DM p22-26 bureaux Dec08.qxp 02/12/2008 11:55 Page 23
Database Bureaux
By using offline says Richard Higginbotham, marketing manager at
data to add
CDMS. “By using offline data like geodemographics
depth, you can
to add depth to customer information, you can devel-
develop insight
op insight much more quickly.”
However this is the acme of current ambition and
much more
most companies are still well behind the integrated
quickly. digital curve. Recent research by E-consultancy and
Richard Higginbotham,
Adestra showed that many marketers struggle to inte-
marketing manager, CDMS.
grate even email with the rest of their business activi-
ty; eight in ten respondents lacked the technological
companies must also bring their targets’ offline activi- capability.
ties into the mix by adding any data that may be This is hardly surprising, as an intelligent data-driv-
available from other channels along with transaction- en approach requires some potentially complex foun-
al and other relevant external data from third party dations – not least that that customer-referenced
suppliers. database that holds multichannel information for tar-
At a basic level, knowing a customer’s channel geting. With many companies now creating new digi-
preference or whether they buy through multiple tal silos rather than bringing their data together, who
channels has huge implications for that customer’s can help them take a holistic view?
real and potential profitability. Used operationally, a It has to be bureaux. Acknowledged experts in
merged database gives web servers and content man- making consistent customer-referenced files out of
agement applications the information they need to dirty disparate streams of data and managing huge
make the right offer at the right price by email or data volumes, marketing service providers are well
when the customer visits the website next – and this placed to bring digital into the database marketing
also means that offline marketing can benefit from fold, particularly those that have experience on both
behavioural knowledge gained online. sides of the digital fence.
“If you just look at IP or cookies, you lose out on “A lot of agencies are interested in the ad words
the benefit of all the and site optimisation side of it, but they are less
richer data,” interested in identifying the individual,” says
Higginbotham. To illustrate how this can be
done, he gives the example of Personal
URLs, web links unique to a single per-
son that can help track a referring
site or, by presenting one within
variably printed direct mail, can
identify someone who has
arrived via a printed incentive.
“You need to look at ways to
help identify the individual
coming into a site in order to
integrate online and offline
data,” Higginbotham says.
“There’s the opportunity to
automate communications
using campaign management
tools, which can trigger
comms to a customer based on
site activity. We have the skills
that are needed to achieve
this.”
But it’s debatable whether
the majority of UK MSPs are
ready to take up the challenge.
Many of them appear some-
what stuck in the past, offer-
ing only traditional offline
services for cleaning the dwin-
dling volumes of prospect
www.dmarket.co.uk Database Marketing December 2008 23
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