Consumer contact data
Reach households — with the consent each channel requires.
Consumer contact data describes people and households at home: where they live, how to reach them and the attributes that help you speak to them relevantly. It's powerful, it's personal, and it comes with clear rules. Here's how it works.
Definition
What consumer contact data is
Consumer contact data — sometimes called B2C data — describes individuals and households rather than businesses. A record links a person to a residential address and, depending on the file, a personal email address and phone number, along with descriptive attributes such as an age range, household composition, homeownership and interests.
Consumer data is the foundation of direct mail, opt-in email programs, audience matching on digital ad platforms and a great deal of market research. It's also the most regulated kind of contact data, because it describes people in their private lives. The quality of a consumer program depends as much on how the data was sourced and what consent attaches to it as on accuracy.
The record
Contact points
A consumer record can carry one or more ways to reach the household. Each contact point has its own verification process, decay pattern and legal rules.
- first_name / last_nameName
- Parsed and consistently formatted for personalization and matching. Some files also identify other adults in the household.
- postal_addressPostal address
- Standardized to postal formats and checked against change-of-address information so mail reaches the current resident. The most broadly usable consumer contact point.
- emailPersonal email
- A personal address with a validation status. For marketing, consumer email should come with opt-in permission for the kind of message you'll send.
- phone / phone_typePhone and line type
- A landline or mobile number, flagged by type. Mobile numbers carry the strictest consent rules for calls and texts.
- dnc_flagDo Not Call status
- Whether the number appears on the National Do Not Call Registry or applicable state lists, as of a stated scrub date.
- last_verifiedRecency
- When the record or contact point was last confirmed. Households move, and recency tells you how much to trust a field.
Postal address is typically the most stable and broadly usable consumer contact point, because direct mail is lightly regulated compared with phone and email. That's one reason direct mail remains a common first channel for consumer acquisition.
Attributes
Demographic selects
Demographics describe who lives in a household. They're delivered as selects — filters you apply to define an audience — and as fields on each record so you can personalize and analyze.
| Select | What it describes | Typical use | Good to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age range | An estimated age band for the individual. | Matching offers to life stage — retirement planning, first-home buying, family products. | Often modeled and delivered as a range. Never use data to target minors. |
| Household composition | Household size, number of adults and marital status where available. | Family-oriented offers; sizing households for products like insurance or utilities. | Describes the household as a whole. We don't offer data about children. |
| Homeowner / renter | Whether the household likely owns or rents its residence. | Home improvement, home services, insurance, solar and moving-related offers. | Ownership indicators can lag behind recent sales and moves. |
| Length of residence | How long the household has lived at the address. | New-mover programs; identifying established households. | Recent movers are valuable and time-sensitive — use the data quickly. |
| Dwelling type | Single-family, multi-unit or other residence type. | Filtering for offers that only make sense for certain homes, such as lawn care. | Multi-unit addresses need complete unit numbers to be deliverable. |
| Estimated income range | A modeled household income band. | Broad segmentation and offer tiering. | Modeled, not reported. Use as a broad segment, and avoid using it in ways that could be discriminatory. |
Attributes
Lifestyle and interest selects
Lifestyle and interest selects describe what a household is likely to care about — hobbies, purchase categories, media habits and causes. They're what turn a geographic mailing into a relevant one.
- Hobbies and activities — outdoor recreation, cooking, travel, fitness, gardening, home improvement, pets.
- Purchase interests — categories a household has shown interest in, such as home goods, apparel or books, typically expressed as an affinity rather than a transaction.
- Media and reading — general preferences for magazines, news or entertainment categories.
- Causes and community — general interest in charitable giving or community causes, used carefully and never in ways that reveal sensitive beliefs.
Interest data is usually either self-reported (a person told a survey or registration they're interested in something) or modeled (inferred from related signals). Self-reported interests tend to be more specific; modeled interests tend to offer broader reach. Both are useful, as long as you know which you're looking at.
We steer clear of interest categories that act as proxies for sensitive characteristics — for example, selects that would imply a health condition, religious beliefs or sexual orientation.
Provenance
How consumer data is sourced
Consumer data in the industry generally comes from a handful of source types. Each has its own strengths and its own consent profile, and the source type should be documented for every file you license.
| Source type | What it means | Strengths | Consent and notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opt-in | The person actively agreed to receive marketing or to have their information shared with third parties, typically at sign-up or registration. | Strongest permission basis; best suited to email and to programs where consent matters most. | Ask what the person agreed to, when, and how that consent was captured and recorded. |
| Public records | Information from government records that are lawfully available to the public, such as certain property records. | Broad coverage for attributes like address and homeownership. | Publicly available doesn't mean unregulated. Channel rules still apply to how you contact people. |
| Self-reported | Information people provided directly, for example in surveys, registrations or warranty cards, with notice about how it would be used. | Specific, first-hand attributes and interests. | Depends on the notice given at collection. The use should match what people were told. |
| Compiled | Records assembled and reconciled from multiple permissioned and public inputs, often with modeled attributes. | Broad coverage and rich segmentation. | Provenance should be documented per input. Modeled attributes should be labeled as modeled. |
Whatever the source, two things should always be true: the people described were given notice that their information could be used this way, and the intended use is consistent with that notice. If a provider can't explain the source type and notice behind a file, don't use it.
