Corporate lease finance

dIRECT LEASE CORPORATE FINANCE'S solicitation mailer contains a brief description of its equipment leasing plans and a reply card. A simple package, perhaps, but there's more to it than that. By adding iMarket's Zapdata.com business information to its prospect list, the company has upgraded the targetability of these mailings.

How much of an improvement has it seen? In spring 2000 the Portsmouth, NH firm mailed 4,000 lease solicitations to a list of industrial laundromats provided by a laundry equipment manufacturer. That campaign, which ran shortly after Direct Lease began using geographic mapping and industrial classification data to pre-qualify its leads, pulled a 3.9% response.

Last month Direct Lease sent out 6,000 pieces. Based on early results, the firm believes it will double last year's response rates. This would be due in part to Zapdata's online appends, which provide fresh data to Direct Lease's records in the time it takes to download the information.

For the laundry equipment maker's prospect list, adding fax numbers and verifying and refreshing phone numbers allowed Direct Lease's sales team to make follow-up contacts in a more personal fashion. While Direct Lease marketing manager Robyn Gault allows that the initial reply card could have asked respondents for the fax information, "We like to make it-as easy as possible for [a prospect] to say it might be nice to get a lease."

Direct Lease, which before using Zapdata mailed half a million pieces per month, has trimmed its mailing levels by 80%.

What started as a strategic relation ship became much more in late March, when Dun & Bradstreet acquired Zapdata's parent iMarket. The purchase has allowed a seamless flow of information and small-market prospects between these once-separate companies.