile, which are more likely to buy its products and services. For example, it discovered that corporate hospitality and entertainment companies in the 10 to 250 plus employee size band brackets are good prospects for future marketing activities.
National are now using this insight to guide its data purchasing, direct marketing messages and lead generation activities in a more targeted manner. The results of this have been above its expectations, with the National telesales team achieving an 11 per cent conversion rate of new accounts being opened to contact made with decision makers.
Frank Reynolds, corporate marketing manager for National, says, “Market Location was the obvious partner for our future B2B data strategy. It listened carefully to our requirements and developed a unique solution for our specific business needs. Other data providers have proved inflexible and unwilling to adapt, whereas Market Location has delivered a truly customised approach. Horizon in particular has proved to be extremely powerful and cost effective, giving us 24 hour access to customer profiles and allowing us to take control of our future targeting activities in a way that has not been possible until now.”
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