1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to the real-time definition, processing and delivery of contact address lists over a network. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to selecting contact records for any geography of any size or shape that have a propensity to consume a specific product or service, and delivering these records with selected information appended, such as a contact name and a consumption propensity score, in a real-time environment over a public network such as the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Technology
Traditionally, the process of selecting and extracting records from a national contact list of 100 million plus records was limited to batch processes on large mainframe computers housed at companies such as ACXIOM, MetroMail and Polk. These lists were mainly used for direct marketing applications such as direct mail and telemarketing. These historical tape-oriented databases contained large records. They were typically several hundred bytes in size and contained separate fields for name, contact addresses: (USPS mailing address, city, state, ZIP code; telephone number, e-mail address, etc.) and various levels of geography, household and individual attribute data like age, income, presence of children, etc., as well as other data like geodemographic codes and composite social economic scores.
Based on the extremely large size of the database and sequential processing requirements, the definition of list selects and appends involved multiple people and took several days, since processing was usually organized around a large weekly batch run that processed all pending orders. The resultant list was usually only available on magnetic media such as nine-track tape that was then mailed or delivered by courier to the mail fulfillment house.
Custom geography selects like radius and polygons were not available. This factor, in conjunction with the long turn-around times, limited the usefulness of these lists for non-direct marketing contact applications like public safety notification of toxic spills, etc.
Product scoring models were limited to large mailers like Readers Digest that could afford to build a custom usage model using the attribute data on these files as independent variables. The list provider would then program this model and use it in the list select process. The building and programming of these models was usually a multi-month process and was a minimum of several hundred thousand dollars in costs.
In the mid 1990's, a CD based product called “Pro CD” made available key-entered data from the national white pages. Pro CD packaged and marketed the resulting database on eight regional CD-ROMs in retail computer stores, like Comp USA, for approximately $100 for both the software and the data. Initially, the software was primarily oriented to directory assistance applications. When the user typed in a name and city, the product would return a list of names, address and phone numbers. Later generations of the product had the address records United States Postal Service (USPS) ZIP coded, appended 5-digit ZIP code latitude and longitudes coordinates, and provided easy to use mailing and telephone number list select and extract software. The software supported geography selects such as State, NPA, NPANXX, City Name, ZIP code or an approximate radius around a selected record in the database. All the records for the same 5-digit zip code were assigned the same latitude and longitude coordinate, which made it easier to select a large radius like 25 miles rather than having to provide a large list of zip codes. There was no ability to assign a particular latitude and longitude and then generate records around this latitude and latitude point. This lack of geographic precision eliminated applications like direct mail to custom pizza store delivery polygons or mailing to high potential Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) customers with a high propensity to own a computer that live more than 2.5 miles from their telephone switch. DSL connectivity is currently limited to about 2.5 miles from a telephone company central office switch.
The contact list functionality and quality of the Pro CD product was limited by four factors. The first was that telephone book addresses are generally incomplete since many listings contain only a name and no address, secondary addresses like apartment number are rarely provided, and it is a difficult process to accurately translate a 7-digit telephone number and a partial street address and determine the correct NPA (area code) and city. These white page address deficiencies result in a mailing list with poor USPS deliverability as well as a deliverable list with very sparse coverage. A USPS mail deliverable contact list is a list where all the records are deliverable by the USPS to the addresses shown on the list. The second limitation was that there was no attribute date on the database to perform any meaningful selects. The third factor was the white pages for a given directory are published only once a year and about twenty percent of telephone listing change every year, which means that many records on the database are out of date. This high rate of white page listing changes coupled with the previously described correct NPA assignment issues and a large number of NPA splits occurring after the white pages were printed also made the quality of telemarketing or telephone number contact lists generated by the product somewhat less than desirable. The fourth factor is it is a messy and time consuming process required to manage an eight CD-ROM database on a PC that normally only has a single CD-ROM drive.
In the last few years, the major contact list suppliers like ACXIOM, MetroMail and Polk have made significant improvements in their database quality, depth of data and have migrated many of their databases from tape to disk storage. They have also provided electronic specification interfaces to their large customers to perform online counts. The method of performing these counts is usually from pre-stored geography summary tables. This method works well as long as the number combinations of geography and selecting or screening data is restricted to a finite number of permutations. However, the nearly infinite number of possible permutations using geography definitions of any area of any size and shape as well as product scores on thousands of products that are Geography, Household and Individual (GHI) data dependent, which require real-time computation, makes this method of pre-stored tables impractical.
Currently, there are web sites that provide some type of Internet based direct marketing list definition, ordering and delivery. However, none of the following Web sites: DataByAcxiom.com; InfoUSA.com; MyProspects.com; QMSoft.com; ThinkDirectMarketing.com; Ira-OnDemand.com or ListsNow.com provide anything close to the meeting the current industry needs. None of the above Web sites provide a mapping interface to provide an easy way to define and process custom geographic areas of any size or shape. None of the above web sites provide a way for scoring individual records in a list based on the consumption of a specific product or service. None of the web sites provide results in real-time and pushes the results to a user-specified node. None of the web sites provide a way to store a customized service area around a set of stores and permit the user to go back at a later time and generate a fresh new list for a selected set of stores without having to re-specify the service location geographic area and select criteria.
There is currently a definite need in the industry to provide a nearly 100% contactable, multi-application list in a real-time environment over a network. More specifically, there is a need for a user, using an interactive detailed street map as a reference, to easily specify a geographically defined trade area of any size or shape, select a consumption score above a cutoff value from a database containing several thousand product/services scores, select from a rich list of additional data from which they want to select or append, and have the resultant list returned to a network node of their choice within a few seconds after they approve the specifications, counts, and costs. In addition, there is a need for a multi-location user that does a monthly direct marketing campaign like a pizza chain doing a direct mailing around their stores, to define their polygon service areas using the above tools and save their select, append and geographic definitions. For their periodic mailing, they could generate a new fresh list for each store by simply selecting the store's saved mail specification record of the stores for which they want to do the mailing.
Such a system would allow the user to interface to the real-time contact list system over a secure public network with either a browser or a customized applet embedded into another application running on a client device.