Background: With over 35 million members, AARP is the leading nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization for people age 50 and over in the United States. In 2004, DMSI was asked to perform a Benchmarking study to establish the current Database Marketing maturity level of ASI - an AARP division devoted to partnerships with for-profit organizations. The objective of the Benchmarking study was to show where AARP needed to focus to strategically focus their resources to continue their marketing database excellence.

Solution: DMSI looked at 5 operational areas: marketing requirements, organizational requirements, informational requirements, technology requirements, and financial requirement. Each area was evaluated using a "gap analysis" according to the following baselines:

• Level 1:   Data Capture level - this is best described as a "looking in the rear view mirror" approach to marketing. A sometimes simplified, sometimes primitive level of database marketing maturity.

• Level 2:   Reactive level - this is best described as "steering through traffic". This category describes a level of maturity that allows some flexibility in real time to overcome challenges, but lacks a strategic pro-active capability.

• Level 3:   Pro-active level - this can be described as "knowing what is ahead, and adjusting". It is very strategic in nature, with vision and foresight built into the database marketing methodologies.

Results: With the results of the DMSI Benchmarking study, AARP was able to identify where it wanted to be, from a database marketing maturity standpoint, and isolate the gaps with their current focus. In this way, AARP moved ahead to resolve these strategic differences.