Data Appending. The Devil is in the Details.

Dear Prospect,

You called me last week about appending email addresses or phone numbers to your house list.

"Can you do it?" You asked innocently.

"Certainly!" I responded.

"What will my 'hit rate' be?" You asked.

"Arrrrrgh!" I thought, thinking to myself that this obvious question is as difficult to answer accurately as the other slow-death-by-quicksand question "What will my response rate be?"

I took a deep breath. Here we go again. I'm dealing with someone who wants an absolute number—almost a performance guarantee—in an area that has so many variables that any answer I give him will be wrong.

I thought about your question for quite a while before I spoke again. Here are some of the thoughts that were racing through my head in those 10 seconds of silence:

How fresh is your data? How often do you update? If we're trying to append information on data that is even 5 years old, lotsa luck!

Do you want the data to match to name only? To name and address? To name and zip code? To multiple "touch points"?

What about name variations? Maybe you have "Joe and Mary Smith" in your data. What about "Joseph and Mary Smith" or "Joseph L. and Mary A. Smith"? or "Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Smith" or any of a dozen other ways this name could be presented? How do you want to address this issue?

What do you need? Do you have specific goals and needs? If you've got a specific end-game, please let me know. I can help you better if you give me more information.

You didn't have any answers for me, but I kept slogging on.

Are you willing to invest time and money to bring your data up to snuff if it needs to be done?

How many passes are you willing to pay for to get the output you want? Are you willing to test vendors to see which produces the best outcome for you? After all, not all data files are created equal.

What are your expectations? If we get a 30% match is that OK? 60%? Or is nothing less than 100% acceptable? So much of our success will be dependent on your data. So much of your happiness over the results will be based on your expectations going into the process.

So here I am, on the horns of a dilemma. We can do what you want, but I know that you want an absolute number that you can plug into an equation that will prove (or disprove) the efficacy of the effort.

I can try to educate you about the process, yet the largest variable in the entire equation is your data. You're asking me to give you a project cost and a performance guarantee based on something that you know more about than I do.

The call ended with you saying (not too convincingly) that you'd get back to me. I fear I shattered your preconception that this would be an easy-in easy-out conversation. And it wasn't.

I hope you do call back. But I fear you've gone to someone who would give you a glib (and useless) answer.

I'll be waiting.

It's not personal. It's math.

If you drive a car, use a bank or a credit card, shop at a grocery store, rent movies from Netflix, have a cell phone, surf the web, or live in the 21st Century, you’re probably a denizen of a databank somewhere.

Like it or not, Google, Facebook, Walmart and the government are building profiles of you. They know who you talk to and what you search for online. They know what you purchase and how much you buy. They know your likes and preferences.

Your car probably has a black box in it—just in case you’re ever in an accident—but also to track your position anywhere on the globe via GPS. Ditto your cell phone.

There’s no escaping scrutiny. You may keep a low profile, but these guys know more about you than even close family. You may hide your Mars Bars addiction at home, but these guys have your number.

And that’s just what you are to them: a vast series of numbers that describe your attributes.

Data mining is used to drill down through all those jumble of numbers to find the attributes (described by those numbers) that should resonate with your audience. Data mining is simply finding the patterns, relationships and correlations in all that stored information.

As marketers, you probably know that the problem is that there is simply so much data, it is hard to extract the exactly right bit of information to pinpoint your perfect target. And finding exactly the right bit is critical. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But fear not, gentle marketer. Exhaustive new programs are being written—even as I type—to simplify and clarify the process. Stay tuned. It is a brave new world out there. Soon even more information about your customers/donors/prospects will be available. At a price.

Have the money? If so, you can look like a marketing genius. After all, getting your message to someone who has a high likelihood of a positive response earns you better return on marketing investment. Your job is still to define the characteristics you are looking for. Then let the computers do the heavy lifting and sifting.

So what about individual privacy? Now there’s a quaint 20th Century concept. Forget about privacy in an era of Facebook and all-seeing cameras at every street corner. Sorry, it’s history.

Netflix and Amazon are using data mining today to increase sales. Enter their websites and they recognize you. They then recommend books and movies to you that “people like you” have enjoyed. The recommendations are based on the theory that you will enjoy what people like you have enjoyed. Aka, similar number strings like similar things.

Can beauty be in the eye of the beholder? Probably. If Netflix makes a movie recommendation and you like the pick, the information becomes useful. You come to rely on Netflix’ subsequent recommendations and the process becomes less like advertising and more like a friendly exchange between friends. Even robots and computers need friends, it seems.

It doesn’t always work perfectly. Sometimes you question what where they thinking. And sometimes you agree. But don’t take it personally.

Remember, it’s not personal. It’s math. It’s data mining.  And you are just a number in a computational labyrinth.

Get Personal. Get Results. (Part 2 of 3)

Get Personal. Get Results.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Personalizing Prospect Marketing

First, a definition.

