Keeping contact lists up to date and relevant

The types of marketing suppressions we offer are:

Deceased – to help organisations avoid contacting deceased individuals, and any associated distress that this may cause to relatives.

To create Experian's Mortality Suppression File, potential deceased individuals are identified from names and addresses in our credit bureau and then verified against names and addresses on public data sources such as Edited Electoral Roll (EER), Country Court Judgements (CCJs) file, and mail sent by our clients which has been returned.

Our third-party sources of deceased data include: Mortascreen from Wilmington Millennium; The Bereavement Register (TBR) from Sagacity Solutions Ltd; and the National Deceased Register (NDR) from The Ark.

Goneaways – to identify and validate where individuals have left an address, and who will not, therefore, receive the marketing communication intended for them. This can help to prevent fraud for individuals.

To create our Absolute Movers file, potential 'goneaways' are identified from Experian’s credit bureau, from mail sent by our clients which has been returned, and from third party files. These are verified as correct by checking against known activity by an individual at that address from our credit bureau data and by verifying against names and addresses on public data sources such as Edited Electoral Roll (EER) and County Court Judgements (CCJs), and mail sent by our clients which has been returned.

Our third-party sources of goneaway data include: the National Change of Address (NCOA) - Suppress file from the Royal Mail; Re-mover from The Ark; and the GoneAway Suppression (GAS) file from Sagacity Solutions Ltd.

Forwarding address – to provide a new address for individuals who have moved, helping our clients to maintain, or regain, contact with you if you move address. By ensuring that you get the marketing communication intended for you, this helps to protect you from fraud.

Our Absolute Contacts file is created from name and address information from Experian's Change of Address file which is derived from contact data on our credit bureau, providing a link between the goneaway address and the forwarding address. To be added to our forwarding address file, the forwarding address must appear on our marketing database so that we ensure there is an appropriate legal basis for contacting you.

The Royal Mail's National Change of Address (NCOA) - Update file is our third-party source of forwarding addresses. It contains the forwarding addresses of individuals who have registered with the service, enabling organisations to suppress the old address from marketing communications for that customer, and for their records to be updated with their current address in order to maintain, or regain, contact with individuals when they move to a new house.

Marketing preference services – to flag or remove individuals who do not wish to be contacted for marketing and have joined an 'opt-out' list to indicate that they do not want to be contacted via a particular marketing channel.

When you ask us to opt you out of Experian processing your personal data for direct marketing, we add your contact details to our No Marketing Request (NMR) file. This means that we won't pass your contact details to any of our clients for direct marketing and your data will be deleted from our marketing database along with any insights we hold. These requests may be received online through this Consumer Information Portal, by post, call or email to Experian, or via our clients. We retain just enough information about you to ensure that your preference not to receive marketing is respected in future.

Our third-party sources of marketing preference data include: The Mailing Preference Service (MPS) and BabyMPS run by The Data & Marketing Association; the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) run by The Data & Marketing Association on behalf of The Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

Credit risk suppressions are a series of data assets that we build to help clients better understand and allow for credit risk when building their marketing audiences.

Our modelled credit marketing risk score, known as Delphi for Marketing, scores every UK consumer according to their likely level of credit risk. It is used by our clients to "pre-screen" any marketing activity for likely risk, allowing individuals to whom the product or service may not be appropriate to be removed from the marketing campaign. We have several versions of this score, with different data inputs depending on whether the client is a CAIS (Credit Account Information Sharing) member or not. CAIS is Experian's database of credit account performance, shared by a closed user group with your knowledge, which is normally required whenever you apply for credit.

Our credit risk indicators are a series of credit risk variables, generally at person or family level, which have been derived from Experian's credit data assets and which can be used alongside the risk score to refine credit risk suppressions before individuals are marketed to.

Consumers benefit from the application of this data because it supports responsible lending by helping our clients to ensure that individuals are removed from marketing campaigns for products and services that are likely to be less appropriate to their personal circumstances or which they are unlikely to be interested in. For example, it helps to screen out individuals who are unlikely to be accepted for a particular credit offer.

Our credit marketing risk scores and indicators are derived from a combination of sources: our consumer segmentation/modelled attributes; data sourced from Experian's credit bureau data (including data relating to financial payment performance and to credit application searches; and public information relating to County Court Judgments (CCJs) and Insolvencies). Where an organisation is not a CAIS member, they can only use a version of our marketing risk scores where the use of credit bureau data in deriving the score is restricted. Our scores and indicators are recalculated monthly for all UK consumers.