Database Marketing: Mining for Gold

Find Specific Elements

“The challenge is not to drown in data, but to look at the specific things that are really valuable to take action,” says Michael Baum, president of The Guild, a Madison, Wis.-based company that started out connecting artists with buyers through its Web site before launching The Artful Home print catalog of gifts to drive traffic online. “The data that come off a well-monitored Web site are valuable in different ways to different groups in the company,” he adds. The Guild uses San Mateo, Calif.-based analytics firm Coremetrics to facilitate the streamlining of information.