Making It Personal Makes It Profitable

Everyone knows that 1:1 marketing works. Yet many marketing professionals find themselves paralyzed by the daunting task of trying to create perfect data. The good news: there is a lot you can do to get on the path of achieving Perfect 1:1 without having perfect data.

One of your key goals in 1:1 marketing is to create timelier, more relevant communications that elicit positive customer responses. This improves customer relationships as well as the all-important marketing metrics executive managers crave. The two best ways to achieve this are improving your data and improving how you use the data.

Improvement is a process. You don’t need perfect data to get your program off the ground. Your objective is to continually refine your data and, in doing so, to improve the relevance of your communications. The more relevant your data and customer communications, the more profitable your direct marketing campaigns.

Start by Bringing Your Data Together
A common barrier to Perfect 1:1 is having data reside in unconnected silos. This results in:

Centralize your data in a “data mart” and then ensure that the information is current, accurate and de-duplicated for one true view of the customer. The old rule of “garbage in, garbage out” still applies, so you should begin your quest for Perfect 1:1 by not short changing database hygiene practices.

You Probably Have More Information Than You Think
Chances are you already have a lot of customer information and are using some data intelligence techniques to enhance the value of that data. This gives you the ability to achieve at least basic personalization, even if you are only utilizing one data-mining technique and a portion of the information available. Personalization at even the most basic levels delivers better results than mass approaches.

Your next challenge, and the one that really pays dividends, is to take a more strategic approach by improving your data mining and effectively integrating the resulting intelligence into a Customer Profitability Optimization Model that includes four core components:

Communities of Interest (COI). Identifying customer segments unique to your business and similar in specific ways — age, gender, etc. — based on internal data mining and appending outside data.
Product Propensity. Identifying what different individuals and Communities of Interest already purchased and using the data to determine what they logically might purchase next.
Customer Life Cycle. Understanding the phase through which a customer is passing—new, growing, maintaining, declining or lost—and personalizing communications appropriately.
Value Scoring. Assigning value scores to customers—i.e., high current/high potential value, medium current value/high potential value, etc.—and establishing interaction rules that guide customer relationships.

An important key is being able to code each customer in all four categories, as well as being able to easily update the data as customers evolve.

Refining the Model
Your goal now is to take your Customer Profitability Optimization Model to ever-higher levels, or Perfect 1:1. You don’t need perfect data to get started, but a commitment to continuous improvement helps you get the most from your data and achieves superior marketing metrics.

The effort is well worth your time. There are significant opportunities to improve your marketing ROI by investing in database marketing strategies that create more personalized customer communications.

Learn More About Achieving Perfect 1:1 Without Perfect Data
To help you elevate the performance of your 1:1 marketing programs, Transcontinental developed a series of white papers on the Database Marketing Continuum. These papers provide an overview of how marketers can create a strategic plan to more effectively leverage the data found within their company.


  1. Data Intelligence (Consolidated Data Mart, Data Hygiene, Data Access)
  2. Business Intelligence (KPI reports, profiling, performance measurement)
  3. Customer Intelligence (Segmentation, Product Propensities, Life cycle, Customer Value)
  4. Marketing Intelligence (Campaign Management and Marketing Resource Management)

We invite you to review the first white paper in the series Perfect 1:1 Without Perfect Data, which covers important topics such as the Core Components of a Customer Profitability Optimization Model. Download a complimentary copy today.

For more information about how Transcontinental Database Marketing can help you achieve Perfect 1:1, please contact us today.