Data Therapy - The Supplier's View

Data Strategy - May 2009

Marketers are wedded to a very fickle significant other - customer data. Like any long-term relationship, they can perhaps be forgiven for alternately loving/loathing their rather unforgiving partner on whom they lavish endless hours of personalisation, customisation, innovation and creativity. All they want to do, after all, is talk, engage and interact in order to build lasting client relationships. That's what 'old school', Nineties-styled CRM promised, right - an IT-lead solution which would lead everyone towards increased ROI? 

Given the number of CRM disasters that ended in D-I-V-O-R-C-E, alas, handing the driving response wheel over to IT departments was mostly an unmitigated disaster. How pleasing it is, then, to see CRM making a welcome come-back - this time as a bona fide business ethos and not merely as a 'bolt on' tech application.  

That it took a recession for many companies to (re)place customers at the heart of their business planning is a tad disappointing. But thankfully action is being taken, with increasing customer retention overtaking client acquisition as a priority for many recently. Whether via single client view or other data-rich applications, optimising datasets so that marketers can more cost-effectively identify and target their most valued customers is the new name of the game, in my opinion.  

DM's old volume-led approach likewise needs to go the way of the Dodo and be replaced with marcoms which are far more specific and multi-channel. Gone are the days when one could simply carpet bomb entire regions with direct mail pieces and blithely say, "marketing's job is done". Why damage your brand image, the environment and earn the public's ire when a more targeted combination of DM and digital can increase response rates and ROI several fold, for example? Alongside r-words like recession and retention, we'd do well to add relevance and responsiveness. 

Now is definitely the time to correct past data wrongs and build a better platform for the future. Adopting a more lateral, linked-up approach to data management - inclusive id standardization, suppression, relocation, segmentation, hygiene, acquisition and defined prospecting strategies - can and will leverage more insight, increase response rates and ROI. 

This is going to be music to the wears of even the most recession-hardened CEO - believe me, I'm one of them! But be prepared. Given that the average B2B and B2C database degrades at upwards of 25 per cent respectively each year, better data management definitely needs to be an ongoing project and not just a one-night stand.