I’m doing a little research into US based data rental and segmentation services.

Four services that look to have good value propositions and credibility are:

• http://www.melissadata.com
• (see Nielsen Claritas’ pdf brochure).
• http://www.infousa.com
• http://www.hoovers.com

And Michelle O’Halloran of http://www.makemoneyonyourlist.com provides her own service and claims to identify and use 66 segmentation categories, including “Upper Crust, Movers and Shakers, Country Squires and American Dreams”, whilst applying a variety of professional products for your analysis (Prizm NE, Psycle$, Connections), including identification of geo-demographic information at the census, block, zip 4 and zip 6 level.

Why segmentation is so important?

[widget id="ad-continue-marketing"]Ad: continue-marketing[/widget]Because categorizing your customers into profiles (including transactional value tiers and demo-psychographics) will help you target your promotional messaging as well as rent new data from list brokers that exactly pinpoint your best value customer types, which means lower data rental costs, and higher promo conversion rates.

Explore the Marketing Matrix available throughout this site for the full perspective on why and how to segment your customer data by various factors, including customer insight, transactional value and performance metrics, and multichannel marketing mix optimisation.