database marketing business plan

Nice to meet you.

Enter your email to receive our weekly  G2 Tea newsletter  with the hottest marketing news, trends, and expert opinions.

What Is Database Marketing? Meaning, Types, and Examples

July 8, 2024

by Lauren Pope

Why does database marketing matter for your business?

Types of database marketing, tips for building your own marketing database, examples of database marketing, benefits of database marketing, challenges of database marketing.

Have you ever spent hours crafting the perfect campaign only to see it fall flat?

Mistakes in marketing strategy and communications are common and often stem from issues with the customer database. Outdated information or poorly segmented lists can severely limit your campaign's effectiveness.

These easily avoidable mistakes damage customer relationships, making database marketing crucial for marketing operations teams.

What is database marketing?

Database marketing is a targeted marketing strategy that uses customer data to deliver personalized communications and promotions. It helps to identify high-performing segments for effective campaign allocation, resulting in improved relationships and conversions. 

Tools like relational database management systems (RDBMS) play a crucial role in database marketing by providing a structured means to store, manage, and analyze customer data. These databases organize data into tables that can be easily queried and linked, enabling marketers to segment their audience, identify trends, and personalize their outreach effectively. 

Database marketing is not about funneling people into contact lists and spamming them with company communications. It's about extending the lifetime value of accounts. A well-crafted database marketing strategy focuses on hyper-personalization and providing value.

Relational or SQL databases ensure that marketing data remains accurate and reliable, which is essential for crafting personalized and targeted marketing strategies.

The oversaturation of choice on the market today has made it a buyer’s market. It has never been easier to research and compare products, and in turn, that makes consumer switching all the more risky for your business.

$138.8 billion

amount lost by U.S. companies each year as a result of avoidable consumer switching.

Source: Outbound Engine

Marketing is no longer a competition about creating the flashiest customer campaign . It’s all about driving value for the consumer. How can you solve their problem, and how do you communicate to the customer that you’ve got the answers? It’s the mix between database marketing and a fine-tined overall marketing strategy that will yield results.

It’s especially important to focus on database marketing if your marketing strategy relies heavily on crowded channels like social media or email.

Email marketing is a bloated industry, and grabbing consumers’ attention is tricky. Personalized marketing communications can help you stand out from a crowded or spam-filled inbox. Social media has become so noisy that sometimes brands have just seconds to make an impact before the customer moves on.

The barrier to entry on many digital marketing channels is quickly increasing. Marketing automation is making it easier to have personalized conversations with leads even in the beginning stages of acquisition, and the data found in marketing databases fuels these campaigns.

There are only two types of database marketing: business database marketing and consumer database marketing. Deciding which to use is as simple as deciding whether you’re a B2B business or a B2C business. B2C businesses should opt for business database marketing, whereas B2C businesses should stick with consumer database marketing.

Business database marketing

If you’re a B2B business looking to connect with your customers, you’ll want to use business database marketing.

Business database marketing is often less time-consuming to manage than consumer database marketing. That’s because B2B marketers often focus on marketing to specific customers and high-priority accounts. It’s less important to reach a large number of people and often more valuable to use account-based marketing.

Account-based marketing is a strategic marketing approach in which a company identifies key accounts and creates an individualized marketing and sales strategy to help close deals. Pairing this strategy with a well-managed customer database is a match made in heaven. Think of account-based marketing as a one-to-one marketing strategy in which you tailor your approach based on the individual needs of a potential client.

Here are just a few things account-based marketers like to know to help keep things personal:

• Prospect names, titles, and tenure at the company
• Company size , market, and employee headcount
• Estimated annual revenue
• Current tech stack
• Social profiles of all decision-makers
• Current or ongoing co-marketing partnerships

This information is then used to create a digital marketing strategy designed to connect with your ideal client or current customer across several digital marketing channels. The type of content you distribute is just as important as the message. Choosing the right content to interact with your ideal B2B customer takes time and testing.

The good news is that database marketing can help add a personal touch to any of these communications. Here are just a few content types you can use in business database marketing:

• Free trial offers
• Industry reports
• White papers
• Targeted email campaigns
• Social media marketing

All of this is done in the hopes of reaching decision-makers. Business database marketing is designed to shorten the length of time between first contact and a signed contract. This hyper-personalized marketing strategy can help your company cut through the noise and rise above the competition.

Consumer database marketing

B2C and direct-to-consumer businesses should focus their efforts on consumer database marketing and direct-to-consumer marketing .

Consumer database marketing is most commonly used in e-commerce businesses; however, this strategy works for anyone who sells a product to a customer and not another business. In this case, it’s more of an advantage to cast a wide net and reach as many customers as possible to generate revenue.

For this reason, it’s very common for mistakes to occur regarding customer data. The larger pool of customers means there are more chances for data to get corrupted, mishandled, or even misplaced. And because the customers you’re trying to reach are often making a one-time purchase, it’s much easier for them to disengage with your brand if they feel their time is wasted.

Luckily, this also means the amount of information and personalization needed to make direct connections with your customers is lower. Customers often expect less from your business if there is no pre-existing relationship. That means it really only takes collecting a few crucial data points to make an impact on potential customers.

Here are some data points B2C marketers should consider collecting:

• First and last name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Mailing address
• Location data
• Transaction history

This information is then used to create a digital marketing strategy designed to cross paths with your ideal client or current customer across a number of digital marketing channels. The type of content you distribute is just as important as the message. Choosing the right content to interact with your ideal B2B customer takes time and testing.

Database marketing adds a personal touch to all of these communications. Here are just a few content types you can use in consumer database marketing:

• Online contests
• Social media giveaways
• Discount codes
• Free shipping offers
• Customer loyalty programs
• First-time buyer perks
• Direct mail and postcards

The key to a successful customer database marketing strategy is segmentation. Building customer lists based on personal interests or purchasing history can help you create hyper-specific content and offerings that catch your customers' attention.

For example, if you segment your consumer database based on gender, you could ensure customers receive promotions and information about clothing or accessories they are more likely to purchase. Consumer database marketing allows you to cast a wide net while maintaining the quality of your customer interactions .

Building your own marketing database requires a specific focus on two things: choosing the right data to collect and then choosing the right software to house that data. Because so much of the buyer's journey happens online, it's important to invest in software that can help you track these interactions.

If you rely on in-platform analytics, it can be easy to let interactions and soft touches slip through the cracks. As your team begins making decisions about your relationship marketing strategies, here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Identify your target audience

Understanding who your target audience is is the first step toward collecting data about them. Building a customer profile is a popular way to pinpoint your ideal customer. Customer profiles act as a form of lead qualification and help your marketing team discover how customers like being communicated with, what motivates them, and what turns them off.

If you've never built a customer profile before, here are some tips you can use to get started:

• Focus on your long-term team and company goals
• Highlight what makes your company unique
• Discover which channels your customers use most often
• Track which competitors your ideal customer might choose over you

Once you've built a detailed profile of your ideal customer, you can start deciding what information you'd like to know about them. This entire process can seem tedious, and it's easy to forget why this step is important. Understanding the target customer will help give you a complete picture of who you're marketing your product to and how best to reach them, which results in more won accounts and marketing-influenced revenue.

2. Choose the right software

Before you can start collecting and processing marketing data, you'll need a system powerful enough to handle all that information. The most popular software option for housing marketing databases is a marketing resource management (MRM) system .

Marketing resource management software allows your team to:

• Collect and store data across multiple marketing channels in a single place
• Manage marketing budgets and campaign planning within the same platform
• Track and build reports on the success of marketing campaigns and assets
• Integrate with third-party marketing tools to execute marketing campaigns
• Easily share and distribute marketing data and materials across teams

MRM systems can work alongside an RDBMS by managing workflows, campaigns, and assets. RDBMS, on the other hand, stores and analyzes the underlying data. This combination offers a powerful marketing management environment.

Investing in a software solution is especially crucial for enterprise businesses or B2C businesses. The volume of data handled at that level is often too much for one person to track manually. Ensuring your marketing database manager has the correct tools for the job will make your job easier and make your data much better.

3. Collect your customer data

Customer data can come from various sources, both internal and external. As you begin transferring data into your marketing database of choice, be sure to include everything you think you might need to track.

While many systems will allow you to create new categories of data over time, those new categories will not be pulled into historic reports created before they were added. This can create inconsistent reporting, which can be a pain if your reporting cycles use data older than six months back.

Here are the four different types of customer data you should consider when building a marketing database:

• Acquisition data: which marketing channel or campaign did the customer come from?
• Demographic data : information about a customer's age, gender, location, income, industry, and more
• Psychographic data: what interests, hobbies, or beliefs could impact your customers' buying decisions?
• Technology data: what devices does your customer use when interacting with your brand?

 Collecting this information is just the beginning. As you begin building rapport with customers, it gets easier to discover and include more personalized data. Marketing communications pieces such as surveys, lead forms, and other data collection tools can help you continue to round out your customers' data profiles.

You can take additional steps and meet with other leaders before making decisions, but marketing databases are often built with these three simple steps. Don't fall into the trap of inviting too many cooks to the kitchen when it comes to building your strategy. Database marketing management is a very technical job that should be left to professionals.

It’s easy to discuss marketing theory; it’s harder to understand how your business can best utilize these strategies. This section will cover a few real-world examples of using your marketing database. Hopefully, this will help give you a better understanding of how database marketing can benefit your business.

Upselling customers to a paid plan

A SaaS company is looking for a way to upsell customers currently using their free subscription model to the next pricing block and turn them into paying customers. They use their customer database to identify which users are utilizing the free version of their product the most to decide who is most likely to start paying for their services. From there, they design a targeted email marketing campaign offering a discount for a paid subscription to their service for a limited time.

In this case , the data was ideal for finding customers already enjoying the free version of the product and delivering them a deal that is hard to pass up.

Offering personalized customer support

A customer success representative for a large e-commerce business in the fitness industry receives an incoming support call. They pull up their caller's profile in their marketing database and see they are a new customer who received the product as a gift. With this information, the representative can assume that this customer is having trouble with their new product and give them personalized support to ensure they receive excellent customer support and a quick resolution.

In this case , the data was ideal for helping a new customer onboard their product and have a pleasant experience with the company. This is great for building rapport with new consumers that will keep them coming back.

Choosing the right product to pitch

A global airline company has recently added a new customer loyalty program for frequent business-class fliers. Before rolling out the program, they use their customer data to view purchasing history and demographic data to find eligible customers. They then use this list to send a personalized direct mailer to the customer, thanking them for their loyalty and encouraging them to sign up for the program.

In this case , the data was perfect for finding loyal customers and offering them an incredibly personalized offering that aligns with the customer’s interests. This is perfect for campaigns that have high-conversion goals.

Customer data has become so integrated into our marketing strategies that consumers now expect a certain level of personalization. Nowadays, customers compare your brand against competitors well before they are ever on your radar. Ensuring your first touchpoints with them are valuable and relevant to their interests will help endear you to them.

When done correctly, using the data in your marketing database to connect with your customers on a deeper level has virtually no downsides.

Database marketing allows your team to:

• Prioritize your most valuable accounts and customers first
• Real-time insights into your customers’ decision-making process
• Create detailed customer segments designed to drive higher conversions
• Inform consumer behavior and highlight common buying patterns
• Improve your product using customer feedback
• Increase brand awareness and sentiment with your target audience
• Centralize data can be used across marketing teams and projects

Database marketing allows you to use the information you’ve collected about a customer to market to them smarter. This data can be implemented at any stage of the customer journey , whether they’ve been a customer for five years or five minutes. This information should be used to create highly personalized marketing touchpoints designed to find the customer at the right time.

While there are a few drawbacks to database marketing, there are a few key challenges.

Most problems with database marketing arise when the data isn’t properly managed. Data is only as good as your own quality standards for maintaining it. Many companies choose to hire a database manager for this exact role. Having a dedicated member of your marketing team who is dedicated to keeping the data usable ensures that all of your other departments are getting the most accurate and helpful customer information.

Here are a few other challenges associated with database marketing:

Data decay – information changes rapidly, and data decay is an inevitable byproduct. When your database experiences decay, the information available is no longer accurate. The average decay for a marketing database is less than 5%. Aim to keep your decay rates low by keeping updating and confirming customer information regularly.

Data accuracy – human error is, unfortunately, part of the process. Customers often provide bad data in the form of typos, incomplete information, or inaccurate data. All that data becomes part of your system and affects the quality of your marketing data. This problem can be easily avoided by limiting the number of input fields on your forms and replacing them instead with drop-down menus or checkbox modules.

Catching customers’ attention – once you have the data segmented and ready to run, it’s imperative to strike while the iron is hot. The window of opportunity to grab a customer’s attention is limited. Marketing automation tools are often used to help segment, personalize, and deploy marketing campaigns using your data as the guide. By automating the process, you can accelerate the time to launch and improve your chances of making an impact on the customer.

The devil is in the data.

As you've learned by now, the make-or-break moment comes down to having better marketing data than your competitors. Even the best data is only as good as the marketing strategy it's used alongside. Get your team on board with the value of marketing data early, and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Learn how to use marketing information management (MIM) to get the data infrastructure and insights for your database marketing needs.

Get rid of data redundancy using the best relational database.

Lauren Pope is a former content marketer at G2. You can find her work featured on CNBC, Yahoo! Finance, the G2 Learning Hub, and other sites. In her free time, Lauren enjoys watching true crime shows and singing karaoke. (she/her/hers)

Software is eating the world – and with that comes a lot of data.

Nobody likes being a member of a captive audience.

In both life and sales, timing is everything.

Never miss a post.

Subscribe to keep your fingers on the tech pulse.

By submitting this form, you are agreeing to receive marketing communications from G2.

Learn how you can Unlock Limitless Customer Lifetime Value with CleverTap’s All-in-One Customer Engagement Platform.

• See a tailored demo of CleverTap's key capabilities.
• Get a walk-through of industry specific use cases.
• Obtain answers to any questions about integration, go-live, and support.

Get to know CleverTap from the scratch. To book your personal product demo, fill out the form and start at your preferred date. Afterwards we will get in touch with you.

Please enter a valid work email

Please enter a valid phone number

Yes, I'd like to receive the latest news and other communications from CleverTap. You can unsubscribe anytime. For more details, go to the Privacy Policy .

By submitting this form, you agree to CleverTap's Privacy Policy Site is protected by reCAPTCHA ( Privacy | Terms )

Thank you for your interest in CleverTap

We’ll get back to you soon!

Subscribe to our blog.

Product Overview Uncover the building blocks of CleverTap customer engagement platform

Customer Data & Analytics Ingest, analyze and segment customer data

Experimentation & Optimization Unleash the winning strategy in real-time

Personalization Contextualize customer experiences in real-time

Campaign Orchestration Build omnichannel customer experiences effortlessly

Clever.AI Insightful. Empathetic. Actionable

Push Notifications

Email Automation

In-App Messaging

Web Messaging

Signed Call TM

THEMATIC RELEASES

Unveiling Clever.AI to Help Brands Gain an AI Edge in Customer Engagement

Build Omnichannel Experiences that delight your Customers

E-Commerce Fuel purchases and maximize order value

Subscriptions Build a loyal subscriber base

Financial Services Win trust with the most secure platform

Gaming Maximize player lifetime value

Blog Latest trends in customer engagement

Case Studies Find out how customers unlock value

Webinar Interactive sessions, seminars and more

Videos Watch Our Latest Videos and Tutorials

Podcasts Listen to Engaging and Insightful Podcasts

Guides Learn & Succeed with our In-Depth Guides

Whitepapers Thought leadership to maximize outcome

Benchmark Reports Measure up against the best

Glossary Stay current with new terms and concepts

Ebooks Explore Our Collection of E-Books

About Us Building lifelong customers

Partners Discover the CleverTap advantage

Media CleverTap in the news

Careers Let's work together

CSR Commitment to empowering communities

CleverTap4Good Where technology meets philanthropy

Contact Us We’d love to hear from you!

Industry Best Practices & Top Insights delivered to your Inbox.

Thank you for subscribing to the CleverTap Blog!

• Customer Spotlight
• CleverTap Elevate
• Engineering
• Uncategorized
• Data Science
• The Big Leap
• CleverTap Quarterly
• CleverTap Engage
• CleverTap Tech

What Is Database Marketing? Why It’s Important and How to Do It Right [Infographic]

• Published on September 6, 2018
• Reading time 9 min read
• Views 101.99k

Found this interesting? Share it now!

Real-time data. Actionable insights. 360 customer views. Personalized engagement strategies. Omnichannel campaigns. They may be buzzwords, but they’re also critical to effective marketing and business growth. And database marketing is the key to all of them. So what is database marketing and why is it important?

What is Database Marketing?

Let’s start with a basic database marketing definition . Database marketing is a form of direct marketing. It involves collecting customer data like names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, transaction histories, customer support tickets, and so on. This information is then analyzed and used to create a personalized experience for each customer, or to attract potential customers. Traditional direct marketing involves creating direct mail pieces like brochures and catalogs and mailing them to a list of potential or current customers in the hopes it evokes a positive response. Database marketing takes that strategy a step further by seeking to understand how customers want to be marketed to, and then applying those insights to fulfill the customer’s need via the best channel.

