There's no question that database marketing is a powerful tool. But many marketing people don't have a clear idea of what database marketing is, or what it can do.
If you think that mass mailing to your customers or to a rented list is database marketing, think again.
There is (or should be) far more to a marketing database than a simple collection of names and addresses. But collecting information for a database and not putting it to use is like keeping your savings in a safe deposit box -- the money is there, but it's not working for you.
Let me give you a real life example: Several winters ago, during one of Vancouver's rare snowstorms, I drove into a Canadian Tire store to buy a set of snow tires and have them installed. They took my name, address, phone number, type of car and a couple of other pertinent facts and dutifully recorded the information. Then they pushed a couple of keys and printed out a work order.
A short while later, job done, I took my work order to the cashier, received an invoice, paid it and left with my receipt and my new snow tires.
That was in November. Around about the following May, I began to get tired of the noise my snow tires made on dry pavement. I noticed there was a sale on at a nearby tire store, so I drove in and 30 minutes and a couple of hundred bucks later, I had a nice new set of summer radials on my car.
What's my point. My point is that the store where I bought my tires wasn't Canadian Tire. But it could have been.
If they had used the information they'd collected about me properly, they probably would have had the sale. All they had to do was send me a postcard in March inviting me in for a free coffee while they took off my snow tires and put my summer ones back on.
They could even have offered me a deal on new tires in case I needed them (which I did). At the very least, I'd have been back in their store for half an hour, browsing and likely buying something. They'd also have had their chance at selling me new tires, and they'd have made a start at building a relationship with me.
Canadian Tire should have done something because they had the means to do it -- my name and other information in their database. And they had good reason to do something because I was a proven consumer of their products.
Why they didn't use their database, I don't know. Perhaps they simply see it as too complicated and expensive to extract timely information from the millions of transactions they must record every year. Perhaps they have embarked on a database marketing program, but haven't rolled it out yet. And perhaps they simply don't know or appreciate the value of their database.
Real database marketers know that direct marketing isn't database marketing unless the information you gather about your clients and prospects works towards your final goal: the sale!
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