Profile & Append: Take Your Customer Marketing to a Whole New Level

I heard a great story from Harvey Mackay, a world-renowned author and speaker, who talked about how he used to love standing in line at the Starbucks counter at a tradeshow because it was filled with his potential customers. And every time he waited in line, he could talk to a few of the people in front and behind him and generate some leads. It struck home for me (which is big because I absolutely hate waiting in line) and I have since landed several customers, as well as my largest customer ever, waiting in line at the Starbucks counter at a tradeshow.

The interesting thing that I have noticed is that just like everywhere else, the people are all different. Even though they are all there for the same tradeshow and are truly, virtually all potential customers, they are not all alike with a sign on their forehead saying “I am a customer of Modern Postcard.” They are of different ages, genders, incomes and ethnicities. Some are single or have children or even grandchildren, they like different foods, music, movies, sports, hobbies, and more.

And yet marketers, if given the chance to market to them, would probably give them all the same message. With today’s data technologies and the ability to provide highly personalized content, why would you do this, especially with your own customers?

When we prospect, we use a wide variety of available demographic selections for both B2B and B2C marketing. We can hyper-target using lifestyle information as well as advanced psychographics and even online and offline transactional information. However, our data on our current customers is often not as comprehensive. We’ll have great transactional data, but are limited to the small and fragmented additional demographic and lifestyle data we have collected. Therefore, we used to have a very limited view of who our customers really are other than what their purchase history.

But this is no longer the case.

When people ask me what has changed the most with direct mail, I respond that it is the advances in data and using that data. It is now easier and more cost-effective than ever to apply the tools to your customer and prospect base, no matter how small or large it is.

Here is how you start:

Profiling
This is the easiest, least expensive and fastest way to better understand who your customers are.

You simply take the names and addresses of your customers, submit them to us and we run a profile on the database. This generates a report that lets you know where your customers fit with regard to about 15 different profiles including income, age, gender, home type and ownership, net worth, and more. For businesses, you get profiles such as revenue, number of employees, types of purchases, etc. This is great information that gives you a deeper understanding of the type of marketing that will greatly resonate with your customers.

Best of all, Modern Postcard offers this service at no charge to help you understand your customers and maximize the effectiveness of your next campaign with us.

Tip: If you have a large number of customers and want to better target your best customers, isolate the top 3,000-5,000 names and only profile them for a more accurate result.

Appending
This is the next step that allows you to actually enhance your existing customer file with a wide variety of additional fields.

It gives you the opportunity to segment your customers into similar groups so you can vary the way you market to them based on their characteristics. You can even use this information to create variable data (VDP) direct mail pieces with a unique message per recipient based on this data.

To data append your file, you submit the name and mailing address of your in-house list. This is then matched against one or more files to identify the person and data associated with that record, which is then provided back in a file that you are free to use for your future marketing. A typical match rate ranges from 40%-60% depending on the quality of your list and the availability of the data fields you are requesting.

On the consumer side, there are over 1,000 fields of information available that can be appended to your file. This includes all of the basic demographics such as age, income, home ownership, net worth, and then a wide array of lifestyle data such as food, entertainment and vacation preferences, product ownership, and more.

On the business side, you can append the basic demographics such as revenue, the number of employees, building ownership, franchise association and more, as well as adding the names and titles of new contacts you might want to target.

The price range for appending services varies greatly depending on the selects you choose as well as the size of your file, but it can go down as low as a few cents a record for a package of basic demographics.

TIP: The nice news is you only pay for the ones you match, along with some minimum charges to cover the basic costs of the file setup and the process of running the files.

Please contact your Modern Postcard representative or call 800.959.8365 for more information on these powerful ways to enhance the success of your retention and upsell marketing programs.

Request a FREE Customer Profile Report. A $499 Value. With the insights from this summary, you can strategically target the most profitable customer types.

By Keith Goodman, VP Corporate Sales & Marketing, Modern Postcard

Call a Direct Marketing Specialist at 800.959.8365.