Mobile Marketing is Easier with Expert Guidance

You’ll start seeing our latest content in your inbox soon.

The Importance of Database Marketing

Today’s marketers have access to more customer data than ever before. That’s why database marketing is once again becoming so important. It’s all about using that sea of data to create more relevant marketing messages that better resonate with customers — both current and potential.

Benefits of Database Marketing

Today’s consumers expect a personalized experience with your brand. To deliver one, marketers need a unified view of each customer across every touchpoint. Only then can they understand the customer’s journey and engage them in a meaningful way. Database marketing strategies make that easier. Customer databases can help you:

• Identify customer groups – from your most loyal, high-value customers to first-time customers and occasional purchasers
• Create detailed customer segments based on demographics, behaviors, or even personal interests
• Design highly personalized messages for both current and prospective customers
• Determine the best channel and time to engage customers
• Improve your marketing efficiency by not wasting time and money sending campaigns to those who are unlikely to respond
• Build effective loyalty programs that provide the right incentives for repeat purchases
• Improve customer service by providing support staff with a 360° view of the customer’s interactions with your brand

Challenges of Database Marketing

Database marketing offers some compelling benefits — but to do it successfully, marketers need to understand the challenges as well. Watch out for these database marketing challenges:

• Data decay. Anytime a customer or prospect changes jobs or earns a promotion, moves to a new address, changes their name, gets a new email address, or makes any other life change, their profile becomes out of date. A well-managed database decays at an average 2-3% each month, which means in just a year, a third of your data could be invalid. * To limit data decay, focus on information that is less likely to change: name and phone number, for example, rather than business email.
• Data accuracy. Customers don’t always provide accurate information. Typos, handwriting legibility, or incomplete info can have a big impact on the quality of your database. You can limit inaccuracies by replacing input fields with standardized drop-down menus or checkboxes.
• Acting on customer data in a timely manner. Collecting and analyzing customer data is just the first step. You have to act quickly enough to capitalize on a customer’s interest in and interactions with your brand. This is where marketing automation tools like CleverTap become so important. By unifying rich user profiles with powerful segmentation and omnichannel marketing campaigns , you can deliver timely, personalized experiences for each and every user.

Effective Database Marketing Strategies

How should you get started creating your own database marketing strategy? Begin with the following steps.

• Identify your target audience. How old are they? What income level? What job title? Where do they live? What are they interested in? What else do they buy? Build a detailed ideal customer profile for your product, and then use this profile to decide what kind of information you need to include in your database.
• Collaborate with other teams. Marketing, sales, and support all have direct contact with customers and prospects. What information does each team need to be effective?
• Find the right software. Customer data doesn’t do anyone on your team any good if they can’t access it. Choose a tool that makes it easy to see different kinds of information, customer types, and even organize customer information to match your different product or service categories.
• Acquisition data: Which channel or source did a new customer come from? Which marketing campaign?
• Demographic data: What is the customer’s age, gender, marital status, education level, location, etc.?
• Technographic data: What device(s) do they use to interact with your brand? Desktop or mobile? Android or iOS?
• Psychographic data: What are their personal perspectives, values, and interests? What motivates them?
• Activity data: How have they interacted with your website, social media pages, and/or mobile app?
• Transaction data: How frequently do they make a purchase with you, and how much do they spend? Which items do they usually purchase together?
• Correspondence data: Have they ever submitted a customer support ticket? Posted a question or complaint to your social media pages? Responded to a survey?
• Keep data up-to-date and backed up. Building a customer database takes a lot of time and effort. Protect your investment by safeguarding against power outages and technical glitches. CRM software can automatically update profiles when customers enter new information, and online tools can protect against data decay by integrating with your software and updating each contact as they browse your website with activity data.
• Respect customer privacy . Social media makes it easier than ever to get detailed insights into your customers’ interests, perspectives, and life updates. Effective personalization is about providing a relevant message to an interested audience — not proving how much personal data you have.  

Once you’ve built your database, you can start with some basic user segmentation . For instance, create a campaign specifically for first-time buyers or new customers, or one tailored for your loyalty program participants. More complex segmentation methods can analyze across multiple data points to give you more detailed user segments. Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM) Analysis , for instance, creates customer groups based on how active they are and how much they spend, so you can quickly see and engage your champion customers, new customers, or dormant customers. The most advanced segmentation involves sophisticated predictive analytics that can forecast a customer’s future behavior. That means predicting things like potential customer lifetime value , probability of churn, or likelihood of purchase. These types of advanced segmentation raise conversion rates by up to 5x .

Database Marketing Examples

Identify High-Value Customers and Potential Upsells An OTT app wants to understand how many of its customers are frequent binge watchers who are primed for upsell to a premium subscription plan. They use their customer database to identify their high-value, frequent watchers, and then send a combined email and push campaign offering these users a free month of premium as incentive to purchase a subscription. Using predictive analytics, they’re able to forecast how many campaign recipients will convert to balance marketing resources and prove ROI. Provide Personalized Customer Support A customer service representative for an ecommerce app is assigned an incoming call. They can immediately access the caller’s profile and see that they are a new customer who recently made their first purchase: a smart home device that lets them remotely lock their front door and see a video feed of visitors. With this information, the service rep can immediately provide a personalized support experience and offer a faster resolution by helping the customer quickly set up and troubleshoot their device. Know Which Products and Services to Pitch Customers A travel app wants to expand its product offering with a series of guided backpacking tours. Before dedicating resources to the effort, they tap into their customer database to view purchase trends and demographic patterns to first determine whether their customers would actually book guided backpacking trips, and second, to learn which customer types they should pitch these trips to. With database marketing, you can ensure that you’re offering something that your customers actually want. Predict Who Will Buy and When For a food delivery app, timing is critical. Understanding your window of opportunity to engage customers is key to beating the competition and boosting conversions — but spamming users at every meal time is a surefire way to lose them. By using predictive analytics with their customer database, the food delivery app team can forecast which users are most likely to buy. That way they can send notifications and promo codes to the right users at the right moment. And on the flip side, they can see who’s likely to churn so they can reach out with a tempting promo campaign and win those users back.

The Next Phase of Database Marketing

Metrics That Matter for Growth: A Handbook for Mobile Marketers

Download Now

• database marketing

Craft effective campaigns with our visual drag-and-drop tool

Engage with customers at scale across 9 channels

Get answers to the what, how, why

Gauge your customers like you know them

Direct users via nudges

Low-code A/B tests for users

Roll out instant segment features

Build personalized context for users' optimal experience

Build infinite user segments based on behavioral data & actions

Measure and analyze nudge-level impact with event-based reporting

Integrate in minutes. Deliver in seconds. We’re that fast!

Build meaningful connections with highly personalized campaigns

Offer a website/app-like experience within your email

Unify data from multiple sources to get complete understanding of a customer

Deliver cross-channel campaigns using our complete automated platform

Connect different customer identities scattered across multiple devices in real time

Use AI to predict & deliver 1:1 recommendations that convert

Define rules to deliver dynamic & delightful web experiences

Extend personalized user experiences across your all channels

Curate exceptional experiences

Enhance ROI with live segments

Unique personalized picks

Get intelligent game-changing insights that propels conversions and revenue

Allow AI to help you predict app uninstalls & boost retention

Allow AI to give a complete analysis of your favourite product

Engage users seamlessly! No coding needed!

Spark 'Aha' moments: Engage during app activity

Engage customers with contextual web push

Engage active site visitors, supercharge your web messaging

Craft beautiful emails, Target wisely, Time perfectly

Send concise, targeted texts to customer mobiles.

Connect with customers via automated voice calls

Convert more: Utilize WhatsApp for power sales

Unlock the power of RCS messaging with Netcore

• Ecommerce & Retail Media & Entertainment Travel and Hospitality Edtech Fantasy Gaming Business & Financial Direct to Consumer Inbox Commerce Startup
• Email Consultancy Gamechangers Infrastucture & Security
• Blog Success Stories Ebooks Podcasts Webinars Videos Guides Interactive Product Demos Inbox Commerce Demos Demo Center Tools Netcore Design

Download the Success Story

Share this article

Subscribe for updates.

Database marketing explained: How to build your database, the benefits, and examples

Database marketing helps Amazon recommend home decor items via email after your recent purchase of an eye-catching side table, or Netflix suggest top thrillers via push notifications when you binge-watch six episodes of Stranger Things. 

So what exactly is database marketing and what are its types? How do you collect the required data? And what benefits can you expect from database marketing? We talk about all this and more, along with examples of successful global brands implementing it.

What is database marketing?

Database marketing involves collecting, organizing, and processing customer data to deliver personalized and relevant marketing communications to existing as well as potential customers. Having a database equips you with enough customer data to create successful strategies to reach a diverse customer demographic.

This marketing approach helps marketers learn more about existing and potential customers, refine customer segmentation , understand them better, and deliver personalized offerings. It also equips you to improve customer acquisition and retention, cross-selling, upselling, reactivation and achieving a higher ROI on your marketing spend.

However, the utility of database marketing is not only limited to personalized product recommendations across various channels. All the behavioral data that database marketing collects also helps you identify customer journey pain points. With these insights, you can create better segmentation and targeting, and make necessary improvements to your platform by adding walkthroughs, or tweaking certain features, for example.

For leads, the database marketing approach is about collecting basic information like name, gender, address, email, phone number, etc., and reaching out with personalized messaging via email marketing, SMS marketing, or social media ads. While for existing customers, basic information plus user behavior—purchase history, average order value, browsing history, and so on, is collected to personalize marketing messages and recommendations.

Types of database marketing

Database marketing branches into two categories—B2B and B2C. Information gathered varies as per your target.

1. B2C consumer database marketing

Businesses use consumer database marketing to sell directly to consumers.

Basic information such as phone numbers, email IDs, addresses, locations, gender, age, and spending capacity; and purchase information such as the number of orders, average order size, and purchase frequency are data prioritized in this type of database marketing.

You can conduct quizzes, social media giveaways, free trials, and throw in some new account registration perks to encourage potential customers to share this information with you.

2. B2B business database marketing

Businesses use business database marketing to store lead contacts of stakeholders from other businesses.

Here, it would be best to gather details of your contact persons—name, business email id, job function, phone number, reference, what exactly they are looking for, etc.

LinkedIn, whitepaper downloads, free software trials, event registrations, webinars, and demos are some ways to collect information for B2B databases.

How to build your marketing database

Building a good database can reap significant benefits. Let’s discuss the various ways you can start building your marketing database.

1. Offer discounts and useful information in a newsletter

Newsletters incentivize your audience to sign-up for your subscriber lists by sharing their basic information, such as name, email, phone number, etc., in exchange for discounts, sale information, or valuable content.

Newsletters are an excellent way to build lasting relationships with new and existing customers and keep them purchasing from your brand. Moreover, depending on user interaction, you can collect valuable data to create better segmentation and personalization strategies.

2. Offer trials of a subscription service

By offering free trials of your subscription services, you can let your prospects try out your full-featured product/service free of cost for a limited time before they are required to pay for it.

This removes any apprehensions that customers have before paying for a service they are unsure about.

You can track their service usage during the free trial and note the features they used the most. If they cancel the subscription before the first payment is due, you can use this information to re-target them using other channels.

3. Create an OTP login

Customers are often reluctant to share their phone numbers before purchasing.

Creating an OTP login will work as a two-step verification login system, which will make them trust the overall security of their accounts and get you their phone numbers, thereby building your database. Although ensure not to spam them with texts, that would break trust.

4. Collect behavioral data

Collecting behavioral data includes tracking customers’ past behavior and interaction with your products and overall platform, social media pages, and ads, including what engages them the most. 

With the right marketing automation platform, you can also identify real-time friction points, recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) value of your customer’s purchase or other events and track metrics like average session count for different user types, and more.

Remember that gathering and organizing behavioral data is a continuous process and goes on after you have added the customers to your database. You begin with focusing on acquiring customers and move on to retaining them via relevant and personalized marketing communication.

5. Launch a chatbot on the website/app

You can leverage a chatbot on your website or app to improve customer relations by quickly responding to queries and FAQs. 

Chatbots collect more information about common problems, usual doubts, and pricing queries. You can utilize this data to improve your platform and personalize your offerings.

Which database sources are useful in database marketing? A checklist

Multiple internal and external sources can provide you with data. When you finally leverage database marketing, it’s critical to understand which data source you should rely on. Here are some of the most useful data sources.

1. Demographic data

Demographic data includes location, gender, age, marital status, education, etc. This is one of the most basic and significant pieces of information collected for database marketing.

2. Acquisition data

Acquisition data involves when, how, and where the customer was acquired (which channel, affiliate, or promotional campaign). Marketers can focus their efforts on that specific acquisition channel on noticing a trend or strengthen other weaker channels.

3. Purchase history

Purchase history data is continuously updated and includes the number of purchases, number of items purchased, intervals of previous purchases, and prices of purchases.

4. Campaign performance history

Marketers must also record the data of how well their campaign has performed, customer’s response (including frequency of response) to such campaigns, and the kinds of campaigns and channels that garnered maximum response. You can then compare it with previous campaigns to study trends.

5. Customer surveys

Surveys and questionnaires are one of the easiest ways to collect data about your customers’ preferences directly and precisely.

6. Interaction with brand

Recorded interactions between the customer and the brand (via website and app) is a critical behavioral data source.

7. Social media activity

Social media profile details, topics of interest, regular interaction with brands, and app ratings are some data collected from social media activity.

8. Third-party adtech

Purchase intent data, details about other sites browsed, and ads clicked are beneficial data for database marketing.

That’s a lot of data that you can collect using various data sources. However, that’s not the only way. You can also purchase a database for marketing.

Should you purchase a database for marketing?

Building your database from scratch requires extensive resources—time, effort, and costs. Purchasing a database from reliable providers can save that. In addition, reliable providers regularly update the database to maintain accuracy and manage and segment the database,  which you would have to spend significant time doing otherwise. 

Ecommerce companies can significantly benefit from buying data and optimizing marketing to those data points. They can leverage data for shopper analysis, price-changing, improving customer service, personalizing the customer experience, and more.

However, ensure that your providers offer permission-based contacts as you want to foster positive relationships with your potential customers from Day 0.

3 database marketing examples

Here are three examples of successful brands implementing database marketing by collecting exhaustive customer information correctly.

Netflix surpassed Disney to become the most valued media company and boasts a stellar retention rate of 93%. Among other things it’s doing right, database marketing easily makes it to the top.

Netflix collects geo-location, browser type, email address, payment information, device identifiers, web beacons (in case of browser), and more. It also collects data on customer interaction and response to a show.

Did you pause the show? Didn’t resume after pausing? Did you finish a show you started? Do you watch shows with female leads? Do you binge-watch thrillers but don’t resume comedy shows?

Netflix knows it all.

All this data adds up to create a detailed user profile post which Netflix recommends shows based on your specific preferences. A staggering 75% of viewership is based on personalized recommendations. That’s how it’s acing database marketing.

Amazon heavily focuses on data-driven marketing. It implements an elaborate procedure during user registration—collecting the user’s name, email id, and phone number, and deploying OTP verification to ensure that users share their correct email id and phone number.

After registration, Amazon leverages users’ wishlists, search history, user behavior, purchase history, and more to deliver relevant and personalized marketing messages and recommendations on-site and off-site (via email, and push notifications). Collected data points also enable Amazon to deploy effective upselling and cross-selling strategies.

3. Bank of Tennessee

Bank of Tennessee collects product interest and preference data from customers to create more effective and personalized acquisition and retargeting campaigns. The bank uses quizzes on its website to engage customers in a fun way to plan their finances.

Consumers are asked questions about their wants, needs, lifestyle, and more to understand how they plan to achieve the said goals. Critical information such as spending behaviors, financial plans, product interest, etc., are then extracted from the data and used to deliver personalized messaging.

Benefits of database marketing

Putting database marketing into action helps you improve your marketing by making your messaging relevant and personalized. You shift from generalized targeting to precise targeting based on proven data.

1. Identify the best channels to contact customers

One of the first steps to database marketing is to gain contact information and establish multiple channels of connection with your customers—phone, SMS, email, WhatsApp, etc. 

Reaching out to customers on these multiple channels and recording which channel they use/engage with the most to connect with you, will help you identify the best channels.

2. Segment customers based on interaction and loyalty

A data repository around customer behavior enables your data analytics team to develop better segmentation tactics. You can segment your existing customers based on their interaction with your brand, behavior, buying history and loyalty, and deliver relevant and hyper-personalized messaging. For example, you can reward loyal customers for their continued support and offer lucrative discounts and relevant updates to bring back dormant customers.

3. Engage across different touchpoints

Database marketing also fuels omnichannel marketing strategies. When you have gathered customer data from different channels, you can offer a seamless marketing experience across multiple touchpoints. This will help you engage customers across touchpoints and drive them down the sales funnel by leveraging personalized messaging and recommendations.