Rules of the road
Consent by channel
This is the part of consumer data that matters most, so here it is channel by channel. It's a plain-English summary, not legal advice — the compliance overview has more detail, and your counsel should review your specific program.
Postal mail
Direct mail is the least restricted consumer channel. Standard practice is still to honor mail preference and internal suppression requests, keep addresses current through move updates, and be truthful in what you send.
US law (CAN-SPAM) sets baseline requirements for commercial email: identify yourself accurately, don't use deceptive subject lines, include a working opt-out you honor promptly, and include a valid physical postal address. Our standard goes further: marketing email to consumers should be opt-in. Unsolicited consumer email damages deliverability and trust, and laws outside the US are stricter.
Phone calls
Telemarketing calls to consumers must respect the National Do Not Call Registry, applicable state DNC lists and your own internal do-not-call list. Under the TCPA, autodialed or prerecorded marketing calls to mobile numbers — and prerecorded marketing calls to landlines — generally require the consumer's prior express written consent. Several states add their own telemarketing rules on top.
Text messages
Marketing texts are treated like calls to mobile numbers under the TCPA, so they generally require prior express written consent. A phone number in a file is not consent to text it.
Digital audiences
Consumer email addresses and phone numbers can be used for hashed audience matching on major ad platforms, where identifiers are converted to one-way hashes before upload. Platform policies and state privacy laws on "sharing" for targeted advertising still apply. See use cases for how hashed matching works.
Boundaries
Sensitive data we don't offer
Some categories of consumer data carry heightened legal protection and real potential for harm. We don't offer them, and we won't build selects that stand in for them:
- Health or medical information, including inferred conditions or treatments
- Precise geolocation data
- Data about children or selects that target minors
- Financial account data, such as account or card numbers
- Selects that imply race, religion, sexual orientation, immigration status or other sensitive characteristics
Best practice
Using consumer data well
- Start with the channel. Decide how you'll contact people, then choose the contact points and source types that fit.
- Keep the field set small. Every attribute you license should earn its place in your targeting or analysis.
- Clean before you mail or send. Standardize and move-update addresses, validate emails and scrub phones against DNC before every campaign — see data hygiene.
- Honor requests everywhere. Opt-outs, deletion requests and do-not-call requests should flow to every list and every future refresh.
- Use it while it's fresh. Households move and preferences change. Plan campaigns around recent data and refresh on a schedule.
- Document your basis. Keep a record of where data came from, what consent applies and what you checked before each campaign.
Keep reading
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers about consumer data, consent and channels.
Can I send marketing email to a purchased consumer list?
Our position is that commercial email to consumers should be opt-in: the person should have agreed to receive marketing email of the kind you're sending. Sending to people who never agreed tends to damage deliverability and trust, and laws outside the US — and some platforms' policies — are stricter still. For acquisition, consumer email is better suited to opt-in programs and hashed audience matching than to cold sends.
Can I call or text the phone numbers in a consumer file?
Only with the right consent and after Do Not Call checks. Under the TCPA, autodialed or prerecorded calls and marketing texts to mobile numbers generally require the consumer's prior express written consent, and telemarketing calls must respect the National Do Not Call Registry, state DNC lists and your own internal do-not-call list. If you don't hold that consent, phone data isn't the right channel for your campaign.
What's the difference between compiled and self-reported data?
Self-reported data is information a person provided directly — for example in a survey or registration form — usually with a notice explaining how it would be used. Compiled data is assembled from multiple inputs, such as public records and permissioned sources, and attributes may be modeled. Self-reported attributes tend to be more specific; compiled data tends to offer broader coverage. A good data card tells you which is which.
Are demographic attributes exact?
Not always. Some attributes are directly reported or derived from records; others are modeled — statistically inferred from related signals. That's why many demographic fields are delivered as ranges or likelihoods, such as an age range rather than an exact age. Modeled attributes are useful for segmentation but shouldn't be treated as facts about an individual.
Do consumers have rights over this data?
Yes. Several US states give residents rights to know what personal information a business holds, to delete it and to opt out of its sale or sharing. Data brokers in some states must register with the state. Any responsible consumer data program has to honor those requests and keep suppression lists current across every file.
Do you offer health, financial or location data?
No. We don't offer health or medical information, precise geolocation, children's data or financial account data. Those categories carry heightened legal protection and real potential for harm, and they aren't part of what we provide.
Planning a consumer campaign?
Tell us the audience, the channel and the consent you hold. We'll scope the right records and fields — and tell you plainly if a channel isn't a fit.