Database Marketing

It’s perhaps surprising to see people so attentive to their work at a company known for emptying out when there’s good surf to be found at a Southern Californian beach not five minutes away. But a walk through the Ventura, Calif.-based headquarters of Patagonia reveals a close-knit staff readily engaged in designing, testing and marketing this outdoor cataloger’s apparel and gear. Then again, perhaps it’s not all that surprising, given that the catalog’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, in his book “Let My People Go Surfing,” (The Penguin Press, 2005) wrote: “Work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. We all had to

When a retailer suffers a data security breach, the results are far-reaching and include financial repercussion, loss of customer trust and damage to the brand. News accounts of high-profile retailers hit by credit account thefts have shown that marketers are vulnerable to such attacks and need to take strong measures to guard against them. Tim Odell, executive director of technology at SmartReply, a voice and mobile messaging solutions firm, says some retailers have been lax about data security and don’t realize the damage that follows when a breach occurs. One way to combat breaches is to hire hackers to attempt to penetrate your systems at

Remailing the same prospect lists or cooperative database segments in the same season is common. But should you remail the exact same names? This is a frequently asked question, and as you’ll see, the best mailing strategy might not be obvious. When a particular list is mailed, or cooperative database model segment is used, results are tracked by source code. If the results meet a predefined criteria — e.g., incremental breakeven, 20 percent less than incremental breakeven — you want to remail that same list or model. If 10,000 names initially were tested, it would make sense to mail 20,000 names next time, and

A housefile, or customer list, is a valuable marketing tool if you maintain it properly. It enables more targeted marketing; facilitates various analyses; and generates incremental income from renting and/or exchanging names with other reputable mailers. When talking about building and maintaining a customer housefile, there are two issues you need to address: 1) collecting data into your order entry system, and 2) extracting relevant subsets of this data to build a marketing database. If you circulate multiple catalog titles or have a large file of records for which you’d like to see transactional history and do complex queries, maintaining a relational database

Matchbacks have become routine for catalogers. This is the process in which you check your orders against your recent mail tapes to give credit to the proper source code — to see where sales are originating, and which key code should be given credit for each sale. With the amount of business going to the Web, it’s next to impossible to track results to a specific source code without doing a matchback. How a Matchback Is Done Matchbacks link orders to mailings using merge/purge logic. The process allocates unknown orders back to mailed records based on customer-provided source code, customer number, merge/purge results,

Last month in this column, I defined the basic psychological and behavioral groupings of prospects and customers as suspects, prospects, triers, buyers and advocates. Developing marketing plans with these groups in mind can increase your results and profitability. This month, in the second of a three-installment series that concludes in the December issue, I’ll explore some strategies and tactics you can implement to accomplish this. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s assume that you’ve done a proper circulation plan and already know who you suspect will become your customers. Your suspects have become prospects by way of list research, and you’re ready to develop

While working with multiple cooperative databases can help you reach new prospects you might not have found otherwise, how can you be sure you’re getting the best results from each database? Developing a close relationship with your representative at each co-op is probably the best place to start, says Gayla Kraus, vice president of sales at Harrison, N.Y.-based co-op I-Behavior. A clear understanding of each co-op’s services will allow you to make the most out of your customer file and models based on it. Following are other tips offered by Kraus: * Keep your data up to date. Although it sounds simple, if every cataloger

In business-to-business (B-to-B), several key factors aside from traditional recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) values could play a significant role in the list selection process for both your prospect files and housefile. Taking the time to identify these factors can pay huge dividends in your response rates. RFM should continue to play the paramount role in your list selections, but consider these additional house and prospecting list strategies that will help you in your marketing efforts. Heed the X-factor An X-factor is any variable that identifies a file segment not defined by RFM value criteria. X-factors don’t replace RFM; they supplement it. Significant portions of many

Best-practices database content lays a foundation for sophisticated CRM. In an ideal world, every cataloger would have access to a state-of-the-art customer relationship management (CRM) system, including Web-enabled business intelligence, campaign management and customer touch point capabilities. Every organization would enjoy the continuous, widespread internal dissemination of complete, accurate and compelling data. All data miners and marketers, and all employees interacting with customers, would have instant access to all the data required for them to excel at their jobs. In such a world, smaller catalogers would operate with the same technological advantages as larger ones. Unfortunately, many catalogers don’t have the budget to invest

Seventy-five percent of direct marketing efforts targeted merchants’ housefiles in 2005, with the rest targeting prospects, according to the “2006 Multichannel Annual Trend Report” recently released by co-op database provider Abacus. The report also revealed that while response from mailings to housefiles was level at 4 percent compared to 2004, sales per book increased by 9 percent. Response from mailings to prospect files, however, were 14 percent higher than 2004, and sales per book increased by 17 percent. To keep this momentum going heading into 2007, Abacus offered the following tips: * Analyze and evaluate the acquisition cost and lifetime value of customers acquired through