4. Personalize marketing for individuals

Let’s discuss this with an example. The customer database for eCommerce brands will contain details like age, gender, location, contact information, buying history, user behavior, preferences, product and overall website/app interaction, and more. Similarly, fintech companies will store information like credit score, EMI payment history, Pan card information, and income details. Using all this information, you can easily tailor your marketing messaging to individuals (current and prospective customers) instead of having a one-size-fits-all, guesswork approach (without any data).

5. Efficiently use marketing budget by sending targeted campaigns

You’ll be able to target your campaigns better when you know who to target, where to target, and when to target. So you’ll not be shooting in the dark targeting customers who are unlikely to respond, at the wrong time, or on the wrong channels. Doing this will ensure you spend your marketing budgets optimally and gain maximum ROI.

Database marketing with Netcore Cloud

You can avoid going through all of the above by using an intelligent martech platform.

• For each contact in the database, apart from basic information, you can also record behavioral information by adding them to lists.

2. From your database, lists can be created for different purposes like     newsletters, surveys, offers, and so on.

3. These lists are then used in campaigns to engage with your customers.

Having a rich database enhances the impact of your marketing campaign and increases your marketing ROI. Effective database marketing positively influences customer engagement and retention as you reach out with personalized messaging, making your customers feel deeply heard and understood. However, managing the customer database is not a one-time process and requires continual effort. The better you handle your data, the better it will supplement your future marketing campaigns. And finally, for desired results, it would be best to collect data and maintain a database, which can be combined with an acquired database.

To know more about how Netcore Cloud can help you maintain customer data and market to them better, visit our customer engagement page.

Copyright 2024

Please wait while you are redirected to the right page...

This device is too small

If you're on a Galaxy Fold, consider unfolding your phone or viewing it in full screen to best optimize your experience.

• Small Business
• The Top Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software for Small Businesses

A Beginner’s Guide to Database Marketing

See Full Bio

Our Small Business Expert

Database marketing is a form of direct marketing using a list or database of customer and prospect information in order to personalize marketing messages. When done right, it should help you prioritize accounts, optimize the ROI on marketing spend, and increase whatever sales metrics you're most focused on.

My grandfather was a door-to-door insurance salesman for Mutual of Omaha. As a kid, I was enamored by the different awards, plaques, and fancy office supplies he kept clustered in his small home office. But he was most proud of his gigantic rolodex, not uncommon for the time, filled with customers’ names, the names and ages of their children, birthdates, the street they lived on, and neighborhood they grew up in.

The times may have changed, but database marketing is still a powerful part of any marketing 101 strategy. In fact, with the explosion of consumer data and the shared technology that enables us to maximize the use of that data, database marketing is more relevant and important today than it ever has been.

Generally speaking, there are two main types of databases:

• Consumer database: This type of database marketing is geared toward companies that sell directly to their consumers, often times labeled as direct-to-consumer, D2C, DTC, or B2C.
• Business database: This type of database marketing is geared toward businesses that sell to other businesses, also called B2B.

What is database marketing?

Database marketing is a process where you collect, organize, and analyze consumer data in such a way that you can use it to better communicate with existing or potential customers. It frowns upon the “one size fits all” standard marketing approach, adhering instead to the axiom that people respond better to more tailored, more personalized marketing.

There are two distinct categories of database marketing, depending on your type of business and who your end customer is.

Customer database marketing

Companies that sell their products directly to the consumer (D2C) can use customer data to identify specific customer segments, build personalized marketing campaigns, determine best channels for messaging, and/or offer certain products to certain customers at a certain time.

Historically, customer data consisted of:

• Customer name
• Postal address
• Phone number

Fast forward to today, and in part due to the popularity of social media platforms and the sheer volume of ecommerce transactions, you’ll no doubt be aware of the absolutely exponential rise in consumer data.

Now, through third party data sourcing, you can find out things like household size and income, credit score, duration of home ownership, education level, and company affiliation, and include that in a customer database.

Facebook alone has more than 2 billion active users across all its platforms, and there are now more than 400,000 google search queries every second. Big data has become an absolute phenomenon. In fact, according to Forbes , 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last two years alone.

Big data is expanding, fast. Image source: Getty Images

Not surprisingly, the world of big data has allowed us to gather customer information that now includes even more granular details such as purchasing behavior, purchasing intent, retention metrics, website and email engagement, customer service communications, and social network activity.

A sophisticated marketer can use all of this consumer information to maximize and optimize their marketing funnel, whether it be to attract a new audience, fill up their prospect pipeline, test new products or offers, or to directly increase sales.

Business database marketing

Companies that sell their services and products directly to other companies (B2B) will use a business database to enhance their marketing strategy. Most of the time a business database will have smaller amounts of data than a customer database, since there are usually just a few really pertinent pieces of data.

When creating a B2B sales strategy, a typical business database might include:

• Company name
• Name of executives
• Company/employee size
• Estimated revenue
• SIC and NAIC codes

Having a detailed business database is especially helpful for account-based marketing (ABM), which relies on a more singular-focused strategy to attract a small number of highly valuable clients. For instance, a company may target a few dozen executives at a handful of companies, in hopes of landing a small number of very profitable clients, versus casting a much wider net and hoping to move people through a larger funnel.

Either way, having the right data will help you identify which of those accounts to go after to generate the B2B sales your business needs.

Ways to successfully utilize database marketing

There are many different ways you can analyze and parse customer data so you can always present the most relevant offers to a consumer. Using a more customized approach to marketing almost always results in more satisfied customers, which in turn tends to drive customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. No matter what type of business you have, which channels you use, or what tactics you prefer, you should be able to use at least one of the four main database marketing strategies.

There are many different ways to use customer data. Image source: Author

1. Relevant customer data

When your company has accurate and relevant data on the customers that are currently buying or using your products or services, you’re privy to some truly unique insights. You can use that information to build highly relevant offers, launch new products, or message your customers in a medium or through a channel that’s most applicable to them.

For instance, if you run your own financial advice firm and you tend to attract high-net-worth clients, that’s an important part of your customer database, i.e, household net worth. Having that insight, you should perhaps focus on more sophisticated financial products like wealth management, derivatives, or real estate.

You probably also know that these clients are “high-touch” and expect advisor access through email and phone support, and so you need to set up your firm in such a way to support their expectations. Additionally, as high-net-worth individuals tend to highly value personal referrals, you should ensure you use a referral strategy for acquisition marketing and perhaps include it as some part of a loyalty program.

Pro Tip: Make sure you use standardized fields or drop-downs to avoid inaccurate customer data entry, especially for common data types or inputs that can be categorized.

2. Basic customer segmentation

Companies that use customer segmentation generally adhere to the notion that each individual is different, and treating them in a customized way will increase both satisfaction and sales. As such, companies might segment customers by demographic data such as age, gender, or location, but also by customer type (new or repeating) or buying behavior (spend, consumption, engagement).

For instance, if you know that immediate customer engagement is an important predictor of a satisfied customer over the long term, then it’s important to treat new customers differently than older customers.

You might segment new buyers to receive special and unique messages whose main focus is getting them to engage in your product or service, in the hope that they use your product, love your product, and ultimately, renew it.

Another example of market segmenting is identifying past customers, those that haven’t used your product or service in a long time, or in the case of a subscription business, a customer whose subscription has lapsed, expired, or been canceled. Any good marketer knows that it’s much more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to re-engage an old customer, so many companies will implement “winback” programs.

A “winback” campaign is often used by marketers to segment past customers with unique marketing messages -- discounted offers, exclusive promotions, and/or extended subscriptions. This is a super effective way to segment your customer database in order to generate sales with people already familiar with your brand.

Pro Tip: If you’re going to run unique marketing campaigns to specific segments of customers, don’t be afraid to really personalize it based on the segment, whether it’s a past customer, a new customer, or someone that’s spent a lot of money with you. Being honest and upfront about why you’re messaging someone can actually help increase conversions!

3. Advanced customer segmentation

As mentioned above, by dividing customers into different segments, companies are able to market to them differently and provide different offers at different times.

B2B advanced segmentation

In B2B sales, there are generally two different approaches to segmentation: horizontal and vertical segmentation, both of which can be very effective marketing tools.

In vertical segmentation, a company will segment based on industry or company type, and then tailor their offer to the needs of each company within the specific industry.

For instance, if you’re in charge of B2B sales for a project management software company, the product details and benefits you’d want to highlight will differ greatly if you’re selling to a financial services company versus a construction company.

In horizontal segmentation, a company will segment based on job title across various industries. If you know the challenges and opportunities that a CTO may face in choosing a new product, for example, then you can tailor your marketing to that individual based on their role in the company.

B2C advanced segmentation

Many companies take advantage of simple customer segmentation by using demographic data or customer profile data. However, there are a few ways to do more advanced segmenting that can result in more accurate targeting and an increase in sales, such as creating buyer personas, customer goal setting, and RFM analysis. In particular, RFM has shown to be a really powerful tool for any digital, e-commerce, or subscription business.

RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value, and is a technique that analyzes each of these three customer traits in order to more effectively communicate to customers. The definitions of each trait can vary business to business, but generally, it measures:

• Recency : a measure of how recently a customer engaged with your brand (be it a visit, a purchase, or another form of engagement)
• Frequency : a measure of how frequently a customer is engaging with your brand (be it transactions or visits or email opens or CTRs)
• Monetary Value : a measure of customer spend or customer purchasing intent (be it total spent, average spent, or lifetime value (LTV) of customers)

RFM can become a very complicated process, but it can also be pretty straightforward as well. You are basically taking your database of customers and scoring or ranking them based on the three traits mentioned above, and then segmenting them based on their score. Once you have ranked your customers by Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value, you can try answering questions like the ones below:

• Who are your most valuable customers?
• Who are your least valuable customers, or the ones most likely to churn?
• Which customers may respond best to an upsell offer?
• Which customers are most likely to renew your product or service?

If you can begin to answer some of the questions above, you can more effectively allocate your marketing budget and maximize the time you spend on valuable customers, while minimizing the time you spend on your least valuable (or least likely to renew) customers.

Pro Tip: If you’re going to do an RFM analysis, weight each component differently based on what type of business you’re in. For example, if your business sells a high-priced product with infrequent purchases, you may want to attach more weight to Monetary Value versus Frequency. Customize the analysis to the needs of your business.

4. CRM and database tools

Relationship marketing is an important part of any database marketing strategy, and in order to be a good relationship manager, you need a customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

The goal is to take all the hard work and analysis you did with regard to customer profiles and customer segmentation, and then to create marketing campaigns that will attract and retain those customers. A good CRM software will help you automate and oversee the entire customer lifecycle, end-to-end.

It’s important to create relationships with your customers. Image source: Getty Images

An intuitive CRM will allow you to employ your database management strategy, letting you:

• Track leads : Make sure you’re keeping track of the leads and prospects coming into your sales pipeline so you can maximize your outreach effort.
• Monitor campaigns : PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns could be effective for your company if you can segment based on visits to your website, and a CRM can help you monitor those data points.
• Foster loyalty : Create unique marketing campaigns for your most loyal customers, providing them with special offers and discounts to ensure they’re satisfied.
• Increase sales : Sometimes your best customers just need additional information to make a purchase, whether it’s product details or warranty information. If you’ve ever received a follow-up “this item is still in your shopping cart” email, then you’ve received an automated email from a CRM tool.
• Maintain data : Maintaining your database and purging it of old or outdated information can be onerous and costly, but having a CRM makes it simple and easy.

Pro Tip: Consider what matters most to you when buying a CRM. Is it price? Usability? Customer support? Check out our HubSpot CRM review and read about one of the Ascent’s Top Ranked CRMs, with a “free forever” plan .

Is database marketing right for your business?

Sure, creating a marketing database can seem time-consuming and complex. Chances are you’re already doing something that’s considered database marketing, whether you have a special onboarding email tailored to new customers or if you’re using direct marketing to develop a telesales team.

And if not, that’s okay -- take baby steps. There’s no need to jump directly into predictive analysis and RFM if you’re just starting, or if you’re new to working with data. Begin with some simple profiling, or creating a campaign to re-engage past customers.

You should try database marketing if you can:

• Embrace technology : You are willing to make the investment in technology. It’s an absolute must to spend capital upfront to invest in technology, not only to protect the data (platform/security), but in order to utilize it.
• Hire and retain great people : You are willing to make the investment in people. Having all the data in the world won’t do you any good unless you have smart analysts, marketers, and technologists that can create actionable marketing campaigns based on that data.
• Support an omnichannel approach : You are willing to spread your brand and product into various channels. Whether it’s retail, direct mail, phone, mobile, or desktop, the more you’re willing to meet your customers where they are, the more effective your marketing will be.

I can’t think of too many negatives with regard to creating a database for your customers since it’s such a great way to increase customer satisfaction and increase your revenue. However, there are definitely a few cautionary items to consider.

You may want to try other marketing methods if:

• You’re on a budget. Collecting information and data from your customers, cataloging it, analyzing it, and then acting on it is not a quick and easy task. It can be costly, depending on how complex your strategy is. And it will almost definitely be time-consuming, so if you’re on a tight budget, this may not be for you.
• Company uses disparate systems . Some companies have gotten themselves into a position where they use seven different systems to collect and organize information. If this is your company, it could be challenging to centralize it all in a way that would make it actionable and relational.
• Data protection seems scary. Security of individuals’ information is only becoming more and more relevant, and more and more complex. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which passed in April 2016, is the most stringent and comprehensive data reform over the past 20 years. It’s becoming more popular and the essence of that reform is already moving from the EU to places like California and beyond.

But by and large, if you’re willing to invest some upfront time and money in your business, I can’t think of a better investment than creating a marketing database. After all, any entrepreneur or business owner will tell you they want to avoid putting their product or service in front of the wrong audience, while trying to ensure that it’s directly in front of the right audience, at the right time.

It’s not always an easy task, but database marketing is the most proven and valuable way to do just that.

We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent, a Motley Fool service, does not cover all offers on the market. The Ascent has a dedicated team of editors and analysts focused on personal finance, and they follow the same set of publishing standards and editorial integrity while maintaining professional separation from the analysts and editors on other Motley Fool brands.

The Ascent is a Motley Fool service that rates and reviews essential products for your everyday money matters.

Copyright © 2018 - 2024 The Ascent. All rights reserved.

How to Use Database Marketing to Your Advantage

Leverage database marketing for strategic advantage. Optimize targeting, personalize communications, and drive business growth.

In today's world, data plays a crucial role in how businesses operate, especially in the field of marketing. One effective approach that has gained traction is database marketing.

Involving using customer data to create customized and focused marketing campaigns, this strategy allows businesses to understand their customers better by analyzing their behaviors, preferences, and buying habits stored in databases. By doing so, companies can fine-tune their marketing efforts to target specific audiences more effectively.

With advancements in technology, businesses now have access to a vast array of tools and techniques for gathering data. From website analytics and social media monitoring to customer relationship management (CRM) systems and transactional data, the sources of data are practically limitless. By aggregating and analyzing these data sets, you can paint a comprehensive picture of your customers, enabling you to better understand who they are, what they want, and how they can be reached.

With customer database analysis, businesses can drive highly personalized marketing campaigns. Whether through personalized email offers, targeted social media ads, or tailored product recommendations, database marketing enables you to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. 

By avoiding generic marketing approaches, you can maximize the ROI of your marketing spend and achieve your objectives more effectively. With the right data and strategy, you can harness the full potential of database marketing to drive growth and success.

Understanding database marketing

Database marketing is a strategic approach that involves using consumer data to create targeted and personalized marketing campaigns. It relies on the collection, analysis, and utilization of data stored in marketing databases to better understand customers' behaviors, preferences, and needs.

By leveraging this information, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts to specific customer segments, improving campaign effectiveness and driving higher ROI.

Key components of database marketing include:

• Data tracking : Gathering relevant customer data from various sources such as transactions, interactions with the company's website, social media engagement, and customer service interactions.
• Data Analysis: Analyzing the collected data to identify patterns, trends, and insights about customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing habits. This involves segmentation, profiling, and predictive modeling to better understand and target different customer segments.
• Database management: This involves data storage and organization in a centralized database or CRM system. This ensures data accuracy, consistency, and accessibility for marketing purposes.
• Targeted marketing campaigns: Using the insights gained from data analysis to create personalized marketing messages and offers tailored to specific customer segments. This may include personalized email campaigns, targeted social media ads, or customized product recommendations.

The importance of customer databases in modern marketing cannot be overstated. In today's highly competitive business environment, understanding customers and delivering relevant, timely, and personalized experiences is essential for success.

Build an effective customer database

Building an effective marketing database is crucial for businesses to improve marketing efforts and understand their customer base.  A well-organized and comprehensive database allows businesses to store, manage, and analyze consumer data effectively, enabling them to deliver personalized experiences and targeted marketing campaigns.

In the following section, we will explore key steps for building an effective customer database.

