Marketing Communications

438 CHAPTER 13 DIRECT MARKETING

database are personal data, including NAP (name, address, phone and e-mail, age), transaction

(purchase history) data and communications (received mailings, incentives, marketing actions

and reactions) data. The database could also indicate which products, company departments

and salespeople are involved with a certain marketing action. In fact, a database stores three

kinds of data: market information, relationship data and company data (Figure 13.5).

There are two possible sources of data:^48 internal and external. Most companies already

have the basic information needed to start a database:^49 order and invoice information, such as

customer names, addresses, account numbers, purchase data, method of payment, etc. These

customer files are internal data which may be the first basis to start up a database. External

data are all types of lists compiled outside the company which can be bought or hired for

direct marketing purposes. Examples are subscriber lists of newspapers and magazines, or

databases segmented on lifestyle and consumption habits.

In the UK, Intelligent Lemon, a creative and design company, released early in 2009 two

new consumer databases through Wyvern Direct Response, a direct marketing services

company. Travellers Content and Ladies Gossip are two fast-growing member websites. They

attract over 2000 new members per month. Both have postal, e-mail, landline and mobile

data available as well as date of birth, gender, number of children and segmentation levels.

All data are fully opted in with third-party permissions for each data item. In total, 100 000

Travellers Content members and 61 000 Ladies Gossip members are being released.50,51

The success of any direct marketing campaign depends heavily on the quality and structure

of the database used. The effectiveness of direct marketing campaigns will increase with

Figure 13.5 The marketing database

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