WealthEngine's New Ratings & Scores Pinpoint Best Clients and Prospects for Luxury Goods and Services

BETHESDA, Md., April 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- WealthEngine, Inc.™, the leading provider of sophisticated wealth intelligence and analytics announced today the release of new and enhanced ratings and scores for effective wealth intelligence in the luxury market.  The expanded offering includes powerful new Wealth Insight Scores to help luxury organizations target and prospect to the most qualified affluent and high net worth individuals through their marketing efforts. By segmenting and prioritizing top prospects, luxury organizations have a sharper understanding of their high value prospects and can drive more successful business development activities and sales.

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"The affluent and HNW marketplace is unique. The customers are savvy, they have discerning interests, and they are faced with a wide range of products and services with which to spend their money. To compete in this demanding environment, providers of luxury goods and services need to understand the distinctive wealth, lifestyle and demographic attributes of their clients and prospects, and apply this insight to their marketing and relationship-building strategy," explains James Dean, Senior Vice President of Luxury and Financial Services at WealthEngine. "WealthEngine helps them do this by providing a complete picture of their current customers and the ability to identify those with the wealth and lifestyle that exhibit the same attributes—and are therefore most likely to become their next biggest customers. There is nothing in the market that compares—our wealth intelligence is the most robust, accurate prospecting and marketing tool available. The strategy, segmentation and sales that it delivers not only pays for itself but provides noticeable return on investment (ROI)."

WealthEngine's ratings and scores combined with lifestyle & Interests, psychographic, demographic and business intelligence on affluent and HNW individuals enables WealthEngine to pinpoint the best prospective customers for luxury clients.  The actionable insight makes it possible for luxury providers to segment their customer database and prospect lists and establish a data-driven marketing strategy for each prospect pool. WealthEngine's new ratings and scores go a step further to allow clients to rank order customers and prospects based on wealth, for greater reliability and more effective targeting. As Ted Curtis, Senior Vice President of Sales at Quintess, a leading destination club and provider of member-only vacation homes in 40+ locations worldwide explains, "The bottomline is that the use of analytics— and these new ratings and scores in particular—enables us to increase sales and maximize our marketing return on investment by giving us the intelligence to build a strategy to reach new market segments, target new customers with the right product offerings, and retain our current customers."

Included in the suite of ratings and scores are new and improved Wealth Insight Scores for net worth, liquidity (disposable income and bank account balance estimates) and total assets. The new wealth scores were developed and validated using actual, individual-level data and advanced statistical techniques, resulting in the most accurate and powerful scores available in the marketplace today. This approach is unique as they are at the household level . "Using individual-level data to develop the scores prevents one household with a multi-million dollar income from skewing the average incomes of other households in the tract, and avoids classifying renters as homeowners and subsequently inflating actual assets," explains Benjamin Post, Director of Analytics at WealthEngine. "It also allows for age to be included as a factor and to account for the reality that asset behavior varies dramatically by age."

WealthEngine's scores were created from over 50 different algorithms that take into account the amount of data available in the match as well as what source the data originated from.  The scoring algorithms have been validated against 'truth' files that statistically represent the U.S. population, further establishing their accuracy in predicting a valid score.  As Mr. Post explains "Our validation process indicated that our scores are statistically valid at 95%, to within one range above or below.  In other words, in over 9 out of 10 cases, our score values will be accurate to within one range higher or lower than the score range we provided. This means that the scores can direct clients, with unmatched reliability, to their best customers, time and again." 

On Tuesday, May 1 at 1 pm Eastern, Benjamin Post and James Dean of WealthEngine will host a complimentary half-hour webinar to discuss the application of WealthEngine's ratings and scores for effective luxury prospecting and marketing. Registration for the 2:00pm webinar is available here.  For more information on WealthEngine's ratings and scores, please visit www.wealthengine.com or contact WealthEngine at [email protected].

About WealthEngine, Inc. ™

WealthEngine, Inc.™ is a leading provider of sophisticated wealth identification and prospect research services to providers of luxury organizations including luxury goods, retail, jewelry, private aviation, automobile, travel, real estate, hotels & resort and art and antiques. WealthEngine clients also include many financial services firms and philanthropic organizations that target high net worth individuals. More than 3,500 clients use WealthEngine for comprehensive research and analytics on individuals, companies and foundations. Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, WealthEngine serves both the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.wealthengine.com.

SOURCE WealthEngine, Inc.