Harte-Hanks, Inc. -  Direct Marketing, Direct Mail -  Category Directory

210-829-9000

200 Concord Plaza Drive
San Antonio, TX 78216

www.harte-hanks.com

Sales

$945 million

Business Description 

Harte-Hanks is a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to a wide range of local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers.

The Company’s direct marketing business operates both nationally and internationally, while its shopper business operates in selected local and regional markets in California and Florida. The Company believes that marketing continues to undergo a transition from traditional mass media marketing to direct and targeted marketing. The transition is being driven by the increasing sophistication and efficiency of technology and a growing need among marketers to customize the products and services they offer to customers. Direct marketing, which represented 62% of the Company’s revenues in 2003, is a leader in the movement toward highly targeted marketing. The Company’s shopper business applies similar targeting principles. Harte-Hanks strategy is based on five key elements: being a market leader in each of its businesses; increasing revenues through growing its base businesses; introducing new products; entering new markets and making acquisitions; using technology to create competitive advantages; employing people who delight its clients; and creating shareholder value.

Harte-Hanks is the successor to a newspaper business begun in Texas in the early 1920’s by Houston Harte and Bernard Hanks. In 1972, the Company went public and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The Company became private in a leveraged buyout initiated by management in 1984. In 1993, the Company again went public and listed its common stock on the NYSE. In 1997, the Company sold all of its remaining traditional media operations (consisting of newspapers, television and radio companies) in order to focus all of its efforts on two business segments - direct marketing services and shoppers operations.

DIRECT MARKETING

General

Harte-Hanks operates a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services to a wide range of local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers. The Company utilizes advanced technologies to enable its clients to identify, reach, influence and nurture their customers. The Company believes that developments in technology and trends toward more sophisticated marketing analysis and measurement will continue to result in increased usage of direct marketing services. Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing improves the return on its clients’ marketing investment with a range of services organized around five solution points: Construct and update the database – Access the data – Analyze the data – Apply the knowledge – Execute the programs. The Company’s client base is both domestic and international. In 2003, Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing had revenues of $584.8 million, which accounted for approximately 62% of the Company’s total revenues.



Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing uses technology as an enabler to capture, analyze and disseminate customer and prospect data across all points of customer contact. The Company helps clients manage the inquiries they receive from their marketing efforts, whether from Web sites, e-mail, toll-free numbers, trade shows or other sources. These inquiries, or leads, are qualified, tracked and distributed both to appropriate sales channels and to client management for analysis, decision-making and/or additional interaction in order for clients to more effectively manage their customer and prospect relationships. Using proprietary software and open software solutions, the Company also builds contact databases for its clients using the information gained from these activities. These databases help clients measure the return on their marketing communications and make more informed decisions about future marketing efforts.

The Company also builds customized marketing databases for specific clients and provides them with easy-to-use tools to perform analysis and to target their best customers and prospects. Using its proprietary name and address matching software, the Trillium Software System®, the Company standardizes large numbers of customer records from multiple sources, integrates them into a single database for each client and, if needed, appends demographic and lifestyle information.

Relational databases are built for clients from a range of facilities, each specializing in specific market segments. These databases are moved to the client’s site or maintained at Harte-Hanks with online access to client locations. In addition to building a client’s database and providing software solutions for analytics and campaign management, Harte-Hanks performs regular database updates. Harte-Hanks also offers its software module, the Trillium Software System®, for clients who want to integrate data quality capabilities into their data warehouse or operational systems.

In addition, the Company operates as a service bureau, preparing list selections, maximizing deliverability and reducing clients’ mailing costs through sophisticated postal coding, hygiene and address updates through a non-exclusive National Change of Address license with the U.S. Postal Service.

As a further extension of the client’s marketing arm, Harte-Hanks provides marketing research and analytics services. Specific capabilities include tracking and reporting, media analysis, modeling, database profiling, primary data collection, marketing applications, consulting and program development.

Harte-Hanks also offers direct marketing agency services to create the plan to manage direct marketing communication efforts. These services combine information-based strategy and brand-building creative efforts across both traditional direct and interactive media.

Harte-Hanks also provides a variety of services to help clients develop and execute targeted marketing communication programs. These include such upfront services as creative and graphics, along with back-end services such as printing, personalization of communication pieces using laser and inkjet printing, target mail and fulfillment, and transportation logistics.

The Company’s mail tracking capability and long-standing relationships with the U.S. Postal Service help ensure that customer mailings reach their destinations on time. By controlling the final stage of the print distribution process through its logistics operations, the Company facilitates the delivery of its clients’ materials while holding costs to a minimum.

Direct marketing services are marketed to specific industries or markets with services and software products tailored to each industry or market. Having established the basic technological foundation, the Company is able to provide services to new industries and markets by modifying its existing technology and information applications. The Company currently provides direct marketing services to all of its primary markets in addition to a range of select markets.

The Company continued to develop new solutions and enhance its products through several new strategic initiatives during 2003. Harte-Hanks expanded its CI Technology Database™, a market intelligence tool that profiles technology platforms at hundreds of thousands of business locations on three continents, to include data on small and medium-sized businesses. Over the past year, Harte-Hanks has added comprehensive data on 220,000 small and medium-sized business locations in North America. The Company released Trillium Software System® Version 6 Unicode Edition for the Chinese and Korean markets. The Company also had two mail processing facilities certified by the United States Postal Service for compliance with its Mail Preparation Total Quality Management (MPTQM) program, making the facilities the first of their kind in the country to earn this quality distinction. MPTQM is a systematic prevention-based approach for managing the quality of the mail preparation process.

Depending on the needs of its clients, Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing capabilities are provided in an integrated approach through 37 facilities worldwide. Each of these centers possess some industry specialization and are linked together to support certain clients that experience volume spikes or seek high-growth needs. The Company also provides direct marketing services internationally through nine offices located outside of the United States.
 

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