Darwill

Three Ways to Build Your Database

Category: Data

Thursday, 22 December 2011 13:33

Agh! Data! The very word sends shivers down the spine of many a marketer. It brings up feelings of frustration and stress and visions of prematurely gray hair. But databases don’t have to be scary or overwhelming. Let’s look at the three primary ways that marketers can build a database.

1. Buying a List

You might be amazed just how detailed you can be when requesting data. You can request all manner of demographics, including age, gender, ZIP code, income, home ownership, number of children, age of children, and more.

The more detailed the data, of course, the more it will cost, so it’s important to understand who you are targeting and why so you can determine the value of each piece of demographic information.

2.  Do a List Append

If you already have a list and want to do more with it, you can purchase just the data you need. Let’s say you have names and addresses but want to know household incomes, the number of children under 18 living at home, or whether people own a home. No problem—you can purchase just that data.

In these cases, the data house will provide you with a list that has been “triple checked,” which means that the data has been verified from three different sources.

3. Customer Surveys

Rather than buy data, you can gather your own. This is one of the values of personalized URLs. You send customers or prospects to their unique URLs where they are asked to answer a variety of questions. Once they complete the survey, the results will be appended back to your database automatically.

You can set up the survey so that the questions are mandatory or non-mandatory.  If your goal is to gather email addresses, for example, you can require respondents to fill in that field before moving on to the next page (and before they are able to claim some kind of incentive).

Over the next several weeks, we’ll look at each one of these database-building approaches in more detail.  Also look for Darwill’s white paper, “Three Easy Ways to Build Your Database,” which will be coming out shortly.

Finding the Right Data is Easier Than You Think

Category: Data

Tuesday, 13 December 2011 13:11

In order to produce a successful 1:1 printing campaign, all you have to have is a great database, right? Not quite. Producing a successful 1:1 print campaign starts with having a great database, but even once you have the data, you have to figure out what to do with it. Often, that means data mining.Data mining. The very phrase strikes fear into the hearts of marketers. The ability to connect the dots to reveal buying habits and other customer behaviors is something many people see as complex, expensive and within the purvey of only the largest companies. In reality, data mining is well within the grasp of any sized marketer.

The first step is simply to understand the field headings in your database. What data are you capturing? Most databases have basic information, like name, address and purchase history. Are you also capturing information such as age, gender and home ownership? If so, this tells you the types of queries you can run. Running queries sounds complicated, but it simply means asking questions of the data. If you are a retailer, you might ask, “Which customers purchased hardwood flooring last month?” If you know that these customers are also likely to purchase area rugs and floor conditioning products, this gives you a great start.

Look at Everything

The great thing about data mining is that sorting is free. Run every sort you can think of. Is there a relationship between hardwood flooring and gender? How about income? Look at everything. You might find that data you once thought irrelevant, such as the date of purchase, has more relevance than you think.

Make the Most of What You Have

Every business has a database program so make the most of yours. Even basic software, like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access provides some data mining capabilities. Or you might want to purchase add-on data mining modules or third-party software. If you have customer information in multiple databases, you might also want to combine them into a single, comprehensive database for use in marketing. Even if you don’t, you can often extract useful information from even one or two databases.

Don’t overlook outsourcing. There are plenty of companies that specialize in this process. Many will use the moniker “business intelligence” or ETL (extract, transform, load) companies. Costs can be very reasonable, as little as $100 or more per sort. So get curious. Take a few hours to run a variety of sorts just to see what you can find. That curiosity could make a big difference to the bottom line.

“You Shall Not Pass” on Bad Data

Category: Data

Monday, 21 November 2011 13:37

In a highly dramatic scene in the film epic, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” actor Ian McKellen imbues wizard Gandalf the Grey with total authority. As the Fellowship escapes along a stone bridge, running away from a  giant beast, Gandalf commands, “You shall not pass!”

In today’s age of high-volume target marketing, marketers need their own kind of magic to slay the demons of inaccurate data. Businesses are looking for the something that may, at first, seem at odds: They want the most customized piece as possible, but with the most efficient process possible. Maximum customization with minimum handling. The answer is, however, counterintuitive: Put a digital Gandalf in charge.

According to Jessica Formosa, writing in Target Marketing, the “Address Quality Gatekeeper” is a key role to reducing costs and increasing quality. Not long ago, databases were not connected or cross-referenced, so independent departments or work groups would maintain their own lists, and update them according to their own needs. And, while new integrated CRM systems have rectified some of the problems, there’s still a long way to go to normalize the information across the various sources.

Formosa notes there are still some procedural issues with companies and their data quality. Companies still cling to old methods – like having customers maintain their own records -- to manage data quality, with varying success. Relying on call centers and returned mail is another approach with it’s own set of limitations and expenses.

Formosa describes the point-of-entry solution as a “gatekeeper” to ensure no address enters the database unless it has been validated.

“There is no sense in adding records to your system that are going to cost money to fix later on,” she writes. “A gatekeeper will prevent most errors from getting into your system in the first place.”

Specifically, address-quality gatekeepers should do three major things: standardize address formats to USPS specifications, offer address correction and verification, and validate delivery points.

And, just like there were to more “Lord of the Rings” installments after “Fellowship,” a quality gatekeeper is just one part of a data quality strategy. It’s the first step, however, in your processes to keep data current and useful. In addition to keeping up with the 40 million households that move each year and zip code changes, it doesn’t hurt to have a set of human eyes look over the list, too. This is especially true “Hot 100” or key accounts where the buyer contact may not be the same as the primary contact in the database. This real-world check is the kind of attention to detail that can turn a marketing campaign into a blockbuster.

QR Codes Aren’t Just for Ads & Mail

Category: Data

Thursday, 17 November 2011 13:40

When we think about the use of QR codes in print marketing, we often think about direct mail and magazine advertising, but just today, I read about two QR code campaigns that were something quite different.

The first was used by the restaurant chain Applebees to entertain its lunchtime customers. As part of the chain’s promotion of its 14-minute lunchtime guarantee, Applebees has created a three-sided tabletop tent featuring an image of a cat with a QR code instead of a mouth.  Customers are invited to scan the code and watch the cat’s mouth rattle off 2:09 minutes of comedic monologue (“Are people staring? Wondering, who’s the weirdo holding their phone toward the cardboard cat?”).  Customers would have to watch the video seven times to use up their 14 minutes, but it’s an interesting idea.

As discussed in PromoMagazine, the code is generating traffic. In fact, the TableCat QR portion of the campaign has seen what is considered to be a very high level of activation in the QR world (30,000 scans in the first month and 65,000 scans total as of the first week of November). While not due to the QR code alone, Applebee’s franchisee Thomas & King, which is running the campaign, has reported almost a 10% increase in lunch traffic and a 4.9% rise in total lunch sales since the launch of the “14-minute lunch guarantee” campaign.

J. C. Penney has an interesting QR code campaign running now, too. The code is being used for its “Who’s Your Santa?” campaign, giving people the opportunity to record a voice message to be sent with their gifts. You use your phone to record your voice online, then apply a sticker with the QR code pointing to the online audio message onto the gift.  When your loved one receives the gift, they can scan the code and hear you speak a short message, such as, “Merry Christmas, my love!”

QR codes are moving beyond mere shortcuts to online marketing pitches and becoming integrated into our pop culture, as well as our business protocol. They are mainstreaming quickly. When you start seeing them in major campaigns by top marketers like these, it becomes clearly how “mainstream” mainstream really is.