When creating your marketing messages it is important to know your audience – what they’re likes and interests are and even what they’ve purchased in the past.  This data helps to help predict future buys.  To really know your audience you need to invest in a combination of database technology, some employee time and a strategy and development process of sorting consumer data into usable information.

CRM is virtually useless if you do not study, analyze and organize your data into valuable information.  Databases can collect all sorts of demographic data, customer’s likes, interests and buying habits, but unless you spend time with this data and understand what it all means, it won’t grow your marketing success.  It may help to ask yourself questions such as what will help me generate meaningful dialogue with my customers?  What does the data tell me about my customers’ buying habits?  How can I leverage the data to help promote my brand in the future?

The next step in database management then becomes segmentation.  If you find you have collected an overwhelming amount of data, then segment your target audience into subgroups.  Once you segment your target audience into more manageable subgroups, you will find that you are able to create more personalized messages based on each of your smaller target audiences.

Finally, if you’re wondering how to grow your database, then start with a more generalized campaign that collects data and grows your CRM database for future mailings that can then be more targeted and therefore, more profitable for your company or organization.

Data is nothing until it is turned into usable information for you company.

Timothy Freeman

President

Print & Graphic Communications Association