Data-Driven Marketing Archive
Finding The True Value of Extended Service Programs, Part 1: Modernization
Posted by: Nathan Baldwin on Monday, September 12th, 2011
Extended service programs are often designed and run for maximum operational efficiency. As a result, good marketing often falls by the wayside. With modest investments, companies can modernize their ESP programs and realize significant gains in revenue and profits.
Marketing Agility, Part I: Data
Posted by: David King on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
In a competitive environment, marketing needs to be more agile, in order to respond to competitive threats and new opportunities. In order to support this, our customer data also needs to be more agile, while still preserving the quality and integrity of the information.
Going Native: The Dilemma of Platform Proliferation
Posted by: Nathan Baldwin on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
We live in an age, in which the number of channels and devices continues to grow steadily. More outlets provide the opportunity to reach larger audiences, but at the cost of increasing complexity. Look for new technologies to allow marketers to design and deliver cross-platform communications more easily.
Dynamic Content and Analytics
Posted by: David King on Monday, August 22nd, 2011
Analytics can (and should) be used to match content to customer needs and propensity. This provides a ready mechanism to increase the relevance of marketing and therefore boost response rates and sales.
Finding The Frictionless Sale With QR Codes & PURLs
Posted by: Nathan Baldwin on Monday, August 15th, 2011
Any time we ask a customer to do something to complete a sale introduces friction that slows or stops the conversion process. Combining QR codes with PURLs is an effective way to eliminate some of this friction and boost conversion.
Rethinking Householding
Posted by: David King on Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
Householding consumers has become a staple of database marketing. Yet, fundamental changes in demographics and behavior, coupled with the falling costs of direct marketing, provide reasons to rethinking the practice.
The Customer Information Hub
Posted by: David King on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
Are "customer information hubs" something new, or just a new buzzword for an old concept. We think the term does signify a shift that is occurring in the way we manage customer information and how we use it across the enterprise.
Those Zig-Zagging Customers
Posted by: David King on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
We look at the phenomenon of zig-zagging, in which more valuable customers tend to spend less with our brand over time.
…Of Drowning Statisticians and Regression Toward the Mean
Posted by: Hongjie Wang on Monday, October 25th, 2010
Regression toward the mean is a phenomenon that we often fail to recognize, something we do at our peril, especially when using models in contexts for which they were not developed.
Should You Move Away From Relational Databases?
Posted by: David King on Monday, September 27th, 2010
Relational databases have become the norm in customer relationship marketing, although it was not so long ago that many marketers had to work with mainframe-based data structures or even “flat files” (of course, some marketers still use such systems, sometimes quite happily). In the 1990s, the relational database won the battle for the hearts, minds, [...]
Is Your Customer Base Changing?
Posted by: David King on Thursday, February 4th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I began to write an entry about a phenomenon we often speak to our clients about: how it is important to focus on cultivating and retaining best customers, but at the same time, it is just as important to watch for changes in the customer base that either indicate a [...]
The Next Big Thing in Interactivity?
Posted by: David King on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
The evolution of interactive marketing may be close to taking its next big leap forward. Let’s face it, despite the fact that we use “interactive” to describe digital marketing, there’s relatively little true interactivity. Most interactions still involve people sitting at a keyboard (or maybe a touchscreen) and typing or clicking away. Speed of interaction [...]
Directing Segmentation
Posted by: David King on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
With the arrival of the new year (and new marketing budgets), more than a few companies may be contemplating developing and implementing a new customer segmentation. Having seen my share of such projects over the years, I’d like to offer a specific suggestion for how marketers can plan for a more useful segmentation. The “Tell [...]
A New Decade, A New Census
Posted by: David King on Monday, January 4th, 2010
My summer job in 1980 was as a census enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau, a position that involved visiting homes of people that had failed to return their census form or had for whom the information was incomplete. It was a fun job (other than the occasional run-in with aggressive family pets) and it [...]