Retail Target Marketing Systems Inc., Waukesha, WI, and Yankelovich Partners, Norwalk, CT, have teamed up to provide a service that will give retail clients a direct marketing edge in improving sales and customer relationships.
RTMS’ Archer software can now incorporate Yankelovich’s Monitor data – which includes attitudinal, values and lifestyle trends – into client databases.
“It’s clear that the database marketers have been able to enjoy a lot of success by doing a sophisticated job of modeling the patterns of customer behaviors,” said Yankelovich CEO J. Walker Smith. “The success will come in understanding the motivators of those behaviors.”
RTMS said that understanding is the holy grail in building retail sales.
“It gives the retailers the ability to take their individualized marketing to the next level,” said David L. Schneider, executive vice president of consulting at RTMS. “Their challenge is to communicate with the right customer with the right offer at the right time. The Yankelovich information is another source of information that can be utilized by the system and utilized to target the customer.”
The agreement calls for an equitable split of revenues from the alliance. RTMS and Yankelovich will both approach individual and shared clients that might be interested in the added service.
RTMS retail clients that might be early adopters of the new arrangement could include Quality Stores, a Muskeegan, MI, farm equipment retailer; Ward’s, Chicago; Sears Canada, Toronto; and Bridgestone/Firestone, Rolling Meadows, IL. Retailers typically use the RTMS intelligence to target timely, highly specialized direct mail promotions to customers.
