Just as marketers putting together a pan-European campaign need to consider each country individually to stay within local laws, so business contacts need to be sourced in the same way, for exactly the same reason. Once sourced, country databases can be amalgamated into a single European database and made available for use.
There are three types of database: pan-European covering all or several European countries; pan-national within one country; and individual data sources within particular countries, says Richard Gibson, commercial director at direct marketing specialist RSA Direct.
European data can be sourced from:
- Suppliers of pan-European data
- Mainstream publishers, particularly of trade and technical publications many are British owned
- Specialist international brokers
- Suppliers within individual countries who are members of their country’s DM trade association.
Relatively few suppliers and brokers cover the whole of Europe, so marketers may need to deal with more than one. This can be expensive in terms of paying for multiple setup costs and marketers will need to arrange for de-duplication of the results.
Vic Godding, chair of the B2B committee at the DMA, says, In the UK a broker can expect to charge around 20 per cent for their services. In Europe the figure is usually half that and often much less. Inevitably brokers will be far less likely to spend the right amount of time putting together an accurately targeted mailing list.
Quality of information
Many marketers believe that UK data is more reliable than data from the rest of Europe. For B2B this is often not the case. The term ‘quality data’ is used to mean both good penetration and accuracy, preferably both.
In many European countries legislation restricts what data may be collected. Although nothing like the Business List Audit (BLA, the DMA’s voluntary business data quality standard) exists outside the UK, those databases that do exist are usually accurate: most data suppliers’ business comes from within their own borders so they have a vested interest in maintaining quality.
Gibson says, Some European sources are as good as any data source in the UK and are telemarket-checked just as high-quality information in this country is checked.
However, Stuart Guzinski, international list broker at Prospect Swetenhams offers a word of caution. The quality of data considered acceptable in Russia, for example, would not be considered acceptable in the UK seventy per cent accuracy for Russian data may be considered a good result, he says. Having said that however, compilers of European data will by and large try to apply the same quality assurance checks to all countries, which are covered on their database.
In most European countries, those starting a business must register with the government of the country where the business is to be established. In the UK, as the smallest businesses (soletraders or partnerships, not limited companies) need not register, the information gained from Companies House UK is incomplete when compared with the more comprehensive business lists compiled in other European countries.
Information collected by European governments usually includes the date the business was registered, its address and number of employees. Such information is in the public domain, although it may only be refreshed every 12 months. The names of directors and managers are not usually included in government registration information and are therefore more difficult to obtain.
Address formats differ enormously across Europe and information such as job titles and industrial classifications require local knowledge to understand and interpret correctly. Different languages obviously need to be taken into account, but even more problematic with a UK keyboard is something as basic as the alphabet if marketing to Greece, Russia or Scandinavia, or diacritics when marketing to countries such as Germany (umlauts), France (accents) and Spain (tildes).
As Robert Posner, European marketing director at Harte-Hanks, says, Cleaning European data is complicated. It needs to be cleaned country by country to ensure that the address format for example, remains standard for that country. It’s a specialist job.
Per Löfgen, director at EuroContactPool, agrees. When it comes to cleaning, lots of suppliers can verify the accuracy of the postal address and postcode for example, but far fewer can confirm that a specific company operates at that address. Data enhancement can only really be done by companies with access to a range of European data.
Legislative restraints
Most marketing is regulated by EC directives, which have been interpreted and implemented differently within different countries according to those countries’ cultures and legislations. For example, the definition of a ‘corporate’ rather than a ‘natural’ person in other words whether the individual is being addressed in his company or private persona differs from country to country, explains Rosemary Smith, director at Opt-4.
Matters are further complicated by the fact that strictly speaking, marketers need only adhere to the law of the country from which the email originates. As Carsten Brettschneider, CEO at FCBi Deutschland, says, The Telemediengesetz [legislation regulating telemedia] provides very strict rules about how German agencies and DM firms must handle email campaigns. It may not apply to firms marketing to Germany from outside its borders.
Even so, legal advice has changed as e-commerce directives from Europe suggest that local laws should be applied to electronic communications wherever they’re sent from. Pragmatically, marketers would get the best results by adhering to the expectations of individuals, which means in effect that marketers should adhere to local laws.
Thankfully, there are fewer restrictions for B2B marketing than for B2C and the legislation that does exist is mostly concentrated around telemarketing, fax marketing and email marketing, with most restrictions surrounding email. Consumer restrictions are spilling into the B2B environment however and current European legislation is due for reconsideration in 2008. All the signs are that regulations will be tightened.
As Smith says, Practically speaking, tougher legislation makes it harder to prospect online and therefore may force campaigns partly or wholly offline as offline names are often available where online ones are not.
Email collection
Collecting email data is often difficult and its quality can be inconsistent. Denise Henderson-Cleland, member of the DMA’s international working party and director of Mediaprisme, says, Sourcing email data is not a problem in France and Germany and practically impossible in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands or at least information sourced within the country is difficult to obtain. Some lists are sourced outside the country’s borders and quite a lot of European data is available in the US.
Roger Hodson, international marketing leader at D&B adds, We find that it’s the Nordic markets which have the highest coverage of email addresses. In these countries email marketing is more popular and accepted than telephone marketing.
Because electronic communication can easily cross territorial boundaries, email data is often collected by language rather than country with most other data there is very little duplication across country borders. Email databases may therefore hold cross-border information for countries that share languages such as Scandinavia and Benelux for example, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
A word of warning is sounded by Gibson, however. The proportion of email addresses available for the European working population tends to be low when compared with total market size, he says.
Pricing issues
Companies offering pan-European data generally have their own pricing structures which are very much in line with UK pricing and work for all data across Europe, says Löfgen.
For individual countries, prices vary hugely with data in small markets tending to be more expensive. Data is generally cheaper in Southern Europe and more expensive in Northern Europe with that from Spain and Portugal around half the price of data from Denmark and Sweden. Henderson-Cleland says, The price per record in the Nordic countries tends to be more expensive because the population is smaller, but the time taken to compile the list is very much the same for a larger marketplace. The cheapest data tends to come from Spain and Italy, partly because the business costs are lower.
Hodson adds, In some countries such as the Czech Republic where the data market is maturing, data is becoming more available and crucially, more reliable. As a result, we are seeing prices coming down.
The future
Much of Europe already has tougher legislation than the UK and the move appears to be to toughen the laws for those who enjoy more leeway. There are however, exceptions. Slovenia, which had strict ‘opt-in’ rules, found its marketing industry dying on its feet and reversed the ruling. Legislation will also continue to be introduced to benefit the environment and reduce waste, while advocates of email, previously claiming to be environmentally friendly, will be drawn into the eco question.
Respected DM organisations are already opening offices in several Eastern European countries showing that they feel the market is worth early investment. Bulgaria, for example, boasts one of the newest DM trade associations in Europe.
Many UK companies still consider it a hassle to work with cross-border solutions and are insecure about what they will receive and are unfamiliar with data from outside the UK. However, as Godding emphasises, there are competent businesses within the UK that are able to supply European data and if marketers decide to do it themselves, it’s important that they use local knowledge.