Identify target customer segments

Divide your customer base into groups with shared characteristics or behaviors. This segmentation allows for more personalized marketing strategies tailored to each group's preferences and needs.

To accomplish this, analyze data to uncover patterns and trends, such as demographic data, purchase history, or engagement level. By understanding these segments, businesses can create targeted campaigns that resonate with specific audiences, leading to higher engagement and better results.

Collect and organize relevant customer data

Collecting and organizing customer data is like putting together puzzle pieces about your customers. This process involves gathering information from various sources such as website interactions, purchase history, social media engagement, demographic data, and customer feedback.

Once collected, the data should be organized systematically within a marketing database or CRM system. This organization ensures easy accessibility and allows for effective analysis and segmentation for database marketing.

Utilize customer relationship management (CRM) tools

Utilizing CRM tools can revolutionize how businesses manage their audiences . Mailchimp's CRM allows businesses to store and organize customer data in one central location, making it easy to access and analyze.

With features like contact management and segmentation, businesses can better understand their customers' preferences and behavior. Our tool enables businesses to create personalized marketing campaigns, track customer interactions, and measure campaign performance – all within the same platform.

Ensure data accuracy and completeness

Ensuring data accuracy and completeness is paramount for businesses to maintain their operations. It involves meticulously verifying the correctness of each piece of information within the dataset, such as customer names, contact details, and transaction records.

Additionally, businesses must proactively address any gaps or inconsistencies in the data to ensure a comprehensive and reliable dataset. By adhering to stringent data quality standards, organizations can make informed decisions, deliver personalized experiences, and foster trust with their customers.

Craft a database marketing strategy

Creating a successful database marketing strategy is essential for businesses looking to maximize their marketing effectiveness. By harnessing the power of data analytics and segmentation, tailor your messages to meet the unique needs and preferences of your customers, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

Below, we’ll explore some best practices for crafting a database marketing strategy that'll work for any company.

Tailor marketing campaigns based on customer data

Tailoring marketing campaigns based on customer data involves leveraging insights gleaned from various sources to create personalized and targeted messaging that resonates with specific audience segments. 

For example, an ecommerce platform might utilize browsing history to recommend products similar to those previously viewed, increasing the likelihood of conversion. By utilizing specific customer data points to inform campaign customization, businesses can create highly relevant and compelling marketing materials that resonate with each individual customer, driving engagement and fostering brand loyalty.

Personalization and customization in communication

Personalization and customization in communication involve tailoring messages and content to meet the specific needs and preferences of individual customers. One example of personalization is addressing customers by their first name in email marketing campaigns, creating a sense of individualized attention. 

Customization also goes beyond addressing customers by name and involves creating unique experiences tailored to their interests. For instance, a streaming service may curate content recommendations based on a user's viewing history and preferences, ensuring a personalized entertainment experience.

In both cases, personalization and customization enhance the impact of communication, leading to higher levels of customer engagement and loyalty.

Integrate multiple channels for a cohesive strategy

Integrating multiple channels involves synchronizing marketing efforts across various platforms to create a seamless experience for customers. For example, a retailer may integrate their online store with their social media channels, allowing customers to easily browse products and make purchases directly from social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.

Moreover, businesses can integrate customer service channels to provide consistent support across different platforms. For instance, a company may offer live chat support on its website, allowing customers to get immediate assistance, while also providing support through social media messaging platforms like Twitter or Facebook.

By integrating multiple channels, businesses can create a cohesive and omnichannel marketing strategy that enhances customer engagement, fosters brand loyalty, and drives better overall business results.

Utilize automation for efficiency

Utilizing automation for efficiency involves leveraging technology to streamline repetitive tasks and workflows, saving time and resources while improving productivity. For example, businesses can automate email marketing campaigns to send personalized messages to customers based on their behavior or preferences. This automation allows companies to nurture leads, follow up with customers, and deliver targeted promotions without manual intervention.

Other ways businesses can utilize automation is with social media engagement, where businesses can schedule posts in advance, monitor engagement metrics, and respond to inquiries automatically.

Automation can even optimize internal processes, such as inventory management, order processing, and customer service. By implementing automated systems and workflows, businesses can reduce errors, streamline operations, and improve overall efficiency.

Maximize customer engagement

Maximizing customer engagement is a cornerstone of successful marketing strategies in today's competitive landscape. Through actively engaging with potential customers, businesses can foster stronger relationships, increase brand loyalty, and drive revenue growth.

In this next section, we'll explore effective strategies and tactics for maximizing customer engagement across various channels and touchpoints to ensure that businesses can connect with their audience in meaningful and impactful ways.

Leverage insights from the database for targeted messaging

Use the wealth of information in customer databases to craft highly personalized marketing communications.

Analyzing data such as purchase history, browsing behavior, demographics, and past interactions, you gain valuable insights into your customers' preferences, interests, and needs. An online retailer might use data analysis to identify customers who have recently browsed a specific product category but have not made a purchase, then send targeted emails with personalized recommendations or special offers to encourage conversion. 

Create personalized offers and promotions

Creating personalized offers and promotions involves tailoring discounts, deals, or incentives to meet the specific preferences and needs of potential customers.

Use data from customer databases to identify opportunities and provide targeted offers that resonate with each customer segment. For grocery stores, sending customized coupons for frequently purchased items based on an existing customer's past transactions can be a good idea. 

Implement loyalty programs and incentives

Implementing loyalty programs and incentives involves rewarding existing customers for their continued support and engagement with the brand. These programs often offer perks such as discounts, exclusive offers, or rewards points that can be redeemed for future purchases.

Encourage repeat purchases and reward your customers by leveraging customer data. This can increase customer retention and further long-term loyalty . For example, a coffee shop might offer a loyalty card where customers earn a free coffee after a certain number of purchases. Analyze customer behavior to identify trends and opportunities for further engagement.

Analyzing customer behavior to enhance engagement

Analyzing customer behavior to enhance engagement involves examining how customers interact with a brand across various touchpoints and channels. With the right data reporting , businesses can gain valuable insights into customer preferences, interests, and needs.

Analyzing website traffic patterns, for example, can reveal which products or content resonate most with customers. Tracking email open rates and click-through rates, on the other hand, can indicate which marketing messages are most effective. Businesses can also use data analysis to segment customers based on their behavior and preferences, allowing for more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns

Whether it's optimizing website content, refining marketing strategies, or tailoring product offerings, data-driven insights enable businesses to better understand their customers and enhance their overall engagement with the brand.

Overcoming challenges in database marketing

Overcoming challenges in database marketing requires addressing key issues such as privacy concerns and compliance, maintaining data quality, and navigating evolving customer expectations.

Addressing privacy concerns and ensuring compliance involves implementing robust data protection measures, such as obtaining explicit consent for data collection and processing, and adhering to regulations like GDPR or CCPA. Transparency about how customer data is used and providing opt-out options are essential for building trust and mitigating privacy risks.

Dealing with data quality issues and maintaining data hygiene is crucial for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of customer data. Businesses should regularly audit and cleanse their databases to remove duplicates, identify data biases , and update outdated information. Implementing data validation processes and investing in data management tools can help maintain data quality over time.

Navigating challenges related to evolving customer expectations requires businesses to stay agile and responsive to changing trends and preferences. This may involve adopting new technologies, such as AI and machine learning, to analyze customer data and deliver more personalized experiences. Additionally, businesses should prioritize transparency and customer feedback to adapt to shifting expectations effectively.

By addressing these database marketing challenges proactively and implementing strategies to mitigate risks, businesses can unlock the full potential of database marketing to drive long-term success.

Measuring success and ROI

Defining KPIs for database marketing may include metrics such as conversion rates, customer lifetime value, email open and click-through rates, and customer engagement metrics like time spent on the website or repeat purchase frequency. These KPIs help track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and customer interactions, providing valuable insights into performance and areas for improvement.

Analyzing the impact of database marketing on customer acquisition and retention involves assessing how targeted and personalized marketing efforts influence customer behavior. By comparing customer acquisition costs with customer lifetime value and tracking retention rates, businesses can determine the effectiveness of database marketing in attracting and retaining customers over time.

Demonstrating the ROI of database marketing efforts requires quantifying the financial outcomes of marketing initiatives against the cost. This involves calculating metrics such as return on ad spend, marketing-attributed revenue, and overall revenue generated from database marketing campaigns.

Overcoming challenges in database marketing involves addressing privacy concerns, ensuring compliance, maintaining data quality, and navigating evolving customer expectations. Fortunately, Mailchimp offers a suite of tools and services that can assist you in these endeavors.

For privacy and compliance, Mailchimp provides robust data protection features and regulatory-compliant forms. To maintain data quality, businesses can leverage Mailchimp's audience management tools for organization and cleansing. What's more, Mailchimp's advanced analytics and segmentation capabilities help understand evolving customer expectations and tailor marketing strategies accordingly.

Count on Mailchimp to help you successfully navigate the complexities of database marketing and drive impactful outcomes.

• Best Practice
• ReachStream Tips
• What’s New?
• Help Center

Get 100 Views, 25 Credits & Free Monthly Recharge

A Complete Guide to Database Marketing

But unlike oil, data isn’t a scarce resource. In fact, too much of it can be a bad thing. And just like oil, data is only valuable when it’s processed and refined. It isn’t of much use in its raw form.  This is where database comes into the picture.

Databases are sets of compiled information that is structured and classified for future usage. They can be easily accessed and continuously updated. By organizing vast amounts of complex data, they make it much easier to use and to work with.

As the internet assumes more significance in our lives, so does data. This spells a break from the way things were always done.

In the past, marketing tended to appeal to the masses. Marketing efforts focused on creating content that would resonate with a majority of their target audience, hoping that a few would convert to paying customers.

But over the last decade, this has changed.

With big data , it’s possible to track and record nearly everything. This means that it’s possible to know who could be interested in your products, what they could be interested in, and where they live.

Using the data that your (to-be) customers provide, you can map out extensive profiles of them.  In other words, customer segmentation is over. Each individual customer is his own segment. The focus has shifted from the popular to the personal.

If you are a digital marketer looking to generate more leads with big data, you have come to the right place.

This is our tell-all guide to database marketing.

Want to learn more, but don’t have enough time download now, read later..

Please leave this field empty.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1:        An Introduction to Database Marketing
• Chapter 2:        B2B Database Marketing: Getting Started 
• Chapter 3:        How database marketing can change email effectiveness
• Chapter 4:        Tips to Grow Your Email List for Database Marketing 
• Chapter 5:        Segmenting Your Email List for Personalized Marketing 
• Chapter 6:        How to Improve Your Email Open Rates with a Targeted Database  
• Chapter 7:        Writing Content for Email Marketing Campaigns
• Chapter 8:        Multi-channel marketing with the help of Databases 
• Chapter 9:        Database Marketing: Best Tools & Software

Chapter 1 :

An introduction to database marketing.

“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” –Peter Sondergaard, Senior V.P, Gartner   (Click to tweet)

Imagine that your company is developing an exciting gadget that is unique in the market. You are launching the product next week, and you have already started to spread the word.

How would you get maximum publicity?

What are your options?

One, of course, is to do it the traditional way. With the help of advertisements and billboards, you can broadcast your product in your locality. But that’s no crowd-puller. Another option would be to obtain a list of people in your neighborhood and directly mail them.

But, again, how effective is that going to be?

Many of the recipients will not show interest in your product. And, there might be a significant number of people who do show interest but don’t live in your area. It would be great if you could  click a button to get a list of people in and around your area that are actually interested in your product.

That’s precisely what database marketing helps you do.

5 Effective Strategies For A New Product Launch

What is database marketing.

Database marketing is a new form of direct marketing. It collects and tracks customer data, such as names, contact details, addresses, and previous transactions. This information is then used to create a highly personalized experience for each customer.  

The methods of data collection can vary.

Data is usually obtained from application forms, contest entry forms, subscriptions, and other legally compliant methods. Traditional marketing is dependent on the hope that at least some of its viewers respond positively.

Database marketing takes it to another level by seeking to understand what customers want, as well as how they receive your message.

These insights are then applied to fulfill the customer’s needs. In our previous example, your company could create a list of users who purchased similar products earlier.

They are the ones who are most likely to show interest in what you have to sell. Once built, these databases allow you to identify and get in touch with prospective leads.

A Brief History of Database Marketing

Database marketing developed during the 1980s as an improvement on direct marketing.

Technology that could record customer responses gave way to a marketing philosophy that focused on two-way communication with the customer.

These changes were, in part, necessitated by an evolving business environment.

Direct marketing ceased to be as effective as it once was, as the customer became the center of all business operations.

The decline of traditional media also contributed to these developments. Now, marketers needed to find newer ways to reach their audience. 

With technological advances, data was no longer stored in a physical form, but on computers.

This offered several advantages, such as accessibility, ease of usage, and security. These older databases paved the way for database marketing as we know it now.

Benefits of Database Marketing

As a result of today’s landscape, the modern customer expects a highly personalized experience with your brand.

To deliver this, marketers need to be aware of every point of the customer’s journey and engage them in a meaningful way.

They also need to know the customer’s tastes and preferences.  

Database marketing makes this much easier than it would be otherwise. 

These are some ways in which database marketing can help your business:

Personalization.

You can deliver highly personalized messages to both leads and customers based on their preferences

Database marketing can help you figure out the best channel for your business to reach prospects

Detailed customer classifications

It makes it easy to recognize both first-time buyers and loyal customers. You can also segment customers based on demography, interests, and other relevant criteria

Database marketing quickly identifies prospects who are unlikely to respond, ensuring that you don’t waste time chasing cold leads.

Improved Customer Service

By knowing your customers’ pain points, your support staff are better equipped to deal with their grievances

Key Takeaway: Database marketing is a natural and much-needed improvement in direct marketing that is appropriate to the digital landscape. It is the groundwork for much of your marketing efforts.

To learn how to use database marketing for your business, continue reading… 

Acquire your very own database for free

Chapter 2 :, getting started with database marketing.

88% of marketers use data obtained by third parties to enhance their understanding of each customer – Forbes.   (Click to tweet)

Database marketing starts by collecting information about your prospects and customers so that you can understand them better.

This will help you to find out who your customers are, select your target markets, and tailor your messaging.  

Here are the first few steps to getting starting with database marketing:

Invest in a database

Buy your database from a reliable provider. A robust database can help you find your most valuable prospects. A reputable provider will be happy to provide small samples of their databases so that you can be confident that what you are about to invest in is the real deal.

Grow your customer list

Make use of every opportunity to collect and store customer data. Collect information from business cards, CTA sign-up forms, surveys, and transaction history. Record it in your database to give them a more personalized experience.

Update your data

Data isn’t like wine or French cheese. With time, the likelihood that it will become redundant is almost inevitable. Make sure you always have the latest information about your prospects. Keep track of addresses, name changes, and any other information that might be relevant to your business.

Keep your database clean

Not every lead is a customer, and your database is likely to contain many inactive leads. Don’t hesitate to delete portions of your database if the information is no longer useful.     Now that your database is set up, you can now begin to reap its advantages. Start with the following steps that are mentioned below:

Targeted messaging

Analyze your database and become familiar with your customers, their preferences, and purchase history. Start email and text message campaigns by sending out content that is relevant to them.

Measure your success

Follow up with your response rates, email open rates, and other analytics. If a customer shows interest in a product without buying it, make sure you follow up with an email and an incentive to buy it.

Calculate customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value is a predictive marketing model that estimates what the lifetime relationship of a customer will be worth to your business. It identifies your most valuable customers as well as gives insights on what you can do to retain their business.

Use analytical software

The need for businesses to track their customers’ behavior across channels is increasing. Analytical software can create information and instant reports that can help define your future business strategies.

Loyalty programs

As databases contain information about sales history, database marketing enables loyalty programs. This allows them to engage and reward long-time customers, which incentivizes them to choose your business.

Effective Database Marketing Strategies

You must have a well-planned database marketing strategy to make the most of it. These are steps you can take to ensure that happens:

Segment your target audience

Build an ideal customer profile for your product, and use it to decide what information is most important. Factors such as age, income, job position, and interests are relevant information for most businesses.

Invest in CRM software that tracks and updates profiles when customers enter new information. Use online tools that protect against data decay. Safeguard your investment from power outages or technical glitches by investing in the right support software.

Gather customer data

• Acquisition data:  What channel did a new customer come from?
• Demographic data:  What is the customer’s age, gender, education level, marital status, etc.?
• Psychographic data:  What are their individual perspectives, interests, and values?
• Activity data:  What are their interactions with your website and social media pages?
• Technographic  data:  What devices do they use while interacting with your brand?
• Transaction data:  How frequently do they purchase from you, and how much do they spend each time on average?

Respect customer privacy

It is necessary to remember that your customers’ privacy is to be respected at all times. Personalization is all about providing the most relevant message to your target audience, not showing off about how much you know about them.

Chapter 3 :

How database marketing can change email effectiveness.

According to a report by  Adestra, email marketing was the best marketing channel in terms of ROI.

