The idea for the database, called OBiT, was developed jointly by Absolute Intuistic and Emma Reid, founder of grey market consultancy Grey Sells. They are behind the formation of The Stop Dead Consortium of marketers who will contribute and share data identifying deceased customers and prospects.
Since its inception in 2004, the consortium has attracted seven founder members, including Age Concern, Readers' Digest and Liverpool Victoria. Among the four other members, who do not wish to be identified, are a high street bank and a leading insurance company.
Reid is now recruiting additional members and expects to grow to 30 members "fairly soon". Members are expected to contribute data on a monthly basis.
Reid said members are encouraged to continue or increase their use of commercially available data. She believes the non-profit approach of OBiT will not harm the prospects for the commercially oriented suppression sources and may result in increased demand for them.
Reid said: "By working on a not-for-profit basis, OBiT has enabled founder members [of the consortium] to justify the release of data which is not currently commercially available."
"Additionally, the lower cost of OBiT data (at just £2,500 a year) will encourage businesses not currently using suppression data to enter the market and experience the benefits of this practice. Hopefully this will then result in increased use of commercially available data to identify deaths not identified by OBiT."
The database to date contains around 750,000 records from three of the founder members.
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