Database Marketing: Mining for Gold

“My perspective is always looking at that data from the consumer’s point of view,” Kachura says. “The data collected is useful if consumers want to share it, and if you’re going to use that data to contact consumers about matters relevant to their lifestyle.”

Best Use of Cookies

Tracking customer behavior traditionally is achieved through depositing cookies on their computers when they enter your site. Web surfers, however, have grown accustomed to this from the hundreds of spam e-mails they receive. And as a result, they erase their cookies with increasing regularity, severing their ties with the related sites. “In collecting data, the only challenge is the increase in peoples’ tendency to block cookies,” says Baum. “If someone has blocked cookies or is deleting cookies, you have less information as to who they are and where they’ve been.”