Define markets and find clients, backed by the best data

Experian Business Information has been purchasing, analysing, and merging prominent B2B datasets from the UK, Ireland and beyond for nearly 40 years. In all of this time it has been clear that no single source database in any market is able to cover all needs. The optimal database combines three virtues: 1) Coverage – covering as many firms as possible in the market. 2) Variety – maximising the amount and different types of information available on any one company. 3) Integrity – sophisticated ‘checks and balances’, developed over the years that allow inconsistent or inaccurate data to be easily identified and removed.

In the UK in particular, the range of commercially available sources includes: 1) Government databases (for example Companies House, Register of Charities), this is there for official company registration purposes and the filing of accounts and other company documents. 2) Open government data (for example, FSA, Council data, Licensed premises data) available under the terms of the Open Government License. 3) Online Business directories (for example Thomson, 118 information), where the primary aim is exposure to customers and therefore reliable in terms of contact information). 4) Specialist databases (for example Infynd, Veridion, Corpfin), which focus on gathering multiple contact information for all businesses in the market, and sometimes with specific depth of data such as fleet or M&A information. 5) Web-harvested information helping to validate other data sources as well as providing detailed information rarely found elsewhere. The data collected by us is the foundation of the goods and services we offer and, as with the combination of data sources, the combination of individual items of information and human analytics can create data outputs for specific use cases (such as modelling, segmentations) which are more powerful than the individual items provided by our suppliers.

Experian relies on Legitimate Interests as our lawful basis for processing B2B email data and fully complies with both the GDPR and PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations). Sole Traders and some partnerships are treated as individuals – so you can only email or text them if they have specifically consented, or if they bought a similar product from you in the past and didn’t opt out from marketing messages when you gave them a chance. You can email or text ANY corporate body (a company, a Scottish partnership, limited liability partnership or government body) just as long as you offer that company the chance to opt out and keep a suppression list of any opt outs you receive so that you can screen those companies out of future campaigns. Using targeted lists provided by Experian will help to ensure that you have a legitimate interest in contacting those companies included in campaigns you do contact.

Experian obtains it’s B2B data from a variety of sources; Government registers such as companies house, datasets released by the government under the terms of the Open Government License, specialist marketing directories and publishers of business directories. For a more detailed explanation of our sources please refer to our marketing transparency notice which can be found here: https://www.experian.co.uk/business-information/marketing-transparency-notice.