Pet supply catalogers groomed for growth
Sixty-two percent of the nation’s 111 million households include at least one pet, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturing Association. Yet
Lists & Data - Business-14-05-2013
Quick Hits
* Last week, Richardson, TX-based KnowledgeBase Marketing acquired Boston-based analytics firm Fortelligent, Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The acquisition will provide KnowledgeBase customers with automated analytic functions. It will also allow KnowledgeBase to link Fortelligent’s technology with KnowledgeBase’s AmeriLink national compiled database, enabling clients to run models and select prospect names.
Setting Your Priorities
List priorities in the merge/purge are a standard topic of debate among database pros, says Scarsdale, NY-based database consultant Michael Grant. Do I put all lists into the merge/purge at an equal priority, or do I give a higher priority to one group of lists, since those lists are my core lists?
Channel Segmentation: What’s Next
By now you know that you should be segmenting your house file not only by recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) but also by order channel and by type of Web activity (organic search, affiliate-driven, e-mail responders, and the like). After all, your pure online customers most likely have different characteristics and buying patterns from those who order by phone or those who are driven by a print catalog to order online.
Polish Your Data Dictionary Part 2
Last week Brent Bissell, president of Minneapolis-based consultancy Direct Target One, kicked off a two-part series on the importance of data best practices. Here he concludes his series.
During the course of the interviews I conducted to collect the information for this article, a number of people echoed the same theme: There has been a mass exodus of workers who really know lists and data hygiene protocols, not to mention the upper-level analytic techniques and the skills to know what to use under which conditions. When it comes to basic direct marketing data knowledge, as one interviewee put it,
Six Steps for Profitable Custom Modeling
Faced with new customer types from search and affiliate programs, lower direct-buyer conversion rates, and higher overall costs, multichannel marketers are continually evaluating new strategies and techniques to maintain and improve acceptable levels of success. In the quest for the
Four Tips for Profitable Multichannel Prospecting
We all know that it’s less expensive to keep a customer than to find a new one. But to grow a business, prospecting is arguably as important as retention.
To help you find new customers profitably, Mark Traverso, vice president of list management, new business, and e-commerce at Pompano Beach, FL-based Lighthouse List Co., and Michele Volpe, vice president for Novato, CA-based list firm Media Source Solutions, offer some suggestions:
Polish Your Data Dictionary
As the saying goes, Cleanliness is next to godliness. And in direct marketing, data cleanliness leads to improved profitability. But because data hygiene is about as exciting as, well, dental hygiene, too many marketers give it only cursory attention.
And that, says Brent Bissell, president of Minneapolis-based consultancy Direct Target One, is a costly oversight. Poor hygiene results in an inconsistent data dictionary
Quick Tip: Add Hotline Prospects to Buyer Remails
“The catalog business is a pretty simple business model,” says Jim Coogan, president of Sante Fe, NM-based consultancy Catalog Marketing Economics. “Prospect at breakeven, and make your profits by mailing … Continue Reading →
Reactivation, Reactivation, Reactivation
You sold to the customer once, twice, maybe even more. You thought you had a relationship. Then, several mailings later, you realized you lost him. He moved on without so much as a good-bye. In moments like this, when you are alone, analyzing your house file, you wonder aloud, How did something so right go so wrong?