Everyone starts as a prospect, ie someone that a marketer believes might donate/buy/subscribe/join/attend or in some fashion show interest in the sponsoring non-profit/company/magazine/organization, etc.

Not all prospects are created equal. To paraphrase George Orwell, some are more equal than others. Hence the first challenge is to find the right people who might want to donate/buy etc. That effort is called “prospecting.”

Looking for prospects starts with a definition of your optimal buyer. Then you define and refine until you get a many faceted profile.

Like grizzled 49ers of old prospected for gold in them thar hills of California, today’s frazzled marketers prospect for gold in the thousands of lists on the market. With the right list and the right approach, the marketer finds his gold.

Finding good prospects just starts with list selection.

Looking for donors? Go to donor files. Select donors to allied organizations. Simple. Or maybe not.

Looking for business owners? There are a thousand lists. Drill down through company size, gender of owner, location (and number of locations), industry sector, number of employees, type of organization (franchise, LLC, Inc, privately/publicly held, HOBO, etc) to find the list you need.

Now you can use the new technology of “data mining” to get even further into the prospect’s head.

Are you asking for the donors to support a non-profit summer camp for indigent children? Women would probably be your best prospects, and women with children would be even better. Families with household income over $xx would mean the family has expendable income to share, and those who have shown their love of nature and support for children’s causes would improve your “hit” rate.

If you’re looking for business owners who travel a lot, maybe those with multiple office/plant locations would be a starting point. If they have a second home, that’s a plus. If they are pilots or sailors, that helps define them as well.

Now you’re finding out what really makes these people tick.

Simultaneously with extracting the gold from the lists, you need to develop creative copy and design that maximizes the impact of your message. Find out what their individuals needs and interests are, then design your message to emphasize those issues.

New production technologies allow for variable full color graphics and copy. Here is how a few companies are using the latest in personalization technology to enhance their prospecting efforts...

Case Study #1. The exclusive mountain resort community. They sent oversized postcards to married couples with household income over $xx, in a specific geographic region. Artwork was based on the recipient’s ethnicity, age and hobbies.

If the recipients were Caucasian, 40-60 years old, so were the models. If he liked golf and she liked tennis, the male model had golf clubs in his hands; she had a tennis racket in hers. They stood in front of the magnificent clubhouse with a world-class view of receding mountains.

The graphic designer used the recipient’s name in color to eye-catching effect, thus creating a split second opening for the recipients to soak it all in. It wasn’t much of a stretch for the targeted couple to see themselves in the picture as it spoke directly to them and their interests.

Case Study #2. The Long Term Care Insurance provider. His marketing package utilized variable art and copy based on the recipient’s age, gender, ethnicity, physical location, and household income. The photo showed a couple waking on the beach with the statement “Now is the time to think about Long Term Care Insurance.”

The copy speaks to women by name as they tend to outlive their husbands and therefore need this product more, and because women make 70% of insurance decisions for their households. “Hypothetical” tables based on the couple’s age and income show what a plan could cost—and could deliver.

Case Study #3. The real estate agent. In an economy that had produced zero house sales for her the previous year, she opted to mail renters telling them to stop wasting rent money and buy a home.
The renters, selected on geographic proximity to her office as well as their household income, got an oversized postcard showing a photo of a home with a curbside mailbox. The home was in the background in soft focus; the mailbox was center front and crisp. On each mailbox was the name of the targeted family: Ramirez, Wong, Williams, Curtis. Subliminally the recipients could “see” themselves in this picture, in their new home.

These three examples show how the newly available filters can help inventive marketers position themselves in unique ways, to people who are specifically qualified for those messages. All three were working with prospect lists, using new technology and fresh creativity to stand out in the mailbox.

Are these individualized approaches more expensive than a traditional one-shot-fits-all marketing approach? Yep. Each individually prepared piece has a different mix of graphics and copy going to highly selected and qualified targets. That effort does have a price.

Are these personalized approaches more successful? Yep again. People see themselves and they respond.

The result: companies mail smaller quantities and get the same number of leads.

Technically, this extreme personalization process is called VDP or Variable Data Printing. It requires lots of computer power, marketing expertise and a precise mix of people and equipment to pull it off.

However, unlike shot gun marketing, with VDP you can approach only people that you know are the perfect target for your message. So you print less (that’s good green business practice), pay less in postage (that’ll keep the bean counters happy) and generate a higher return rate (that’ll make the boss ecstatic).

As the pharmaceutical ads say, VDP isn’t for everyone. It’s more expensive, it takes more time in development, and it can be nerve wracking waiting for the creative and data processing and programming to come together. But when it works, it’s amazing!

It’s state-of-the-art direct marketing. Until the next new-best-thing comes along.

Part III of this series focuses on personalization in housefiles.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

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