68% of the companies that participated in the study rated email marketing as “good” or “excellent.”

As a cost-effective marketing technique, email marketing offers measurable results for businesses.

It keeps customers curious about new deals, ensures leads remain engaged and makes it easy to track your progress.

These are some ways in which database marketing can make your emails more effective:

Build a Quality Customer list

The 80/20 principle in marketing suggests that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers   (Click to tweet)

With a database, you can track and record users who show a genuine interest in your product. Once you can reach out to them, you will find customers who are more than happy to endorse your brand.

Personalized messaging

With the help of customer data, you can send out personalized messages to your subscribers. Something as simple as addressing the reader by name can be very useful in boosting open rates. On average, regular emails generate  $0.11 in revenue  per mail, while personalization increases revenue by six times.

Subscriber Segmentation

Segmenting your audience lists by industry, company size, and sales cycle. This ensures that customers receive only information that is most relevant to them. It also lends the element of personalization, which is essential to the modern customer. This, in turn, increases open and response rates, revenues and leads.

Automated email campaigns

With the help of marketing automation software, you can send trigger-based emails. Trigger emails do much better than traditional emails in terms of open rates (95% higher), click-through rates (almost 2x), and conversions (40% more).

Forrester research found that trigger-based email marketing campaigns generate 4 times more revenue and 18 times more profit.   (Click to tweet)

Clearing out Inactive Contacts

At any given time, a large portion of those you mail are going to keep your emails unopened. Find out those who are inactive and show little interest in your products. Then, you can redirect your efforts towards the leads that are most important to you, and spend less time chasing cold leads.

Key Takeaway:   In terms of ROI and reach, email marketing trumps all other channels, including social media. When you add a clean and reliable database to the mix, it becomes an even more effective channel.

When done right, email marketing with the help of a database will provide your business with the vital boost it needs.

Learn More About Automation And Its Benefits

Chapter 4 :  , tips to grow your email list for database marketing.

Now that you have your database and your email lists, it can be tempting to believe that your work is cut out.

In case you do, we have bad news.

Your email marketing database stales by about 22.5% every year.   (Click to tweet)

There are several reasons why this happens. Your contacts addresses could have changed, they could opt-out of your email list, or their contact email addresses might simply be inactive.

Whatever the reason, it’s necessary to ensure that you’re always updating your database.

Here are some ways by which you can grow your email list to make the most of your database marketing efforts:

Create compelling email content

If you want people to remain subscribers, your emails must intrigue them. Ensure that your emails have a touch of personalization and creativity. If you are unique and engaging enough, your subscribers will look forward to your emails.

Segment lists by buyer personas

Use various types of email subscriptions to send targeted content. Email recipients are likelier to click on emails that cater to their specific interests. If you create multiple subscription types, you increase the chances that your contacts will subscribe to at least one of them.

Share ‘bonus’ content

To a website visitor, gated content may not be worth exchanging their details for. To lure them into sharing their information, you need to give them freebies first. Blogs that offer beginner advice on a relevant subject is an excellent way to start.

Promote online contests

Use your social media account to host an online contest. This is incredibly helpful in generating a buzz and interest in your product. Encourage participants to sign up for it using their email address.

Shorten your forms

While it seems like a reasonable thing to do, asking for too much information can drive visitors away! By reducing the length of your forms and asking for only relevant information, you will convert more visitors. Besides, you can always ask for more information once you’re able to confirm their interest.

Create a blog

There are plenty of reasons why you should blog if you already haven’t! The most important one is that blogs can boost your search engine rankings, making you more visible online. It allows you to collect more subscribers and also establishes your authority as an expert on your subject.

Key Takeaway:   Don’t believe that your email list will be as useful in the future as it is today. There are plenty of reasons why email list attrition happens, and there’s little you can do about it. Continually growing your email list with the tips mentioned above will keep your databases healthy and updated. You will also have access to the most recent information about your contacts.

Chapter 5 :  

Segmenting your email list for personalized marketing.

It’s easy to find sources that proclaim email marketing is dead. With the advent of social media, emails were forecasted to take a backseat and slowly but inevitably fade away.

But nothing could be further from the truth.  

Email still continues to rule the roost.

In fact, email is 40% more effective than Facebook and Twitter when it comes to acquiring new customers.   (Click to tweet)

Segmentation is part of the reason why email marketing continues to remain on top. 

Segmented campaigns receive up to 65% more clicks than non-segmented campaigns. 

That said, figuring out the best tactics to segment your email list by can be challenging.  

Here are some segmentation strategies you can implement for optimal results:

Demographics

Information such as age, gender, position, and income reveals a lot about one’s interests and needs. The more information you can capture, the better.

However, make sure you don’t ask for too much, as it can scare prospects away from signing up.

Decide what information is most important to your business, and include it in the signup process.

Survey and quiz results

A survey or quiz gives you an excellent opportunity to access valuable information. They can provide insights into individual tastes, preferences, and beliefs.

Provide users with an incentive in exchange for completing your surveys. 

If you opt for a quiz, analyze the results carefully to learn more about your audience.

Email engagement

You can segment users based on open and click-through rates.

Designate users as either ‘active’ or ‘non-active’ based on their engagement with your emails.

You can focus on active users and target them more accurately. You can also launch programs to reward their loyalty.

Additionally, run specialized campaigns that aim to re-engage inactive subscribers.

Purchasing history

A user’s previous purchases can reveal a lot about what they’re likely to buy from you later.

Start by sending emails of recommendation to buy products that are similar or would go down well with their previous purchase.

Position in Sales Funnel

A prospect at the top of your sales funnel should be receiving different emails from those at the bottom.

 For a set of brand-new or unique subscribers, send out generalized emails giving an overview of your products and services.

If they have been subscribers for a while, determine what their interests are. Then, send more targeted emails out for that product/service.

Key Takeaway:    Segmentation is part of the reason why email marketing is and will continue to stay on top. With the help of the segmentation, you will understand your subscribers’ preferences. You can target your audience based on their needs and pain points. With a database and some creativity, segmentation can help you go a long way!

Learn how to create an Ideal Customer Profile

Chapter 6 :  , how to improve your email open rates with a targeted database.

Email open rates are one of the most critical metrics for database marketers. It gauges the health of your email marketing campaigns. Low email open rates can mean your emails aren’t as useful as they can be.    

There are plenty of mistakes that can occur during an email marketing campaign. This can result in a decline in click-through rates and lower profit margins.

Here are some tips to keep your customers clicking your emails:

1. Create the perfect subject line

Your subject line is the first thing your customer sees when they get an email.

Use A/B testing if necessary to figure out the right subject line for your emails.

Aim to be casual, personal, and interactive. And of course, test until you find the perfect lines!

2. Write to one person

An email is much likelier to get opened if it’s written directly to the receiver.

Ensure you use the recipient’s first name in your opening.

Make sure you frame your message as if they are the only recipients of the email.

This lends a sense of familiarity and will encourage your readers to keep opening your emails.

3. Create quality content

If customers associate your business with exciting and engaging emails, your open rates will undoubtedly skyrocket! Make sure you send them unique content that they won’t find elsewhere.

It’s always advisable to post high-quality content less frequently, than low-quality content regularly   (Click to tweet)

4. Make it personal

An essential factor that determines higher open-rates is familiarity.

If a user knows the person sending the email, it’s much likelier to get clicked.

However, if they realize it’s a company, chances are they will mark you as spam.

Emails that seem like they’re written by a real person at your organization is more personal and is likelier to get opened. 

5. Schedule your emails

Timing is everything when it comes to digital marketing – regardless of channel.

Ensure you’re sending emails at the right time – you can find this out by researching your industry and audience.

A study by Experian concluded that messages sent on Saturdays and Sundays had the highest opening rates, while it was lowest on Tuesdays and Thursdays.   (Click to tweet)

6. Clean your lists

Review and remove inactive subscribers from your email lists from time to time. Gloss over your list every now and then, and correct any glaring errors such as “@gmal.com.” This will improve your open rates as well as cut costs as it ensures you don’t pay for subscribers you can’t reach.

Key Takeaway:    It’s hard enough to acquire your own email database. But what’s harder is convincing your prospects to click on your emails. That said, it is certainly doable as long as you don’t overlook a few simple details. It’s okay to be creative and personal when it comes to emails, but always remember to be professional.

Chapter 7 :  

Writing content for email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing has a unique spot in the content marketing world and not without reason. It is practical, personal, and accessible, both for companies and the people they’re trying to reach.  

But writing for email campaigns is no piece of cake. If your content is good, it’ll get clicks, but to really shine, you have to stand out.

Here are five points to keep in mind while writing content for your email campaigns:

1. Clarity first, Catchy next

Writing engaging content is a skill, but it’s more important to be clear about what you’re saying. Make sure your emails are precise and descriptive first, catchy, and attractive second.  

This ensures that they will understand the purpose of your emails. They will also cement your authority as a company, and give your customers realistic expectations.

2. Write in the second person

When it comes to email, the second person is the best voice you can use. By reaching and speaking out to your customers directly, it becomes easier for them to relate to your content.  

This makes it likelier that they will connect with your emails. It also increases the odds of them opening your emails in the future.

3. Highlight benefits, not features

Ensure that you showcase the benefits of your product, rather than the features. Although most marketers use features in their attempts to sell a product, focusing on benefits will give you a real edge over your competition. It paints a realistic picture of your product and sets the foundation for what can be expected.

4. Keep it brief

Many marketers are guilty of being overly verbose and beating around the bush. This is one of the biggest turn-offs for any recipient.

It is necessary to be as brief and to the point as possible.  

This increases the chances that your audience will remain interested in your content. It also keeps you on track and makes you relevant for the duration of your email campaign.

5. Don’t spam

Spamming is one of the deadliest sins when it comes to email marketing   (Click to tweet)

One doesn’t need statistics to underline this fact, for almost all of us have received spam emails. If you don’t like them, remain assured that your customers won’t either. 

Only send out emails when you have to share relevant information. Timing is of paramount importance. Don’t rush or spam prospects needlessly, because it’s a surefire way to drive them away.

Key Takeaway:   It’s easy to write content but challenging to create content that stands out.

It’s a maxim that applies for email marketing as well, just as much as other channels. But writing for emails isn’t rocket science.

With a little care, and effort, you can write unique, top-notch emails that will definitely provide a boost to your business and make you stand out. 

All you need to know about content marketing

Chapter 8 :  , multi-channel marketing with the help of databases.

We’ve talked about just how vital databases are to a great email marketing campaign. 

Without one, you’re unlikely to find the leads you want to reach out to.

But did you know that databases can go beyond email marketing?  

There are several channels you can use to promote your business.

It can take time to identify the best possible fit for you. 

Multi-channel marketing allows your business to engage with various types of customers, tailor messages to groups, and maintain a consistent brand image.

Here are some ways you can make the most of multichannel marketing with databases:

Data tracking

Tracking your data is the best way to measure the impact you are making. Track data at the lowest possible level to ensure it is clear.  

You should also consider how this data is stored. You need to have an efficient storage system to keep the data safe. In case nothing else is feasible, outsourcing is a viable option.

Data analysis

Once you track your data, it’s crucial for you to make sense of it. Once you identify your most valuable customers, develop a message that will drive them towards your business. 

Ensure your message is consistent across channels. 

Data analysis can help you understand changes you can make, as well as what you can do to boost the process. It also gives you a thorough understanding of your customers.

Develop your strategy

Following data analysis, you will understand the most effective channel for your business. Understand your customer’s needs, desires, and reality before mapping out your strategy.  

Make sure your customer’s journey across all channels is a seamless one.

Map out your goals and stay aware of the essential trends in your market.

Respond on your channels

Create a clear and compelling message that remains consistent across channels. Ensure your messages are consistent with the identity of your brand.  

Create your content, keeping in mind the different platforms customers will view it through. To establish a successful campaign, it’s crucial that your marketing and advertising teams are on the same page. 

Test consistently

If you think you can tweak certain aspects or elements of your campaign, do so! 

Tinker with different conversion variables and see if results change each time. Be flexible and open to new ideas while testing.  

It is necessary to be adaptable and to know what to expect in an ever-evolving industry.

It helps you to track what works, what doesn’t, and what it takes to stay ahead of the pack.

Key Takeaway:   Multi-channel marketing is all about getting your money’s worth. With the help of big data, your business can indeed take off on multiple channels. Remain proactive and aware of all the significant changes happening in your industry. An acute awareness of your data will help you respond to challenges, grow your business, and to remain successful.

Chapter 9 :  

Database marketing: best tools and software.

To organize a winning database marketing strategy, you will need the right tools. It’s as essential to your business as your database itself.   (Click to tweet)

These tools should have vital features that promote personalization. It should also make it easy to measure campaigns , have lead scoring, email broadcast, and other features.

They are the final yet fundamental addition to your arsenal.

Here are some database marketing tools you can use for your business. Each has several advantages over the other, so ensure you choose the right fit for your business –

 is one of the most popular CRM systems online today, and for a good reason. It comes with features optimized for three areas of expertise: Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service.

• For Sales, your sales team can receive insights into prospects. The need to schedule manual tasks such as setting meetings is also eliminated.
• For Marketing, they provide automation services as well as tools that support inbound lead generation.
• For Customer Service,  you can add live chat, create tickets, and even customer feedback campaigns! 
• It is the best platform to choose if you are planning to run a full-scale marketing campaign.
• Pricing:  Plans can vary from starter (Just $50/month) to enterprise ($1200/month)

2. Oracle Eloqua

is a marketing automation platform that stores customer and prospect information.  

It is a highly data-driven and functional platform.

For example, it records and monitors your prospects’ activity even after they click a link.

This is a feature that most automation platforms do not offer.  

It also tracks information such as most effective emails, website views, pages viewed and time, and day of the visit.

Pricing: Plans can vary from Basic ($2000/month) to Standard ($4000/month)

3. Stirista

is the complete all-round package that you’re looking for. 

It provides data and email services while doubling as a display advertising firm.

It is a viable option for marketers who are unwilling to build a database from scratch.    

Stirista’s unique features include a proprietary segmentation software.

This dramatically helps clients in designing their ICPs.

It also has competitive conquesting capabilities, which help you to target your competition’s followers.  

Stirista provides the most comprehensive list of unique features available to you, apart from the standard ones.

Pricing: Plans can vary from starter ($40/month) to custom (price depending on your objectives) 

is a B2B marketing platform that focuses on sales-ready leads. This helps to send them personalized emails to leads while scoring them based on engagement.  

Market  provides a variety of options for marketers.

From customization options to Salesforce integration, it also has analytics tools to help you track how your data is doing.

Pricing: No set pricing, you will need to place the request for a quote. 

5. ReachStream

is the B2B marketing automation and CRM software.

With access to nearly 73+ million contacts and 50+ million companies, it has one of the most comprehensive databases available.

ReachStream also provides marketing services, such as automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). From novice marketers looking to make their mark to experts trying to boost their business, ReachStream has several plans that can be tailored as per the requirements of your business.

Pricing: Plans start at $99/month. For more details, visit our  pricing page or simply start with your Free Trial .

Key Takeaway:   The foundation of any of your database marketing efforts lie with a robust database.

Live your marketing dreams with ReachStream

Data is the virtual currency of the internet. But like real money, to make the most of it, you need to know how use it wisely.

With so much data available today, it can be a real challenge to identify the data you need most.

The successful modern marketer is one who can manage his data most efficiently.

Managing vast amounts of data can seem daunting. But, with the right strategies and tools, it’s a much easier task than it seems.

It’s imperative that you have access to the best databases.

A good database can take time to build, or find, but at the finish line it will prove to be totally worth the resources and then some, you invested to acquire it.

With the right databases, your email marketing campaign will really take-off as you will be able to connect and convert with authentic leads and contacts.

You can also run marketing campaigns across multiple platforms and keep track of how each one of them are performing.

And, by investing in the right tools, you’ll find that you don’t need to devote as much time keeping real-time tabs.

The best tools do most of the number-crunching work for you, ensuring that you will be able to focus on what’s important.

Data by itself is of little significance. But when refined and processed, it’s a priceless resource.

We hope this guide proves to be a valuable nugget of knowledge that will help you run your campaigns to its fullest potential.

Happy Hunting!

Joseph Cruz

Don’t forget to share this post.

Check out our other blogs!

Dentist Email List: What It Is + How To Find It?

8 Proven Ways to Get More Web Design Leads for Your Business

How to find Real estate agent Email List: Strategies for Outreach

What Is Cold Contact? An Overview

Nurture Your Knowledge Tree

Enrich your acumen with the latest research, think-pieces, expert insights, and more.

• [email protected]
• +1(669)-544-2861
• Become a Data Partner
• Reach API Document
• Company and Contact Data
• Marketing Data
• Technology Insights

Take control over your email campaign NOW!

Sales CRM Terms

What is Database Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

Oct 11, 2023

Database marketing is a powerful marketing strategy that utilizes customer data to enhance targeting and personalization. By leveraging a database of customer information, businesses can create more tailored marketing campaigns and increase customer engagement. In this article, we will explore the concept of database marketing, its advantages and disadvantages, and provide real-life examples to illustrate its application in various contexts

1°) What is Database Marketing?

