Better data delivers powerful integration

"Today customers are considered prospects all the way through the sales funnel, even after they become loyal, engaged customers," Dempster says. "A lot of this is being driven by the speed at which you need to act today. In the past, the world was batched. You got data 30 days from now, 90 days from now, but today it's about responding in real-time."


Another major difference in database marketing today is how and where customers receive (and give) information. 


"Consumers are more fragmented in how they receive information," says Ira Haimowitz, SVP and group director of analytics and operations with CementBloc, a healthcare advertising agency. Haimowitz is also the author of the upcoming book Healthcare Relationship Marketing, which will be released in February by Gower Press. "Consumers used to receive information from radio and TV broadcasts. Now information is everywhere: the Internet, on mobile devices and social networks. [At CementBloc] we refer to the patient experience as a journey. And today that journey is multichannel." 


CementBloc handles marketing for pharmaceutical and biotech companies using direct mail, print, broadcast, as well as digital marketing, including search and mobile. Haimowitz says his company gathers typical demographic information, but it also determines which products customers favor, if they've bought from competitors, and their redemption or transactional history. CementBloc also stores information on whether customers have filed rebates for co-pays, how frequently the customer purchases and how people navigate the CementBloc website. Additionally, the company monitors how customers respond to online media and use search engines to find CementBloc products. 


Haimowitz has used Tibco Spotfire analytics software for the last decade to help his company manage this data because, he says, the software makes it easy to explore data sources for trends and outliers.


"Spotfire is great for synthesizing and viewing data in a way that allows people to come to the 'aha' moments," Haimowitz says. 


Colin White, director of demand generation at Tibco Spotfire, says analytics tools give companies with database information the proverbial "two second advantage" — meaning a company that saves just two seconds in understanding and taking action on data could gain an advantage over competitors. 


"There's an explosion of data in every category, in every industry, in every department," White says. "Our clients want tools to make sense of that data to develop, market and sell new products."


Data personalizes 


In the case of the New Jersey Nets, the goal was different: How could the franchise resell a familiar product to existing customers? Hoping to leverage customer information to make season ticket holders renew, the Nets enlisted FanOne Marketing to deliver a multichannel campaign that would consist of three e-mail communications, one postcard and two personalized URLs (PURLs). Each PURL contained relevant, individualized information, such as a photo of the sales rep with which the customer had previously been working, the customer's account number and seat location. The communications also featured an "Add to Outlook" button, a "Renew Online" button and a button to trigger a call from a sales agent.

FanOne worked with conversational marketing technology provider, Neolane, to turn the customer data into actionable results. 


"Because Neolane is so customizable, we could work variable elements into the campaign," says Jen Zick, 
director of strategy and business development at FanOne. "Neolane has virtually limitless fields we 
can add. All that information can be pulled to be part of the PURL."