Utlizing complex data elements will improve the integrity of your communication with your customers and help add new customers faster.
The mood of many marketers today rises and falls on a daily basis. Inspired marketing plans backed up by targeted data can improve response rates like never before. Even with the country leaning towards Privacy as the new religion, technology has advanced and allowed marketers to know their customers better. In addition to the traditional and proprietary cleansing services available, data is now incorporated into processing at many levels. Whether the information is transactional, demographic, lifestyle in nature or a combination of all three, the end result is a breakdown by deciles or persona’s. Adding promotion history creates another level and managing multi-channel contact adds still more depth to the equation. In the end balancing the financial commitment with the return on investment will rule the day.
Because of the amount of data now available many niche marketing companies are able to get insights that has long eluded them. The changes to automotive registration data availability had a great impact on catalogers in the late 1990’s. Now that void has been filled by Cooperative Databases that can provide transactional information and allow companies to infer auto ownership or match up precisely customer need with the appropriate offer. As multiple COOP’s moved into this space the costs were driven down more companies could participate, improving the knowledge pool for all and again lowering the cost of doing business. When this data can be included and streamlined in the process, when additional time is not required for model development or scoring, the freshness of the data is improved and marketers can get offers out in the most timely fashion.
Profiles and deciles, scores and persona’s have been integrated into each phase of the marketing effort. Questionable records can be screened early in the cleansing process and dropped if they don’t meet the mailers criteria. Records merged together can be evaluated by the record scores and the best record can be kept for additional processing. The best record is no longer just the most deliverable record, additional variables are now considered. Finally, post merge selections become a simply cut off or break even analysis. As with any direct or multi-channel program, testing will inevitably complicate the process, but every aspect can be considered in putting the best marketing effort in front of customers or prospects. The companies that introduce this thinking today by choice will avoid having it forced on them by necessity tomorrow.
Justin Jackson is an Account Executive with Donnelley Marketing with over 10 years of experience in consultative sales in the multi-channel arena. Email any questions to Justin.Jackson@Donnelleymarketing.com or check out the website: www.workone2one.com. Sign up for a free e-newsletter and you can be entered into a drawing for a free business profile.
