The Melissa Enterprise Key (MEK) is a 9-digit digital key assigned to companies in the U.S. Just like an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) identifies any book published, MEKs are a persistent, unique identifier for businesses that you can add to your database to help you:
- Identify duplicate businesses in your system quickly and easily by searching for repeated MEKs
- Group a company’s acquisitions and franchise groups
- Update stale or outdated information to keep your records accurate, such as contact information, phone number, web addresses, etc.
- Enhance your data with missing firmographics such as company size, valuation, SIC/NAICS codes, etc.
MEK Improves Business Data Quality
Whether you’re doing business with an individual or a company, contact data is crucial to maintaining a good working relationship. Without correct company information for the companies you work with, plan to work with, or hope to market to in the future, your business could experience:
- Duplicate mailings or communications that lead to customer or partner frustration, eroding business reputation
- An increase in fraud due to gaps in your data, potentially breaching compliance regulations and other business contracts
- Misguided or outdated B2B marketing campaigns, resulting in wasted time and resources
MEK technology helps you avoid costly mistakes like these by allowing you to gather information on companies you have gone into business with or are potentially planning on marketing to. MEK numbers stay consistent even as company details change. This makes it easy to keep track of your business partners and clients and stay up to date with any changes to their business details.
MEK Overcomes Common Business Data Hurdles
A contact at a company suddenly quits and leaves you with no information on who to reach out to. A business name has multiple variations. A business associate has contact data for a parent company while doing business for a subsidiary.
These are all common business data hurdles that B2B businesses or companies with many business relationships run into. MEKs can help alleviate these worries. Our proprietary engine takes data from a variety of sources and consolidates it into one identifying business number—the Melissa Enterprise Key. It takes into account different business names and acronyms, so that if a business shows up as Acme Inc., Acme, or Acme Incorporated across accounts, for example, they are all grouped together under one MEK, standardizing the name for ease of use.
MEKs also store business information such as physical address, web address, and phone numbers and track outdated information to help with your record matching and consolidating efforts.
MEK technology also allows you to enrich your data by appending missing business firmographics to your database. This data includes:
- Stock Ticker
- Sales Value
- Number of Employees
- Acquisitions
- SIC/NAICS codes
- Business Contacts
- And More
The Benefits of MEK for Data Management
Because a MEK carries no PII, they are ideal for sharing with outside vendors or partners who might not need a full account history of a business. MEKs also help cut down on storage, as there is less transmitted information when utilizing them.
