Introducing... Database Screams!
Rants and raves from the database pros at Desktop Marketing Solutions, Inc. Fall 2002

In This Issue:

Introducing our Newsletter…

If you are a busy direct marketing professional, this newsletter is for you - to make your life and job a little easier. In each issue, we will highlight the database and technology issues affecting the direct marketing industry today. We will then show how they directly benefit marketers like you - and where you can go to learn more about each topic.

By way of introduction, our firm - Desktop Marketing Solutions, Inc.(DMSI) - began in Northern Virginia in 1997 with a single strong conviction: that companies badly needed a firm to "bridge the gap" between their marketing function and their database function. Too many companies suffer from the phenomenon of being data-rich and information-poor. Thus the core philosophy of DMSI - simplify the complex - was born. Today DMSI is a full-service resource for database marketing software, programming, installation and applications.

Please let us know how we can make this newsletter even more helpful in meeting your database marketing needs. Send your comments to BruceGregoire@DesktopMarketingInc.com.

Sincerely,

Bruce Gregoire, President and founder, DMSI

Marketers -- march yourself into our boot camp!

DMAW (Direct Marketing Assoc. of Washington DC), with 1400+ members in the mid-Atlantic area, has recently announced its first RFM Boot Camp, facilitated by Bruce Gregoire, President of DMSI and adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

This workshop will provide an introduction to RFM (Recency-Frequency-Monetary value) fundamentals and more importantly, a chance to apply them. Using MS Access software, each attendee, working hands-on with a PC, will do basic RFM calculations to see how this knowledge can be used to increase campaign response (plus sales and earnings). Registrants will master the basics of RFM -- and discover new revenue opportunities in their own database.

Learn more: about RFM Boot Camp www.dmaw.org/bin/webdbc.dll/dmaw/users/htx/&/dmaw/calendar/calendar.htx

Amazon.com has been the envy of the data mining community for years, and you have undoubtedly experienced the reason why. Amazon is able to recommend a book selection based on the buying pattern of other customers just like you.

This technology is sometimes referred to as "collaborative filtering", and has been popularized by Net Perceptions, an analytic vendor for Amazon. A similar approach known as "market basket analysis" is provided by vendors like MicroStrategy. You can guess what happens when all your groceries are scanned at a supermarket checkout: your purchasing pattern ends up in a data warehouse. From an analysis of these patterns, one can establish, for instance, that new dads who stop by a store to buy diapers may also buy beer (to sleep through the night?). This analysis could result in a strategy to place these items near each other in the store - or to generate discount coupons at checkout.

"Would you like fries with that?" Yes, data mining can create tremendous cross-sell opportunities! If you have more than 250 products in your database, you should be suggesting to a prospective buyer (either on your web shopping cart or on a phone order) the added products that they could benefit from.

But here is the dirty little secret about data mining: It doesn't have to be expensive! Many vendors charge hundreds of thousand of dollars for this type of analysis. DMSI has developed Crystal Report programs for Mail Order Manager clients that perform this very analysis, at a fraction of the cost. Here is what Don Gooding of Mainely A Cappella had to say about "Amazon-MOM": our data mining tool: "I've had a chance to go through the recommendations from your Amazon-MOM analysis. It's really fantastic! I'm very pleased with the spreadsheet showing the top 3 co-purchases by people who bought our top 250 selling items. I can't wait to get this onto our web site and start driving up average purchase sizes online".

Learn more: about Data Mining at www.NetPerceptions.com

Search Engines and Pay-per-click: Is there payoff for your business?
by Bruce Gregoire

Prospecting for new customers has always been an expensive and time-consuming process. But take heart. In 2002, a new and powerful prospecting tool has arrived: Pay-per-click ads - sponsored by Google and other search engines. Cheaper than the banner ads of the past, pay-per-click ads are growing quickly in the Google, Yahoo, and Looksmart search engine communities. The process is simple:

1. Go to Google, Overture or Looksmart and set up an account. You will be asked for a credit card deposit to initialize your account.
2. Key your ad copy, and select a keyword(s) that succinctly describes your product or service.
3. Submit your ad with a bid (price per click through) you can afford. Google is the leader in pay-per-click, and takes a more genuine approach than others in terms of the way it positions an ad on the screen. Instead of selling the premium ad position (usually near the top) to the highest bidder, Google positions your ad based on a combination of click-thru popularity and price. This keeps a level playing field for small budget players.

