Panel Offers Six Ways to Get the Most From Your Database

2. Form a hypothesis. Know what kinds of product- and customer-related information you want to get from your data, Max said. Determine whether you sell better seasonally, if you need to target your mailings to a particular demographic, whether your free-shipping promotions are effective, and so forth. Pollack suggested contacting a vendor to do a survey of your customers. Geisinger pointed out that every marketing dollar the insurance company Geico spends goes through a forecasting tool. This tool enables Geico to measure how much business will be driven to its call center from each marketing dollar, down to the medium used (television, radio, print) and the market area.