So, Now What Do I Do?

Back to our client with "too much data".

Once the data is homogenized, cleaned and segmented, we can look to creative and copy. Since our goal is to make marketing communication as relevant as possible to our recipient (and I would add valuable), we need to begin to tailor our message to our recipient constituencies. In the case of our client, they serve both the residential furniture and the corporate/institutional markets.

Depending on the level of segmentation and the amount of data available, these segments should be further segmented. I would imagine that they serve high middle class individual to the wealthy. From a creative standpoint, images for each of these segments could be different. The same would hold true for male versus female and married versus single- each of these segments will find relevance in different images. Copy should be different as well.

With the institutional recipients, there are additional segments: corporate boardroom and executive as well as libraries and schools. Again, each segment has different needs and budgets, and therefore, creative and copy should reflect that. Further segmentation and tailoring of the messgae could be has around size of the company (Fortune 100 v. Fortune 1000, or public v. private, for example), as again needs and budget may be different.

Setting this kind of communication up, requires a greater investment than just just producing a catalog. However, if we follow the process out, the ROI is there. The need to produce a larger catalog, with many pages that don't apply to me as the recipient is in essence, eliminated. We don't have to buy printing enough for the year and then store the catalog, hoping that they don't become stale. When we fulfill a catalog request, we are mailing a smaller item, providing potentially huge postal savings. We can also fulfill on demand, and so are not tempted to batch fulfillment to save postage and processing fees. We are responding to our prospect at the time of highest interest, and remembering that timing is the largest lever of relevancy, with the content and time of greatest relevance, producing a much higher potential for a sale, and indeed a higher potential for a larger order and repeat orders. We can further increase relevance by personalizing the catalog; perhaps a letter on the inside of the from cover addressed to the recipient or past client endorsements from the recipients gender, marital status or income band. Let me reiterate that using the data should be very subtle. Many people have a visceral reaction to the perception that their privacy has been violated!

When you combine enough data and digital printing, the ability to provide extremely timely, highly relevant marketing communication is limited only by your imagination.