Zecible is a family business, which does not prevent it from being one of the leaders in the data market. It holds those of 38 million French people, recovered legally via partnerships with sites such as EasyVoyage, SeLoger or AlloCiné (when Internet users tick, not always knowingly, a small box which authorizes the processing of their personal data) . Its clientele is mainly made up of brands wishing to encourage the purchase of their products, but for the past five years, women and politicians have appeared there.
A reduced target for personalized communication
What are their demands? Julie Périssé, president of Zecible, has agreed to do a simulation for “Complément d’Enquête”. It all starts with this tool: “create targeting”. It allows you to select profiles to which an email or an SMS will be sent.
Take the case of a candidate who would like to communicate on a specific topic, for example the taxation of gasoline. All you have to do is tick the “car” criterion to reach an audience that owns one. Which, at Zecible, represents more than 7.5 million contacts. A communication on such a scale, which is similar to a massive distribution of leaflets, would cost more than 453,000 euros… and did not “strictly no interest”, according to Julie Périssé. “We prefer to have small campaigns, of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 profiles, she explains, because there, we can really do personalized and targeted communication.”
To refine the target, it may be relevant to add an additional criterion. We can thus choose to limit ourselves to “profiles whose household has income that does not exceed 3,000 euros”. We then go from 7.5 million contacts to 1.4 million, which remains “a huge target”, emphasizes Julie Périssé. Finally, you can choose to specifically target a geographical area: in this case, rather a rural area, where the car is more widely used. In our example, the candidate will have ultimately access to 4,408 profiles… for the modest sum of 264 euros.
Profiles anonymized
These profiles are anonymized because “we never make available to a candidate or an elected official the databases that make up our files, assures Julie Périssé. The candidate will never see the contact details of the people he will contact. He will never have access to their e-mail, their telephone number, their identity.” However, with all the criteria available to its database, Zecible’s techniques make it possible to approach political profiling. Every candidate’s dream…
Excerpt from “Big data: when politicians target us!”, a document to be seen in “Complementary investigation” on April 14, 2022.
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