Database marketing refers to the practice of collecting, organizing, and analyzing customer data to develop targeted marketing campaigns. It involves the use of a database management system to store and access customer information such as names, contact details, purchase history, and demographic data. With this wealth of information, businesses can segment customers into different groups based on their preferences, behavior, and characteristics.

Database marketing has revolutionized the way businesses approach marketing. By leveraging customer data, companies can gain valuable insights into their target audience, enabling them to create personalized and impactful marketing campaigns. This strategic use of data has become increasingly important in today's competitive business landscape.

1.1 - Definition of Database Marketing

Database marketing can be defined as the strategic use of customer data to deliver personalized marketing messages and offers. By utilizing customer information, businesses can create relevant and timely marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. This targeted approach increases the effectiveness of marketing efforts and can lead to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

Database marketing involves various processes, including data collection, data integration, data analysis, and campaign execution. These processes work together to ensure that businesses can effectively leverage customer data to drive their marketing strategies.

1.2 - Advantages of Database Marketing

One of the key advantages of database marketing is its ability to deliver personalized experiences to customers. By understanding the unique preferences and needs of individual customers, businesses can tailor their marketing messages and offers accordingly. This personalization fosters a stronger connection between the brand and the customer, leading to increased loyalty and repeat purchases.

Furthermore, database marketing allows businesses to optimize resource allocation. By analyzing customer data, companies can identify their most valuable customers and allocate their marketing budget more effectively. This targeted approach ensures that marketing efforts are focused on the customers who are most likely to generate a positive return on investment.

Another advantage of database marketing is its potential for increased customer retention. By regularly engaging with customers through targeted marketing efforts, businesses can cultivate long-term relationships and reduce churn. By identifying customers who haven't made a purchase in a while, companies can implement re-engagement campaigns to bring them back into the sales funnel.

In addition to these advantages, database marketing also enables businesses to track and measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. By analyzing the data collected, companies can gain insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and overall marketing ROI. This data-driven approach allows businesses to make informed decisions and continuously improve their marketing strategies.

1.3 - Disadvantages of Database Marketing

While database marketing offers numerous benefits, it also presents some challenges. One of the main disadvantages is the need for accurate and up-to-date data. Inaccurate or outdated data can lead to ineffective campaigns and wasted resources. It's important for businesses to regularly clean and maintain their databases to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the customer information.

Another challenge is the risk of privacy concerns. Collecting and storing customer data comes with a responsibility to protect that data and ensure compliance with privacy laws and regulations. Businesses must prioritize data security and adopt appropriate measures to safeguard customer information.

Additionally, database marketing requires a significant investment in technology and infrastructure. Implementing a robust database management system and maintaining the necessary hardware and software can be costly. Businesses need to carefully consider the financial implications and weigh them against the potential benefits before embarking on a database marketing strategy.

In conclusion, database marketing is a powerful tool that allows businesses to leverage customer data to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. While it offers numerous advantages, businesses must also be aware of the challenges and take proactive measures to ensure the accuracy and security of the data they collect. With proper implementation and management, database marketing can significantly enhance a company's marketing efforts and drive business growth.

2°) Examples of Database Marketing

Let's explore some real-world examples to better understand how database marketing can be applied in different contexts.

2.1 - Example in a Startup Context

A startup in the e-commerce industry can use database marketing to segment customers based on their purchase history and browsing behavior. By analyzing customer data, the startup can send personalized product recommendations, exclusive discounts, and targeted email campaigns to different customer segments. This targeted approach can help increase customer engagement, improve conversion rates, and drive repeat purchases.

For example, let's consider a startup that sells clothing online. Through database marketing, they can identify customers who have previously purchased winter coats. With this information, they can create a segment of customers interested in winter wear and send them personalized emails promoting their latest collection of winter coats. By tailoring their marketing efforts to specific customer segments, the startup can increase the chances of generating sales and fostering customer loyalty.

2.2 - Example in a Consulting Context

A consulting firm can utilize database marketing to nurture relationships with potential clients. By collecting information about their target market, such as industry, company size, and pain points, the firm can send targeted content and offers to prospects. This personalized approach helps build credibility and trust, increasing the likelihood of converting prospects into clients.

For instance, imagine a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation for small businesses. Through database marketing, they can identify potential clients in specific industries, such as retail or hospitality, who are struggling with outdated technology systems. The firm can then send tailored case studies and success stories to these prospects, showcasing their expertise in solving similar challenges. By demonstrating their understanding of the prospects' pain points and offering relevant solutions, the consulting firm can establish themselves as trusted advisors and increase their chances of winning new clients.

2.3 - Example in a Digital Marketing Agency Context

A digital marketing agency can leverage database marketing to optimize their advertising campaigns. By analyzing customer data, such as past purchase behavior and website interactions, the agency can create custom audiences and serve tailored ads to specific customer segments. This approach maximizes ad relevance and increases the chances of conversion, resulting in a higher return on ad spend for their clients.

Consider a digital marketing agency that works with a fashion retailer. Through database marketing, they can identify customers who have previously purchased women's shoes. With this information, the agency can create a custom audience of women interested in footwear and design targeted ad campaigns specifically tailored to this segment. By showcasing relevant products and promotions, the agency can capture the attention of potential customers and drive them to the retailer's website, ultimately increasing sales and brand awareness.

2.4 - Example with Analogies

To further illustrate the concept of database marketing, let's consider two analogies:

Think of a library where each book represents a customer and their data. Database marketing is like a librarian who organizes the books based on different categories and guides readers to the books that align with their interests.

Imagine a personalized music streaming service that curates playlists based on a user's listening history and preferences. Database marketing is similar, as it uses customer data to curate personalized marketing experiences.

These examples highlight the versatility and effectiveness of database marketing in various industries and contexts.

In conclusion, database marketing is a valuable strategy that enables businesses to leverage customer data and deliver personalized marketing experiences. By understanding the advantages and disadvantages of database marketing and examining real-life examples, businesses can harness the power of customer insights to enhance their marketing efforts and drive growth.

About the author

Arnaud Belinga

Close deals x2 faster with

Breakcold sales crm.

SEE PRICING

*No credit card required

Related Articles

What is the 80-20 rule? (Explained With Examples)

What is the ABCD Sales Method? (Explained With Examples)

What is an Accelerated Sales Cycle? (Explained With Examples)

What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)? (Explained With Examples)

What is an Account Manager? (Explained With Examples)

What is Account Mapping? (Explained With Examples)

What is Account-Based Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Ad Targeting? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Addressable Market? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Adoption Curve? (Explained With Examples)

What is an AE (Account Executive)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Affiliate Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is AI in Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is an AI-Powered CRM? (Explained With Examples)

What is an Alternative Close? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Annual Contract Value? (ACV - Explained With Examples)

What are Appointments Set? (Explained With Examples)

What is an Assumptive Close? (Explained With Examples)

What is Automated Outreach? (Explained With Examples)

What is Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA)? (Explained With Examples)

What is B2B (Business-to-Business)? (Explained With Examples)

What is B2G (Business-to-Government)? (Explained With Examples)

What is B2P (Business-to-Partner)? (Explained With Examples)

What is BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Behavioral Economics in Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Benchmark Data? (Explained With Examples)

What is Benefit Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What are Benefit Statements? (Explained With Examples)

What is Beyond the Obvious? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Bootstrapped Startup? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Bounce Rate? (Explained With Examples)

What is Brand Awareness? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Break-Even Point? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Breakup Email? (Explained With Examples)

What is Business Development? (Explained With Examples)

What are Business Insights? (Explained With Examples)

What is Business Process Automation? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Buyer Persona? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Buyer's Journey? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Buying Cycle? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Buying Signal? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Buying Team? (Explained With Examples)

What is a C-Level Executive? (Explained With Examples)

What is Call Logging? (Explained With Examples)

What is Call Recording? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Call-to-Action (CTA)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Case Study Analysis? (Explained With Examples)

What is Challenger Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Chasing Lost Deals? (Explained With Examples)

What is Churn Prevention? (Explained With Examples)

What is Churn Rate? (Explained With Examples)

What is Click-Through Rate (CTR)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Client Acquisition? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Closing Ratio? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Ben Franklin Close? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cognitive Bias in Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cognitive Dissonance in Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cold Calling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cold Outreach? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Competitive Advantage? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Competitive Analysis? (Explained With Examples)

What is Competitive Positioning? (Explained With Examples)

What is Conceptual Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Consultative Closing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Consultative Negotiation? (Explained With Examples)

What is Consultative Prospecting? (Explained With Examples)

What is Consultative Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Content Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Content Syndication? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Conversion Funnel? (Explained With Examples)

What is Conversion Optimization? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Conversion Path? (Explained With Examples)

What is Conversion Rate? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cost-Per-Click (CPC)? (Explained With Examples)

What is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cross-Cultural Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Cross-Sell Ratio? (Explained With Examples)

What is Cross-Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Customer-Centric Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Customer-Centric Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Customer Journey Mapping? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Customer Journey? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Customer Profiling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Customer Retention? (Explained With Examples)

What is Dark Social? (Explained With Examples)

What is Data Enrichment? (Explained With Examples)

What is Data Segmentation? (Explained With Examples)

What are Decision Criteria? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Decision Maker? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Decision-Making Unit (DMU)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Demand Generation? (Explained With Examples)

What is Digital Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Direct Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Discovery Call? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Discovery Meeting? (Explained With Examples)

What are Discovery Questions? (Explained With Examples)

What is Door-to-Door Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Drip Campaign? (Explained With Examples)

What is Dunning? (Explained With Examples)

What is an Early Adopter? (Explained With Examples)

What is Elevator Pitch? (Explained With Examples)

What is Email Hygiene? (Explained With Examples)

What is Email Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Emotional Intelligence Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Engagement Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Engagement Rate? (Explained With Examples)

What is Engagement Strategy? (Explained With Examples)

What is Feature-Benefit Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Field Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Follow-Up? (Explained With Examples)

What is Forecast Accuracy? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Funnel? (Explained With Examples)

What is Gamification in Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Gatekeeper Strategy? (Explained With Examples)

What is Gatekeeper? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Go-to Market Strategy? (Explained With Examples)

What is Growth Hacking? (Explained With Examples)

What is Growth Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Guerrilla Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is High-Ticket Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Holistic Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Inbound Lead Generation? (Explained With Examples)

What is an Inbound Lead? (Explained With Examples)

What is Inbound Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Inbound Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Influencer Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Inside Sales Representative? (Explained With Examples)

What is Inside Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Insight Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Key Account? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Landing Page? (Explained With Examples)

What is Lead Database? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Lead Enrichment? (Explained With Examples)

What is Lead Generation? (Explained With Examples)

What is Lead Nurturing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Lead Qualification? (Explained With Examples)

What is Lead Scoring? (Explained With Examples)

What are LinkedIn InMails? (Explained With Examples)

What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator? (Explained With Examples)

What is Lost Opportunity? (Explained With Examples)

What is Market Positioning? (Explained With Examples)

What is Market Research? (Explained With Examples)

What is Market Segmentation? (Explained With Examples)

What is MEDDIC? (Explained With Examples)

What is Middle Of The Funnel (MOFU)? (Explained With Examples)

What is Motivational Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is a MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)? (Explained With Examples)

What is MRR Growth? (Explained With Examples)

What is MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)? (Explained With Examples)

What is N.E.A.T. Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Neil Rackham's Sales Tactics? (Explained With Examples)

What is Networking? (Explained With Examples)

What is NLP Sales Techniques? (Explained With Examples)

What is the Net Promotion Score? (NPS - Explained With Examples)

What is Objection Handling Framework? (Explained With Examples)

What is On-Hold Messaging? (Explained With Examples)

What is Onboarding in Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Online Advertising? (Explained With Examples)

What is Outbound Sales? (Explained With Examples)

What is Pain Points Analysis? (Explained With Examples)

What is Permission Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Personality-Based Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Persuasion Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Pipeline Management? (Explained With Examples)

What is Pipeline Velocity? (Explained With Examples)

What is Predictive Lead Scoring? (Explained With Examples)

What is Price Negotiation? (Explained With Examples)

What is Price Objection? (Explained With Examples)

What is Price Sensitivity? (Explained With Examples)

What is Problem-Solution Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Product Knowledge? (Explained With Examples)

What is Product-Led-Growth? (Explained With Examples)

What is Prospecting? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Qualified Lead? (Explained With Examples)

What is Question-Based Selling? (Explained With Examples)

What is Referral Marketing? (Explained With Examples)

What is Relationship Building? (Explained With Examples)

What is Revenue Forecast? (Explained With Examples)

What is a ROI? (Explained With Examples)

What is Sales Automation? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Bonus Plan? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Champion? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Collateral? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Commission Structure Plan? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales CRM? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Cycle? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Demo? (Explained With Examples)

What is Sales Enablement? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Flywheel? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Funnel? (Explained With Examples)

What are Sales KPIs? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Meetup? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Pipeline? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Pitch? (Explained With Examples)

What is a Sales Playbook? (Explained With Examples)

Try breakcold now, are you ready to accelerate your sales pipeline.

Join over +1000 agencies, startups & consultants closing deals with Breakcold Sales CRM

Get Started for free

Sales CRM Features

Sales CRM Software

Sales Pipeline

Sales Lead Tracking

CRM with social media integrations

Social Selling Software

Contact Management

CRM Unified Email LinkedIn Inbox

Breakcold works for many industries

CRM for Agencies

CRM for Startups

CRM for Consultants

CRM for Small Business

CRM for LinkedIn

CRM for Coaches

Sales CRM & Sales Pipeline Tutorials

The 8 Sales Pipeline Stages

The Best CRMs for Agencies

The Best CRMs for Consultants

The Best LinkedIn CRMs

How to close deals in 2024, not in 2010

CRM automation: from 0 to PRO in 5 minutes

LinkedIn Inbox Management

LinkedIn Account-Based Marketing (2024 Tutorial with video)

Tools & more

Sales Pipeline Templates

Alternatives

Integrations

CRM integration with LinkedIn

© 2024 Breakcold

Privacy Policy

Terms of Service

Database Marketing: Benefits and Strategies

Last Edited

March 1, 2024

Mar 1, 2024

Oğuzhan KIR

Data Scientist

Marketing and Analytics

min reading

What is Database Marketing?

Database Marketing is a marketing strategy that leverages databases where customer data is stored and utilizes data analytics methods to deliver personalized messages and campaigns to users in order to optimize marketing strategies. Organizations can analyze the data collected from current or potential customers to facilitate finding the right target audience in their marketing strategies. Campaigns offering customized promotions or offers to specific customer segments will significantly enhance effectiveness. Database marketing is a highly effective method for increasing customer loyalty and utilizing marketing budgets most effectively.

Customer Data Used in Database Marketing Strategies

There are many internal and external data sources that companies can use to examine customers' journeys comprehensively. These data sources include:

Acquisition data: When, how, and through which channel the customer arrived at the website or application

Demographic data: Customer's age, gender, education level, occupation, address, etc.

Activity data: Pages frequently visited by the customer, visit frequency, features used, etc.

Purchase data: Customer's past purchase history information

Campaign response data: Feedback on campaigns the customer has responded to in the past

Location data: Geo-location information recorded on the customer's device

Social media activity data: Profile information on the customer's social media accounts, topics discussed, brands used in their shares, application ratings, etc.

Benefits of Database Marketing

Today's customers want a fully personalized experience with campaigns, products, and offers. In order for marketers to effectively communicate with customers, they need to understand the customer journey and create customizable offers. Marketing database strategies make this process easier. Collecting and analyzing customer data is the first step in the solution. With customer databases,

You can segment your customers into categories such as your most loyal customers, new customers, and those who transact at certain intervals.

You can look at the demographic characteristics of your customers, capture demographic-similar behavioral patterns, and create customer segments.

You can determine the most appropriate channel to interact with customers.

When you analyze data obtained from customer databases and create an effective marketing strategy, you will see that your marketing strategy is more optimized. The key benefits of Database Marketing are as follows.

Targeted Marketing: Utilizing customer data in the database to direct the right strategy to the right audiences increases response rates and ROI.

Personalization: Database marketing allows communication to be personalized based on customers' past behaviors, preferences, and demographic information. Personalized interactions increase customer loyalty.

Optimization of Marketing Expenditures: Database marketing helps identify the most beneficial customer segments and enables more effective use of marketing resources. In this way, businesses maximize their ROI and minimize wasted expenditures.

Challenges of Database Marketing

While Database Marketing offers significant benefits, there are some important considerations that marketers need to pay attention to.

Data Quality: The data of existing or potential customers will change over time. For example, when a customer changes their job or address, or gets married, the old information in the database becomes outdated. Maintaining up-to-date information in databases is crucial. If there is a possibility of using outdated information, marketers should use data with less likelihood of change, such as name, phone number, or email address, when developing their strategies.

