Database Marketing & Relationship Management: 10 Steps to get you started
The following is my understanding of WHAT should be done in order to create the right environment for Database Marketing and Relationship Management. The HOW largely depends on the company’s individual circumstances. Database Marketing is just one term used to describe the way organisations look for improving and streamlining their marketing activities in a world of increasing competition, fragmentation and uncertainty – the computer database as a marketing tool.
It is, contrary to popular belief, not just a database with names and addresses for more or less co-ordinated and integrated mailing purposes. In fact, it is more – far more. The setup of a database will change the way you communicate with your customers, once and forever. It will show respect and trust, the commitment to customer satisfaction, service excellence, etc. Your communication will be an honest and true reflection of your company. But it will affect it on a large scale.
It will affect your media selection and schedule, the content, timing and duration of your advertising and other promotional activities.
It will affect your human resources development, because they will play an important part in feeding the system with customer information.
It will affect your IT department, because information management and systems development will play an increasingly important role.
It will affect top management, too, as it has to come to grips with changing realities in the marketplace. They need to be 100% committed and convinced in order to make the system work.
Last but not least, it will eventually affect your whole business operation, as information from the database will be actively used to satisfy individual customers. And that means adapting both the company’s internal marketing, as well as all functions of the marketing mix. Even if you start out with a purely marketing decision, it will become a corporate decision in no time!
But what needs to be done? And in what sequence? Questions that beg for answers. Here they are:
- Understand yourself and your environment (business, customers and competitors).
- Identify what kind of information is necessary for improved marketing decision-making. What do you want and what do you need?
- Evaluate how much of it is already available, either via data-processing, accounts or previous direct marketing campaigns.
- Analyse your operating environment and your systems. Decide what action needs to be taken in order to cater for more detailed and complex customer and supplier information.
- Set up new or improved marketing database system – a system that caters for both input and analysis (<- that's the most difficult, expensive and time-consuming part in larger organisations!). Make absolutely sure you have someone who is PERMANENTLY working with the system; who analyses database information, contacts customers, gathers information, makes suggestions re marketing mix, etc. The system will fail if the database is not used and maintained properly!
- Find a way of identifying your customers – individually. Increase the contact points. Give them the opportunity to talk to you. Stimulate feedback! Use new media!
- Re-evaluate existing media. Adapt your traditional communications according to findings from the database. Current, lapsed and prospective customers need different approaches; each one needs an individual and personal approach, one that shows the company’s commitment to a long-term, mutually beneficial and profiitable relationship.
- Feed the database, analyse it – DAILY!
- Integrate your marketing activities. Brainstorm new ideas!
- Adapt your internal operating environment according to changing customer demands. Empower staff; stimulate the use of the system in order to gather more information; challenge the status-quo. Get input and suggestions from all levels.
If you follow this logical sequence, you can hardly get it wrong. But you will discover that it really affects your whole business operation – it’s not just talk! And what you may find out for the first time is that marketing is more than just advertising, sales promotion, sponsorships, etc. You’ll find out that it is actually everything and that there are still three other elements in the marketing mix, apart from the promotion. 😉
