Marketing services and your data
Published: 13 September 2023
INTRODUCTION
Our marketing services use data to help our clients find and better understand customers. This helps ensure people receive marketing for products and services that are more relevant to them.
On this page you can find out how we use data to help our clients with their marketing activities. It explains:
- what types of marketing services we offer
- what data we use and how we use it
- how to opt out of these activities
More detail can be found in our Marketing Services Privacy Notice if you need it.
MARKETING SERVICES USING PERSONAL DATA
Our services
Some of our marketing products use personal data, such as names and addresses. These are the Standalone open register and Over 18 validation.
The Standalone open register consists of names and addresses of people who have registered to vote in the UK and have not opted out of the open register.
The open register can be bought from local authorities by anyone and used for any purpose, including direct marketing. We obtain it from local authorities and then supply it to our clients. Our clients can use it to send advertising to people through the post.
If you want to opt out of the open register at source (so that your local authority stops supplying your name and address to all businesses, including TransUnion), please see here. If you just want to opt out of TransUnion's copy of the open register, please see below.
Our Over 18 validation service allows us to help clients check whether their customers or potential customers are aged 18 or over. To do this, we receive a list of individuals from a client, check it against any dates of birth we hold for those individuals, and return the list to the client with indicators showing which of the individuals are over 18.
This helps clients to avoid advertising age-restricted products (such as gambling services) to children.
What we do and don't do with this data
We do...
- Obtain the open register from local authorities and supply it to our clients for postal advertising
- Use dates of birth from credit reference data to help clients check whether individuals are over 18
We don't...
- Use credit reference data (other than the open register) to provide clients with new names or addresses for marketing purposes
- Use credit reference data to provide clients with information about people's financial status for marketing purposes
Opting out
If you would prefer that TransUnion doesn't use your personal data in the ways described above, you can contact us at ukconsumer@transunion.com and ask to opt out of our marketing services.
If you opt out, we will:
- Add your name to our marketing suppression list
- Remove your name and address from the copy of the open register that we supply to clients for marketing purposes (or flag it as not to be used for marketing in cases where we are supplying the data for multiple purposes)
- Not confirm whether you are over 18 as part of our Over 18 validation service
- Not use your personal data when building or updating our CAMEO product (described below)
MARKETING SERVICES USING NON-PERSONAL DATA
Our services
Some of our marketing services are based on the use of non-personal data. These are CAMEO, Homemover data and Property services.
CAMEO UK is a set of data which lists all UK postcodes and categorises them based on estimates about the types of people that live in each area. For example, CAMEO categories can be based on estimates of the average age, wealth and education level of the local residents, how rural or urban the area is, and what sort of properties there are there.
Similar data sets are also available for other countries.
We supply CAMEO to our clients for a range of different purposes. For example, clients might use it to help understand the likely characteristics of their customers, or to decide which geographical areas to focus their marketing activity on, depending on the types of product they sell.
Homemover data is a list of residential addresses together with information about the sale and rental status of those properties. For example, the data can indicate whether a property is for sale or available to let. It doesn't contain information about who lives in the property.
We supply this to clients to help them decide which properties they should send marketing to, and when. For example, a utility or home insurance company may use the data to help send its marketing to properties where people have recently moved in.
Property services uses a list of residential addresses together with information about the properties. For example, the data can indicate whether the property is a flat, a terraced house, a semi-detached house or a detached house, whether it has a garden and what council tax band applies to it. The data doesn't contain information about who lives in the property.
We supply this information to clients to help them decide which properties they should send marketing to. For example, a company selling conservatories could use the data to help send its marketing to houses with gardens, rather than to flats.
What we do and don't do with this data
We do...
- Use non-personal datasets from third parties (such as information about residential properties) to help clients target their advertising and make it more relevant to individuals
- Use credit reference data (but not any financial information) to work out average ages and numbers of adults per household to help build our CAMEO product
We don't...
- Use credit reference data to provide clients with information about people's financial status for marketing purposes
In some cases, we use these datasets in combination with each other to help meet a client's specific requirements. For example, a client may provide us with a list of postcodes for its existing customers, and ask us to find addresses which may have similar people living there. We can use CAMEO to find postcodes where we estimate similar people might live, and Property services to produce a list of addresses in those postcodes. The client can send postal marketing to those addresses.
MORE INFORMATION
If you would like to see more information about our marketing services and the data that we use, please visit our Marketing Services Privacy Notice. This also provides information about your rights over the personal data we hold about you, and how to contact us if you want to exercise those rights.