The Land of Confusion
I visited the Land of Confusion, searched for the holy grail, opened ancient tombs — even talked to dinosaurs — and came back with some interesting observations.
- Why is true Database Marketing virtually unknown in South Africa?
- Is it just a more sophisticated form of Direct Mail?
- Does it mean everything’s direct?
- Will traditional Advertising disappear?
- Is a database all you need to make it work?
- Does the customer really benefit?
- And how will it affect you?
Limits where there aren’t any
First it was just a mere observation, but I wasn’t quite sure if my perception was right or not. Now I know! Wherever you look or listen, even among the experts, Database Marketing is equalled with some kind of Direct Marketing, and more often than not, this is equalled with direct mail. Weird, because these ‘practitioners’ place limits upon themselves where they aren’t any. Needless to say they will never benefit from the real power of Database Marketing, which, as you may have guessed now, extends far beyond direct marketing and direct mail.
But how come? The answer is easy. Whereas maintaining a mailing list and doing some queries is easy stuff and can be done largely without any human interference, anything that goes beyond a piece of communication to the customer or prospect involves a lot more than just a database extraction and some mail merge.
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