Brian Giese's Blog

Top 5 (ok 6) Data Marketing Mistakes

Marketing databases allow sales and marketing to reach customers and nurture relationships more effectively (and efficiently). If they are designed properly and used correctly they are the "secret sauce". Unfortunately, this is often just not the case. So here are some of the most common mistakes that I see made by direct marketers as they build a data-driven marketing engine:

1. Having no methods or procedures established for monitoring the vitality of the customer base over time. Statistics such as retention, reactivation, conversion and percent new-to-file will allow a direct marketer to more easily determine the success of various marketing strategies.
2. Lack of standards regarding data hygiene including householding the file prior the delivery of promotions, etc. The result being mailing inefficiencies and potential customer service problems. Scrub that data!
3. All response models are not created equal. Many managers don’t realize that roughly 75% of the analysts time should be spent becoming intimate with the customer data through data manipulation and massage to ensure it’s predictive power is exploited to it’s fullest potential.
4. Lack of basic knowledge regarding database architecture, hardware and software. Lacking even a basic knowledge, a marketer is not in the best position to establish marketing specifications for the database that are reasonable and will maximize effectiveness.
5. Little knowledge of the rules that must be followed when establishing promotional or list tests to ensure results are readable, reliable and projectable and a lack of understanding of how to read test results once final.

Bonus mistake:

6. Purging customer records after 24 months of inactivity (or less). Most marketers don't understand the implications of doing this. At a minimum, a direct marketer should roll up key data for inactives including all promotional data and make available for future analysis purposes for at least 4 years.

The Top 7 Partner Lies

I'm not sure I can count the number of partner programs that I've seen fail. Usually it's the manufacturer's fault because of someones grandiose expectations of leverage from a channel that never existed. No doubt the manufacturers job is to build great products and create demand for them. And the channels job is to fulfill the demand.

Here are some of the misconceptions (lies) of partner programs.

1. The other company has APIs so that integrating will be easy. Integration is always hard. Take whatever your first estimate is and double it to be safe.
2. Not only is integrating easy, co-marketing will be too. Take whatever your doubled estimated time to integrate and double that to get the co-marketing launched.
3. Your challenge will be scaling up fast enough. I’ve never seen scaling up be the gating item on a distribution deal.
4. Your partner’s challenge will be scaling up fast enough too. I’ve never seen this be the gating item either.
5. You understand what your partner wants. If it’s anything besides “additional revenue,” you’re missing the boat.
6. “We’re forming a cross-functional team to ensure the success of this project.” This ensures that no one is responsible for the success of the partnership, nor is there anyone who’s going to take the blame. Instead, you want the large company to identify one “champion” for the partnership. One champion is always better than one cross-functional team.
7. You can cut a deal with a Fortune 1000 company because a board member knows someone there.This is possible. It just won’t happen before you’re fired for missing your sales projections.