Strategy: Maintaining a Relational vs. Flat File Marketing Database

A relational database enables you to look across all catalog titles to determine who’s purchasing from your other catalog titles or sales channels. Relational databases are different data tables, i.e., multiple titles that relate to each other. A flat file is one-dimensional; a collection of data in columns and rows, often presented as a spreadsheet. If you circulate more than one title and cross mail to your housefile via a relational database, you can determine buying patterns in addition to standard recency, frequency and monetary value (RFM) analysis. It will enable you to mail “smarter” to your housefile. (For instance, you’ll better know how often to mail, which groups to mail and what title to mail.)