Benefits to marketers like You:
As an advertiser, the beauty of pay-per-click is that you merely pay for only those prospects that click-through to your web site. In select cases, especially niche markets, this can be more efficient than catalogs and other direct mail approaches - where you pay for the 99% of prospects that throw your promotion away.

1. Fake it 'til you make it: Pay-per-click gives you instant feedback on the early success of your promotion, through web based reports from your Google (and other) accounts. Thus, it is a great way to "test market" new products or services to see if they have market appeal, before you launch them. It is also valuable for testing the appeal of your copywriting - small changes can make a dramatic difference in click-thru response.
2. Timing is everything. For many products or services, the buyer "wants it now", not when you are ready to contact them by mail or phone. Thus, when a prospect enters a keyword into Google, chances are they are poised to make an inquiry or a buying decision.
3. The world is your oyster. If you have a highly specialized product, the potential for attracting buyers worldwide is greatly expanded. This is due to the highly targeted results that Google and other search engines provide. Niche markets can thrive - try it yourself by keying the keyword(s) that describe your best selling product - and see if your competitors are advertising online.

Learn more: about Pay-per-click
1. Business 2.0 - Nov., 2002: P. 73 "Google's Next Runaway Success"
2. www.SearchEngineWatch.com

Spin4fun uses humor to build customer databases. A powerful new marketing tool devised by MAC Direct has shown excellent early results. MAC Direct is a database marketing services company. In a recent convention traffic test usage, over 20% of Spin4fun recipients of a post card about the game converted into booth-visitors and active prospects.

Called Spin4fun, this tool offers marketing an intriguing solution to several challenges, including those associated with breaking through the mailbox clutter, building a customer and prospect database, and combining offline and online media. To receive a PIN number and see for yourself how this personalized, database-building game works, write to info@macdirect.com

Virginia Wine of the Month Club
by Bruce Gregoire

"Virginia is for Lovers" as the slogan goes, and is also home to many vineyards with great wines. The Virginia-based Wine of the Month club (WOMC) has been popular in the mid-Atlantic for more than a decade, and was recently acquired by The Virginia Company.

This presented a challenge for Willis Logan of the Virginia Company: how to fold in all WOMC member orders from an Access database into the Virginia Company's corporate database (Mail Order Manager). Willis asked DMSI to perform the database conversion, based on our experience with both Access applications and M.O.M. The resulting conversion was pleasing to both Willis and his customers: "We completed the transition without skipping a beat - Bruce's help was invaluable".

In Part 2 of the database project, DMSI configured the RFM analysis feature of M.O.M. for the Virginia Company database. RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value) is an approach to scoring your customer database, since all customers are not alike. In this way, organizations are able to cut mailing costs by sending catalogs to the highest scoring customers most likely to respond. This is targeted direct marketing at its finest.

Congratulations Virginia Company on your successful database launch!

Learn more about DMSI database conversion services

DMSI is a full-service resource for database marketing software, programming, installation and applications.

Whether you're considering a new software system or just need help assessing your current one, DMSI can help. The staff at DMSI offer the rare combination of database know-how and direct marketing expertise. Our niche is small to mid-size companies who need the power of advanced database techniques to grow their business. We provide software product installation and customization for "best of breed" marketing database packages.

Additionally, if you are betting your business on selecting your next marketing application vendor, let us assist in researching your needs. Finally, we have created a family of services that solve your data quality problems, to get maximum value from your database.

Web site: DesktopMarketingInc.com
E-mail: info@DesktopMarketingInc.com
Telephone: (703) 941-8109
Falls Church, VA