Hoover’s began rolling out a set of concierge services for small businesses after being merged into the Emerging Business unit last summer.  Dun & Bradstreet CEO Bob Carrigan has positioned the new services as important to turning around the Hoover’s product line which has been struggling of late.  In December, Carrigan noted that the new services have had “good success.”

The Concierge services target SMBs with revenue up to $250 million.  Concierge services target the standard Hoover’s B2B verticals including technology companies, business services, financial services, and manufacturing.

Dun & Bradstreet Product Leader (S&MS Solutions) Michael Umbach noted that the company has long received requests for assistance with customer marketing.  Dun & Bradstreet is meeting this need by combining their expertise with their data and solutions to help customers implement targeted list building, marketing file enrichment, and marketing campaigns.  Furthermore, Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp, which was acquired last May, has had success offering concierge services to SMBs for credit products.

The services enable customers to perform targeted marketing without requiring them to add marketing headcount.  According to their website, “Our experts can serve as an extension of your marketing team, helping you find—and reach—your best customers.”  The underlying services utilize the Hoover’s, Optimizer, and NetProspex WorkBench (aka Optimizer for Contacts) platforms for fulfilling customer needs.  Dun & Bradstreet has also partnered with an undisclosed email platform to support email services.

Hoover’s is providing three related services for SMBs:

• Targeted List Building – Identifies prospects similar to a client’s best customers.
• Effective Email Marketing – Delivers email services including messaging, design, email coding, blasting, and testing.  Dun & Bradstreet also supports email verification, analytics, and unsubscribe / bounce management.  Landing site hosting is provided via an undisclosed partner.
• Optimized Customer Data – Supports data cleansing, standardization, and data enrichment for customer company and contact files.

As a promotional tool, Hoover’s is offering a free data quality check which assesses email deliverability, phone connectivity, and duplicate records.  This service would be provided by their NetProspex Workbench platform.

Many of the Concierge clients are signing up for a full year of service allowing them to run multiple campaigns, target different audiences, and maintain and enrich their marketing data files.

The acquisition of NetProspex has also directly benefited Hoover’s users.  Following the acquisition, the NetProspex contact file was merged into the Hoover’s contact set.  Furthermore, the professional contacts file was processed through NetProspex CleneProspex validation process.  Umbach noted that the improved contact data quality has raised customer satisfaction around contacts.