Automotive Mailing Lists vs. Vehicle Registration Data: Which Best Suits Your Needs?

Automotive mailing list data and vehicle registration data are two different types of data that are confused quite frequently. Both of these forms of data have a large significance when it comes to researching, marketing, and collecting data for promotional purposes. This article will thoroughly explain both list data and registration data to clarify the differences.

Automotive mailing list data

Automotive mailing list data is used to reach individuals either via email marketing or postal direct mail.

Automotive mailing list data is utilized when a client wants to contact a vehicle owner. The consumers’ address will be available because, in order to stay compliant with regulations, our list data is not based on state DMV registrations. Our list data is collected from a number of sources including: auto dealerships, warranty companies, major national car clubs, automotive service chains, and insurance companies.

Automotive list data gives you the option to choose whether you want to contact consumers via postal or email. We have about 60% coverage when it comes to consumer postal data. This amounts to more than 114 million US households, 145 million vehicle owners, and 30 million enthusiasts, giving you a very large customer database to reach. Also, about 20% of our postal records will have email addresses to contact as well. The records are all verified by two separate sources to confirm the data is accurate. Mailing list data can be customized to the purchaser’s needs. The data can be broken down into many categories including year, make, model, ZIP code, county, fuel type, and many demographics. When trying to get in touch with a vehicle owner, the best option is list data.

Vehicle registration data

Vehicle registration data is best utilized when a client wants to know a general or very specific statistic about the targeted population (not wanting to contact the end-user directly). For example, an auto parts business wants to open a new store location where they will have a high volume of traffic. Registration data will give theses owners the information they need to know what areas are densely populated with motor vehicles, and what types of vehicles are in that area. Since our vehicle registration data originates from DMVs across the United States, this data covers over 99% of all vehicle owners across the country. Our automotive registration data is also very customizable.

Whether you are interested in vehicles that are in operation (VIO) or new registrations (new sales) we have data for you. The data can be customized by types of vehicles ranging from motorcycles and ATVs, cars and light trucks, to heavy trucks. The data can also be broken down by a certain geographic area. For example, you can order a file of a specific state broken down to show vehicles per ZIP code. More broad files are available as well such as an entire overview of the United States with no breakdown.

Similar to list data, there are many different ways you can have the data organized including vehicle make, model, year, fuel type, engine size, amount of doors and more. Clients can decide on the amount of categories they want the data segmented into. Registration data is a helpful tool when trying to understand the vehicle population of a specific area.

Why you can’t use registration data to directly contact an individual:

There have been two laws passed by the United States that ban using registration data to contact individuals. The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) was enacted to protect the personal information of drivers collected by the state DMVs. The other law that has been enforced is the Shelby Amendment. This amendment requires states to obtain a driver’s consent before giving out any personal information. In the industry, this is sometimes called “personally identifiable information” or “PII.”  This means the data cannot be used to contact owners, and we therefore do not provide owner information in our registration data. This covers name, address, where the vehicle was purchased, and VIN. The most we can include about an owner is their age, gender, ethnicity and income. If it is important to directly reach your audience, the only option would be automotive mailing list data.

Conclusion: using automotive “big data”

The important thing to keep in mind when deciding what type of data to use is whether you are trying to reach the end-user or not. Utilize mailing list data to contact individuals; use vehicle registration data to know the vehicles that make up your targeted area.