Data Accuracy: Customers do not always provide accurate information in surveys or when filling out forms. Additionally, typos or misinterpretation of handwriting can greatly affect the quality of the database. You can reduce data accuracy issues by asking multiple-choice questions or limiting data entry by writing in surveys or forms.

Data Integration: Organizations typically store customer data in different systems and formats. Integrating different data sources into a database where the customer's lifecycle will be examined can be complex and time-consuming.

Security: Since customer databases contain personal information, protecting this sensitive data from unauthorized access, breaches, and cyberattacks is of critical importance. A security breach could lead to severe legal consequences.

Database Marketing Tactics And Strategies

Creating an effective marketing strategy based on customer data primarily relies on being able to collect customer data. Then, these data need to be carefully analyzed and made actionable. Below are commonly used tactics and strategies for effective database marketing:

Data Collection: Customer behaviors leave traces on the internet. The first step in analyzing customer behaviors is to collect data. It's critical to gather demographic information, purchase data, and product interaction data from various sources.

Data Segmentation: After collecting customer data, specific customer segments are created to develop marketing strategies. Various methods can be used for customer segmentation. One of them is RFM analysis. RFM analysis is used to segment customers based on their purchase behaviors and visit frequencies. With RFM analysis, you can easily distinguish your most loyal customers, your most active customers, and customers you are about to lose. With B2Metric's RFM analysis solution, you can manage your customer segments on a single platform without any coding requirements and direct your marketing strategies and campaigns to customers.

Personalization: Create special campaigns and offers for segmented customers and determine the most suitable communication channels for audiences. Personalized messages will increase the conversion rate of your campaigns.

Customer Lifecycle Management: Determine appropriate strategies for customers at different stages of their lifecycle, such as acquisition, onboarding, loyalty, and reactivation. Estimating the lifetime value of your existing customers is critical at this point. You can develop various strategies to engage customers whose lifecycle you expect to be short. B2Metric offers a unique solution for customer lifetime value prediction.

Predictive Analytics: In addition to non-predictive segmentation methods like RFM analysis, which analyzes customer behaviors, you can segment your customers with machine learning algorithms.

Cross-Selling and Upselling: Analyze customers' purchases to make cross-selling recommendations for related products or offer better advantageous packages to your active customers, which will increase customer loyalty.

Marketing Automation: Automating marketing strategies is of critical importance. For businesses with a large number of individual customers, it is impossible to operate without automation.

In simple terms, Database Marketing helps businesses tailor their marketing to fit customer preferences. While it allows for personalized communication and targeted campaigns, there are challenges like keeping data accurate and secure. However, by using strategies like segmentation and predictive analysis, companies can make the most of their customer infomation to grow and stay competitive in today's market.

Related Blogs

Nov 25, 2023

AI-Driven Marketing for Mobile Apps

Applications of ai-driven marketing for mobile apps.

Jul 10, 2024

What is SQL? Differences Between SQL and MQL

Jul 2, 2024

What is Engagement Rate? How to Calculate Engagement Rate?

Jun 27, 2024

A/B Experiments vs. Multivariate Experiments

Customer intelligence data platform that helps brands analyze and predict user behavior across multi-channels.

Car Market Analytics

Retention Analysis

Segmentation

Adaptive Learning

Anomaly Detection

Explainable AI

Embedded Analytics

Integrations

Automated Marketing Actions

Fraud Detection

Become a Partner

About B2Metric

News & Updates

Success Stories

Integrations Guide

Privacy Policy

Comparisons

B2Metric x Amplitude

B2Metric x CleverTap

B2Metric x Mixpanel

B2Metric x Contentsquare

B2Metric x Pendo

B2Metric x Countly

B2Metric x Optimove

B2Metric x Vaix

B2Metric x Moengage

B2Metric x GA

B2Metric x Power BI

SaaS Customer Journey Mapping

Insights from the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2024 with B2Metric

Low Touch vs. High Touch Engagement Models

What is Cross-Channel Campaign Management?

Subscribe to our newsletter

Get the latest from B2Metric! 👀

Copyright © 2024 B2Metric | All Rights Reserved

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit aliquam mauris sed ma

Insights from the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit

2024 with B2Metric

Marketing91

Database Marketing – Definition, Types, Importance and Strategies

May 8, 2024 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing

Database marketing collects consumer data such as names, contact information, and purchase history to create targeted marketing strategies to attract, engage, and convert potential customers .

It involves organizing, evaluating, and analyzing new and current customer data to learn more about them and sell the product or service more personalized and outcome-driven. This type of direct marketing extensively uses databases and stresses the efficient application of statistical approaches.

Table of Contents

What is Database Marketing?

Database marketing is a targeted marketing effort that uses databases of present and future customers to promote a product or service.

Customer relationship management , often known as database marketing, gathers information about potential consumers to create personalized communications that address their wants or needs. The database comprises various forms of information, including demographics and buying history.

It enables the marketer to discover more about their potential customers. Based on this information, the ideal approaches to approaching distinct customers are simple.

Simply collecting information about a customer’s future behavior is not database marketing. Understanding consumer behavior is an integral part of database marketing. Once a marketer learns a consumer’s actions, the solutions supplied are tailored to those consumers. Tutorials, videos, and a specific product or service are all possible solutions.

Key Takeaways:

• Database marketing is collecting and analyzing client data to create individualized marketing tactics.
• It uses existing and potential client databases to personalize product or service promotions.
• Understanding consumer behavior is critical; it allows customized solutions such as lessons, videos, or unique products/services.
• It is a type of direct marketing that focuses largely on statistical tactics to engage and convert customers effectively.

Who benefits from database marketing?

Merchants, technology companies, insurance companies , and other service providers mainly use database marketing. This methodology benefits businesses with large customer populations by permitting enormous data transactions that aid in prospect identification.

Unlike traditional marketing databases, which primarily hold customer information, database marketing distinguishes itself by including a wide range of consumer information and utilizing it in a multidimensional manner.

The information gathered serves critical tasks in database marketing:

• Understanding customer profiles .
• Defining target demographics for tailored marketing campaigns (via customer segmentation).
• Appraisal of customer value to the company .
• Creation of personalized offerings for consumers.
• Data elements collected may include customer IDs, location information, email and phone contact, purchase history, professional designation, site cookies, and interactions with customer service .

Following data aggregation and preservation, this information assists marketing teams in using marketing budget , creating personalized customer encounters, and enticing potential clients.

Types of Database Marketing

Database marketing has two types: consumer database marketing and business database marketing.

1. Customer Database Marketing

This type of marketing targets B2C marketers. They collect such data through contests, giveaways, discount codes, etc. Once the information is complete, the marketer can create targeted offers and send them to specific clients via email, social media, etc.

Personalization is simple after the database is separated. This indicates that consumers are promoted items based on their preferences.

2. Business Database Marketing

Business database marketing addresses the demands of organizations that conduct business with one another. Data collecting entails obtaining information from various sources, including industry reports, event registrations, demos, etc.

When comparing databases, B2B has a smaller database than consumer marketing . That is because B2B marketers focus on key target accounts.

Importance of Database Marketing

Businesses have access to more customer data than ever before. Because of this, they must use that data in a way that gets results. Database marketing helps better use the huge amount of data to create more targeted marketing strategies that reach their audiences more effectively and increase sales .

Some of the main reasons why database marketing is becoming more important are:

• Sorts current customers and new leads to improve the customer segmentation process.
• It helps you prioritize your most important accounts and gives you the power to guess how customers will act.
• It helps you try new products and ideas . For example, Google tests new features on a small group of marketers first, then makes them available to everyone.
• It makes getting comments easier and figuring out what your customers want.
• Engaging customers better and keeping them longer by building relationships makes your brand more meaningful.
• It helps build brand loyalty and credibility as a thought leader and can also be used for future advertising efforts.

How Does Database Marketing Strategy Work?

Get information about your existing customers. This is the first step in database marketing. There are many places to get information, such as buy history, campaign response, customer survey history, and correspondence history.

A holistic database is made up of material from many different sources. One assumption should always be true, so it is important to keep the information current. People’s tastes and preferences change over time.

For database marketing, customer data can come from many different sources, such as acquisition data, demographic data, website or app activity history, purchase or spend history, campaign response history, loyalty program data, customer surveys and questionnaires , correspondence data history, location data, social media activity, third-party data, and more.

Some of the key steps that you need to follow for building a marketing database are-

How to build a Marketing Database?

1. create thought leadership articles.

It would be best to create such articles around industry topics and use them as content, which a reader can access only by sharing contact details.

2. Offer free trials

By offering free trials, businesses can compel their users to share some basic details; then, you can run ads targeting users who opted for free trials.

3. Design a free tool

By using this technique, you can build a customer database for marketing, as this way, you will be able to get details of audiences inclined toward your product or service.

4. Collect customer information

For building a marketing database, marketers should incorporate mechanisms to collect customer information at the time of checkout

5. Acquire a business contact database

Businesses might connect with a data provider to get the business contact database of their prospects

6. Collect website visitor data

Marketers can use online cookies to collect the data of website visitors

7. Create a Chatbot on your business page

Using an average chatbot or Facebook chatbot will not only assist you in collecting customer data but also help you grow your subscriber lists

The Sources of Customer Data Used in Database Marketing

Companies use a variety of data sources in database marketing to build a full profile for each customer. These tools help with more targeted advertising and improve customer service and long-term planning . Let us look into the different places where this customer info came from:

• Points of Entry: You might want to track the first time a customer uses your website or app. Find the source, the deal that interested them, or the partner site that directed them to your site.
• Demographic Facts: Personal details like age, gender, and whether you are married or have children are essential. Also, collecting addresses and school backgrounds gives you a better picture of your customers.
• Patterns of Engagement: Look at the digital traces people leave when navigating a website or app. This includes the areas they visit most often, how often they connect, and the pages they look at before registering.
• Transactional Records: Look at how often they buy, how many items they usually buy, and the range of purchase prices over time to get a sense of how much they spend.
• Getting involved with campaigns: Draw a picture of how customers interact with your marketing, including how much they have seen, how active they are, and the best ways to connect with them.
• Loyalty Engagement: Participants in loyalty programs must keep track of their status, points, and offers.
• Feedback Contribution: Thank people who fill out surveys and forms and give you feedback; their help is an excellent source of information.
• Communication Logs: To have a complete log of all communications, it is essential to keep track of all interactions between a brand and a customer.
• Data about geography: Using geographical cues from mobile devices can make the customer experience more meaningful.
• Social Media Interactions: You can get information from social chats, such as when people talk about a brand or how they feel on different networks.
• Enhanced Adtech Data: Do not just look at the digital world around you; look at viewing habits, ad engagements, and signs that someone might buy something from other sources.

When combining data from these massive sources, it is important to be precise, accurate, and timely to avoid mistakes and ensure each customer’s record is unique and full. To avoid these problems, you need a strong plan to ensure all your customer information is grouped under unique names.

Thanks to technological progress, more advanced database marketing methods are now possible. With these tools, companies no longer have a choice but to use them to stay competitive and meet the changing needs of their customers. Companies can change how they sell and get more loyal and interested customers by correctly using these different types of data.

Database Marketing Strategies

Some of the best strategies to optimize the effectiveness of your database marketing campaigns are-

1. Start with identifying your target market

Before learning to segment your information, you must know who you are trying to reach. What are the characteristics of your made-up dream buyers? How much money do they make? What do they want to know? Make a full profile of this buyer with lots of information. The only information useful for your business is the information you focused on when creating your dream customer. Your main goal should then be to gather information about those specific traits of your possible customers.

2. Collaborate With Other Departments to Gather and Cross-reference Data

This step is very important because it can save a lot of time, even though it might take a while. If people from different departments share information, your database will grow and become as accurate as possible.

3. Finding the Right Home for Your Database

Every effort you make in the future to maintain your database could be wasted if you pick the wrong program. Having reliable database tools that can do everything would help. It needs to be changed, and there needs to be a strong backup. Having problems all the time will hurt your efforts. Your software should have all the tools to gather data and keep it up to date as easily as possible.

4. Have the Right Balance of Data

Your data needs a mix of activity, transaction data, demographic, technographic, psychographic, and acquisition statistics. When making the perfect customer, this mix should be at the top of your mind. This combination can give people who work in marketing a lot of chances to be creative .

5. Respect the Sanctity of a Customer’s Privacy

Improving personalization is the whole point of keeping the information in the first place. Nowadays, there is a lot of discussion about how personal information should be kept. This is only ONE example of the many problems regarding customer privacy. The safety of your database could be another problem with the same thing. The company that is doing this needs to deal with these problems. If the customer does not trust your business to keep their information safe, they might not give you accurate information about themselves. Again, this leads to wrong data, which costs the company more money.

Here is a video by Marketing91 on Database Marketing.

Database Marketing Examples

1) facebook customer database.

Facebook ’s segmentation of user data is one key example of database marketing. To ensure personalized experiences, Facebook segments user data based on location, first name, last name, phone number, email, date of birth, gender, and interests.

Facebook’s personalized database is also quite useful for advertisers and marketers who use Facebook to run ads. According to a rough estimate, Facebook currently incorporates data from more than 2 billion people.

2) LinkedIn Customer Database

LinkedIn also uses database marketing, comprising a customer database of around 660 million business professionals.

LinkedIn utilizes its database with monetization strategies, such as LinkedIn Premium, Talent Solutions, Sales Navigator, and LinkedIn Ads, that take its database marketing to the next level. Marketers use LinkedIn’s customer base to run their B2B ads and marketing campaigns.

Advantages of Database Marketing

Database marketing can help marketers, consumers, and advertisers alike by:

• Identifying customer groups is a great way to categorize your customers into first-time and loyal customers.
• Having a database helps marketers determine the best channels to contact potential clients.
• A database can help you prioritize accounts more vital to your business.
• It provides access to a myriad of resources to increase customer retention .
• It is more cost-effective as you do not waste money on individuals who are unlikely to respond.
• It allows the marketer to create more relevant messages targeting customers’ tastes and preferences.
• Through deep insight into customer behavior, a marketer can predict customer behavior.
• The database can additionally be used to gather feedback.
• Develop impactful loyalty programs offering compelling rewards to encourage continued purchases.
• Enhance customer service by equipping support staff with a comprehensive overview of customer engagement with your brand.

Challenges of Database Marketing

As compelling as the benefits of database marketing are, many must learn how to exploit its challenges and benefits fully. That leads to various challenges such as:

1. The Inevitable Data Degradation

Data degradation, rot, or decay is the loss of database data over time. When a customer moves, changes email addresses, gets a promotion, etc., their profile changes. Mechanical problems can cause data deterioration.

Even without mechanical involvement, data deterioration occurs virtually daily. You need a reliable backup to gather customer data and fight mechanical data deterioration. According to statistics, a third of your data can become invalid in a year and 2-3% in a month. That generates a lot of incorrect data and wastes many hours chasing answers.

Data is time-sensitive, so an up-to-date database is essential. One method to address this is to campaign on predictable or stable information. Demographics and business email addresses are included.

2. Inaccurate Data Collection

Remember that customers may be dishonest about the data they share with firms. Customers may offer inaccurate information about themselves. It need not be intentional. Illegible handwriting, errors, insufficient data, etc., can cause inaccurate data collection .

Options like checkboxes and drop-down menus can reduce such errors. Dirty data costs firms 15% of income, according to studies. Being data-driven and not hoarding data can help you have an accurate database.

3. Inability to Capitalize the Data Efficiently

First and foremost, accurate, often updated data for customer support must be obtained. The business collects data for a reason. The practice is pointless if it cannot capitalize the data.

Using data promptly to maximize brand connection is crucial for the business. This delays logical data degradation.

4. Database Collection and Maintenance is an Expensive Endeavor

Both subjective and objective definitions of pricey are used here. Objectively, collecting data and storing lots of data is expensive.

Subjectively, database management costs are unreasonable if they extract no value. It means that if your database data does not add value to the effort put into it, it is a waste of money.

The primary goal of a database marketing campaign is to create targeted or personalized content that generates quality leads and optimizes conversions.

The effectiveness of such campaigns depends upon how target audiences react to them. Businesses need to check whether their database marketing has led to the desired number of conversions.

On a concluding note, database marketing gives you enough data and information to contact potential clients and convert them. Marketers need to find ways to use that information to stay in the minds of target audiences.

What are your thoughts about the effectiveness of database marketing in running personalized marketing campaigns?

