October 13, 2006

PNT Marketing Services, Inc., has released version 4.0 of its MetroMatch Linker software, a tool designed to match customer and prospect records across multiple data sets and create list record groupings based on any and all available links. The product now makes use of advance "fuzzy-logic" matching modes and includes 2 new matching algorithms: distance matching and business demographic matching.

Database Marketers and List Managers have long struggled with the imprecision of matching prospect lists, purchased lists, and third party demographic and firmographic data to their customer data. Managing Partner Phil Jarymiszyn points out, "this new version of the software overcomes lots of issues - it really lets businesses get more matches, faster, cheaper and with greater accuracy than ever before."

Similar names can now be matched based on physical distance not merely similarity of address. This permits incremental matches without devising thousands of new address similarity matching rules. The algorithm has interesting uses for matching, deduping and householding (the practice of grouping multiple individuals or companies within a single "household" or corporate family).

Business lists can now be matched on business demographics and address. For geographies which lack competitors in a record's business profile, matches can be made even where company names are different. This will obviously benefit business list compilers of specialized industries or geographies.

"Fuzzy logic" is an advanced concept from set theory that copes with ambiguity in a much more human way than the typical black and white logic employed by computers. For example, fuzzy logic would instantly recognize that "451 George Street, South" is the same as "451 George St So" without having to look-up abbreviation rules in tables, as older methods would. The use of "fuzzy logic" allows the system to automatically recognize likely matches that would otherwise be missed without returning a large number of "false positives." This yields more accurate matches faster, without recourse to the name and address standardization processes that are typically performed, since the system can recognize slight differences much as a person looking at the records individually would.

MetroMatch technology has applications in many B2B and B2C industries and PNT has seen particular success with Financial Services, Printing and Publishing applications.

For further information, please contact Managing Partner Phil Jarymiszyn in our Virginia office at 703-761-0291 or Client Services Director Adam Isler in the New York office at 212-932- 7898.