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Marketing

Related posts:

• How to use your customer database
• Customer Database – Meaning, Examples, Benefits and Softwares
• Deep Assortment – Definition, Types, Strategies, Importance And Examples
• Brand Recognition – Definition, Importance and Strategies
• What is Customer Engagement? Definition, Importance, Strategies & Metrics
• Brand visibility – Definition, Importance, Strategies and Measurement
• Customer Appreciation – Definition, Importance, Ideas and Strategies
• Assortment Strategies – Definition, Importance, Components, Tips
• Customer Reviews: Definition, Importance and Strategies
• What is Pricing? Definition, Types, Strategies & Examples

About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

All Knowledge Banks (Hub Pages)

• Marketing Hub
• Management Hub
• Marketing Strategy
• Advertising Hub
• Branding Hub
• Market Research
• Small Business Marketing
• Sales and Selling
• Marketing Careers
• Internet Marketing
• Business Model of Brands
• Marketing Mix of Brands
• Brand Competitors
• Strategy of Brands
• SWOT of Brands
• Customer Management
• Top 10 Lists

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• About Marketing91
• Marketing91 Team
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Terms of Use
• Editorial Policy

WE WRITE ON

• Digital Marketing
• Human Resources
• Operations Management
• Marketing News
• Marketing mix's
• Competitors

• Our Approach
• Marketing Essentials

How to Create a Data-Driven Marketing Plan

Marketing plans have been used for decades to outline an organization’s marketing strategy and communicate aspects of the current marketing environment. These plans are usually designed to take place over the course of a year, a quarter, or a month, and are intended to improve a business’s market share and their subsequent bottom line.

However, many marketing plans are becoming outdated. In recent years, data has taken a central role in marketing – but data hasn’t necessarily moved to the center of many marketing plans. Let’s take a look at key areas to integrate data-driven insights within today’s modern marketing plan.

Building Your Marketing Plan

To get back to basics, a marketing plan outlines your overarching strategy and the tactics used to accomplish specific business objectives. Many marketing plans generally include the following elements:

• Business Objectives & Executive Summary  - This part of your plan will outline what a business is trying to achieve, whether that be related to revenue growth or customer retention.
• Target Audience & Target Market  - This part of your plan will outline who your target market is. It will address your target audience’s demographics, including gender, age and interests.
• Marketing Strategy  - This part of your plan outlines the marketing initiatives your team will take to help the business reach their overarching objectives.
• Marketing Tactics -  Marketing tactics include the individual campaigns and milestones needed to accomplish the objectives set by the strategy.
• Marketing Channels  - The marketing channels will describe where media is bought and how this media is placed.

Traditionally, marketing plans included these key parts. By creating a marketing plan, organizations are able to better understand their current environment, and devise a course of action to reach their organizational goals. However by combining these plans with a data-driven approach or strategic marketing planning tools, organizations can drive better results.

Set SMART Goals and Use KPIs

Marketers shouldn’t let their strategy determine their goals – instead, they should let their goals determine their strategy. This will help marketing teams not only think outside of the box, but it will ensure that your marketing team stays on a consistent, pointed trajectory that focuses on metrics first. Once your campaign is in flight, SMART goals and KPIs are great ways to break down what parts of your campaign are working, and which parts aren’t.

Marketers should begin their planning by devising SMART goals – goals that are  S pecific,  M easurable,  A ttainable,  R elevant, and  T ime-bound. Each of these five attributes are very important, but for data-driven media plans , it’s critical to have goals that are measurable and time-bound. Without the considerations set forth by SMART goals, it will be much more difficult to determine your progress towards goal completion. SMART goals try to take an objective angle to goal setting, and force organizations to realistically assess what they hope to achieve.

These SMART goals should then be broken down into KPIs. This requires taking a baseline of the company’s current activity – for example, if your goal is to increase your organization’s social following by 10 percent before the end of Q2, you should find out how many followers the organization currently has on social media. Then, you can use those baselines to set specific KPIs that contribute to the completion of your SMART goal. So, you may have a KPI to increase Instagram followers by 20 percent, and another KPI to increase Facebook followers by 5 percent. KPIs like this allow your organization to measure and attribute marketing success in a data-driven, granular way.

Find and Segment Your Target Market

Once your organization understands their goals, they need to understand how to leverage their  target audience ’s needs to meet those goals. This is why it’s important to use data to create well-defined, accurate target markets and their subsequent customer segments. These segments will allow your marketing team to focus on reaching the  right  customers – not the  most  customers.

To determine this, take a look at the customers that are buying from your organization and determine what they have in common. Some niche products will attract a small, general market that largely looks and thinks the same way. However, more often than not, many small customer segments make up an organization’s larger target market. Finding these segments involves analyzing customer data, typically using a clustering analysis, to find similarly motivated groups of customers.

For example, imagine that you run a bookstore that attracts a diverse group of customers – making it a challenge to frame your communications for one type of customer. Instead of casting a wide net, you look at sales data and customer data to determine which types of customers are contributing the most to your business.

After running a segmentation analysis, you find that two primary segments exist. The first segment is primarily composed of recent college graduates, aged 22 to 30, and their purchase motivation is entertainment first, self-education second. The second segment is primarily women aged 25 to 35, and they primarily purchase children’s books – making education for others their top priority.  Now, you can examine both of these segments and have a better idea of how to best address their purchase motives.

Understand the Buyer’s Journey and Industry Sales Cycles

Once you understand your customers, you should understand how they shop by analyzing the buyer’s journey and industry sales cycles. It’s important to understand exactly where a customer is in their journey relative to the sales cycle, as these stages indicate a customer’s purchase intent. By having data about a customer’s propensity to purchase, organizations can target the right marketing messages at the right time.

The buyer’s journey is a framework that breaks down a customer’s purchase intention into three key stages – awareness, consideration, and decision.

• Awareness -  At the “awareness” stage, marketers need to refer to a customer’s purchase motivation, which was found during the segmentation analysis. This purchase motivation often revolves around unmet needs – so, marketers should make customers aware of this need, and suggest how to resolve it.
• Consideration –  Customers will begin researching your brand. If a customer is in this stage of the buyer’s journey, your brand should provide promotional assets that explain how your product resolves their needs more effectively than the competitor’s offering.
• Decision –  The customer is ready to purchase, and is currently seeking your product. At this point, your brand should focus on customer retention efforts.

These stages can predict a customer’s propensity to purchase as they travel through the marketing funnel. Finding where a customer is in this framework requires analyzing massive amounts of data involving customer interactions within your plan’s previously defined customer segments.

Marketers should then layer the buyer’s journey with information about their industry’s sales cycles. Sales cycles determine how many customers are shopping in your market at a given time. This is typically found by analyzing sales volume data on a monthly basis, and then evaluating long term, year-over-year trends. By understanding the data behind your industry’s sales cycle, you can ensure your marketing messages are aligned with when your target customer is most likely to make a purchase.

For example, car dealerships are often very concerned with the sales cycle and the buyer’s journey. They experience slow sales in the winter, so they use that time to create seasonal advertisements that build their brand’s image. These advertisements aren’t designed to encourage short-term purchases. They’re designed to convince customers in the awareness phase to consider buying a car in the coming years, especially in the spring time – which is when the sales cycle says customers are most likely to purchase.

Align Customer Experience with Strategic Priorities

A customer’s experience is the sum of all their interactions with a brand’s employees, marketing channels, systems, and projects. It takes into consideration both positive and negative experiences with a brand. Marketers need to understand how to improve the customer’s experience to overcome the most challenging aspects of today’s marketing environment, such as increased competition and rising customer expectations.

Determining the ideal customer experience means inspecting the customer segments and personas that were established earlier in the planning process. Marketers should leverage information about the motivations, goals, and needs of their highest value customers, and consistently keep profiles up-to-date with fresh qualitative and quantitative data. It’s also important to ensure the customer’s experience is attuned to the right phase of the customer’s journey via frequent analysis.

Remember that crafting the best customer experience doesn’t just focus on how experiences play out for the customer. Rather, consider how departments within your organization will work behind the scenes to achieve the ideal customer experience. This requires total organizational alignment, especially in areas like sales and customer service. Then, don’t forget to justify the budget for such an undertaking to senior level management.

Final Thoughts

Marketing plans are essential to any successful marketing strategy. However, many organizations still create marketing plans that are based on subjective insights – not firm data. In today’s data-driven environment, marketers must maximize the success of their strategies by placing data at the center of their marketing plans.

Through intensive data analysis, good  data quality , and strategic marketing planning tools, marketers will receive a realistic portrayal of their customers, the state of the market, and competitor activity. This will give your marketing plans a clear sense of direction, allowing your organization to seize more market share than ever before.

Related Articles

Why Ensuring Data Quality is Key to Marketing Success

Data has become the lifeblood of marketing. It helps marketers make informed decisions, personalize messaging, and target the right audience....

A History of Marketing Analytics: The Digital Revolution

As we explored in our first post in this series on the history of marketing analytics , marketing in one form or another has been around for...

4 TV Advertising Trends to Guide Your 2022 Strategy

TV has taken a secondary role in most marketing strategies due to the growing influence of digital marketing. Many marketers are increasing ad spend...

Marketing's Data Quality Imperative: Aligning for Success

The marketing landscape is undergoing nonstop disruption. Rapid innovation and the rise and spread of automation have created an “always-on” culture...

Marketing Evolution Announces New Industry Standard for Data Quality Assurance

Marketing Evolution , provider of marketing measurement and optimization solutions, announced enhancements to its Marketing Measurement and...

How to Capture The Most Value From Your Marketing Data

The key to achieving business success hinges on high-quality, reliable data. According to a recent study conducted by Marketing Evolution, data...

Wondering if Marketing Evolution is a Good Fit? Answer These 4 Questions.

Reviewing and purchasing marketing technology software isn’t a walk in the park, especially when it comes to finding a marketing analytics platform....

2016 ARF Ogilvy Gold Award Winner: BIG Data - Warner Brothers powered by Marketing Evolution

As a theatrical campaign was unfolding, the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment team hired Marketing Evolution to strategically aggregate BIG Data...

How Better Accountability in Marketing Leads to Better Insights

For years, many businesses have operated on a slightly modified version of “business as usual.” CMOs may have been demanding data to prove the...

Marketing Evolution , provider of powerful marketing measurement and optimization solutions, announced enhancements to its Marketing Measurement and...

The Importance of Data Quality Assurance in Media Planning Tools

Marketers need to have a precise view of customers across their media planning initiatives. This has caused marketing technology that promises this...

Factors to Consider For Data Quality in Marketing

Data is moving to the center of marketing strategies across organizations. It’s no wonder why – it provides the foundation for insights that...

Data Quality Dimensions Marketers Should Emphasize in Decision Making

According to the recent Forrester report, Why Marketers Can’t Ignore Data Quality , commissioned by Marketing Evolution, leadership teams across all...

Can Data Privacy and Data-Driven Marketing Coexist?

In 2018, GDPR marked a fundamental shift in how organizations were allowed to collect and leverage a consumer’s personal data. If they wanted to...

Marketing Evolution Roadmap: What's New, What's Next

Christine Grammier, COO of Marketing Evolution, will introduce Marketing Evolution's new capabilities including, the new customer portal and...

Poor data quality costs marketers 21 cents of every media dollar

High-quality data empowers marketers to effectively understand and influence shoppers at the right moment , while also demonstrating accountability...

Why the Future of Successful Marketing Analytics Begins with Good Data Hygiene

Data hygiene may not be the most exciting topic in marketing, but its value is immediately apparent as soon as any marketer tries to use unreliable...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 21, 2019-- Marketing Evolution , provider of powerful marketing measurement and optimization solutions, today announced...

Evaluating Programmatic Buying Tactics in Your ROI Analysis

Did you know that Marketing Evolution can append over 1,000 third-party targeting segments to your customers as part of your individual ROI analysis?...

Measuring The Wrong Data Is Costing Marketers Billions

Today’s data-driven world has resulted in the emergence of data as an organization’s most valuable resource and cornerstone of corporate strategy....

Ready to take a generative approach to media planning and measurement?

What is Database Marketing?

Database marketing is an extension to direct marketing. It allows the increase of customer engagement and loyalty programs for businesses. One of the main reasons marketers use database marketing is due to its power to create a personal shopping experience for customers. Not only that, but it also improves the efficiency of your marketing.

• How to Build a Marketing Database
• Database marketing vs Direct marketing

The significance of Database Marketing

It is helpful to organizations in several ways. We discuss a number of those below:

Helps separate existing customers from new leads

Prioritizes valuable accounts, allows the ability to protect customer behavior, ability to test new ideas and products, used to gather feedback to understand your customers’ needs better, your brand stays relevant and top of mind, increased customer retention by building relationships, establishes leadership credibility and brand affinity build-up, future promotional campaigns.

Different Types of Database Marketing

Consumer database marketing.

Consumer database marketing is database marketing that targets consumers using information such as a first and last name, email address, gender, phone number, and location data.

Business Database Marketing

As for business database marketing, companies who sell to other businesses use this form of database marketing to target more businesses. This practice is also known as B2B marketing.

Benefits of Database Marketing

There are several benefits. According to a 2020 report conducted by HubSpot( 1 ), 68% of businesses use automation in some way. With the help of database marketing, businesses can seek the great help of customer databases. Read about how customer databases can elaborate as a strategy in terms of lead generation.  

How Customer Databases Help

With the help of customer databases, businesses increase insight on buying behavior and have the ability to determine what’s in store for their target consumers overall. It’s the key tool to succeed in database marketing.

Identify customer groups – from your most loyal, high-value customers to first-time customers and occasional purchasers

Create detailed customer segments based on demographics, behaviors, or even personal interests, design highly personalized messages for both current and prospective customers, determine the best channel and time to engage customers, improve your marketing efficiency by not wasting time and money sending campaigns to those who are unlikely to respond, build effective loyalty programs that provide the right incentives for repeat purchases, improve customer service by providing support staff with a 360° view of the customer’s interactions with your brand, challenges of database marketing.

There are lots of ways to collect data to succeed with marketing. However, the overwhelming amount of tools to track information on marketing data can lead to fragmented systems within the marketing department of your business. In the end, having less is more rather than the other way around.

( Also Read: Challenges & Actionable Solutions for Database Marketing )

Steps to Building a Marketing Database

Develop thought leadership articles, offer free trials, create a free tool to use, collect customer information during checkout, acquire a business contact database of your ideal prospects from a data provider, collect website visitor data via online cookies, create a facebook chatbot on your business page, difference between database marketing and direct marketing.

Final Thoughts

There are different approaches to database marketing. The only difference between database marketing and direct marketing is that one form of marketing mainly attracts and markets to other businesses and another traditionally attracts customers directly.

There are plenty of reasons why database marketing is a popular marketing strategy for businesses. However, it all comes down to the challenge of building up a marketing database with relevant content.

Overall, businesses that use database marketing can have a better chance at reaching out to loyal and new customers because of the relevancy that database marketing brings.

Other Useful Resources:

What is Email Marketing?

Why Dark Data Is Important for Marketing?

Aileen Padua | Aileen Padua is an aspiring social media coordinator. She is currently majoring in Advertising at Fresno State University. With her understanding about the power of social media, Aileen is passionate about preserving and enhancing the image of one’s reputation in the public eye.

Aileen Padua | Aileen Padua is an aspiring social media coordinator. She is currently majoring in Advertising at Fresno State University. With her understanding a...

Error: Contact form not found.

Related Posts

How to Measure Tech Leadership Success: 20 KPIs and Metrics for Evaluation

10 Ways to Measure ROI from Experiential Marketing Campaigns

Sensory Marketing Guide: The Art of Engaging Audiences through Multi-Sensory Experiences

Latest read, latest watch.

Database Marketing Services: The Key to a Higher ROI

by Deep Sync Apr 26, 2024 Audience Targeting , Business Data , Consumer Data 0 comments

Database marketing couples information within a brand’s database with third-party information to serve as the foundation of all marketing efforts. This reliance on data can drastically increase the ROI of your marketing efforts—so it’s understandable why so many brands and agencies are turning to data marketing strategies .

In this guide, we’ll dive into database marketing services and the custom services offered by Deep Sync. We’ll take a look at key database marketing services as well as case studies to see these services in action.

To help solidify your understanding of database marketing, we’ll explore the following topics:

Database Marketing FAQs

• Database Marketing Services to Increase ROI

Learn More About Deep Sync’s Database Marketing Services

Feel free to use the navigation above to jump to the section that piques your interest. Or, continue reading to explore the full guide. Let’s get started!

What is database marketing?

Database marketing involves using your customer data as the foundation of your marketing strategy. The data you collect, store, and leverage may include:

• Physical addresses
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Purchase history
• Customer support history

When you incorporate this information into your marketing efforts, you can personalize your outreach and give each customer an individualized experience.

What do database marketers do?

Database marketers are marketing professionals who base their efforts on the data contained within a customer’s database. This could mean internal data or third-party data that’s appended to the original database. Regardless, all marketing efforts are tied back to the database and the information in it.

Investing in database marketing services comes with several benefits such as:

• Quantifiable and measurable results
• The ability to target audiences with precision
• A more effective, efficient use of marketing dollars

With database marketing, you can obtain a clear view of the exact audience you’re trying to reach and how that audience is best targeted. Rather than dedicating time and resources to efforts that might work, you can dedicate the same resources to efforts that have a proven likelihood of success.

There are a variety of database marketing services that can be leveraged to develop a successful data marketing strategy . This spans from data enhancement to targeted marketing campaigns.

We’ll cover three main database marketing services and how those services have helped businesses increase their ROI.

What are commonly used tools in a modern marketing data stack?

Before we dive into the specific database marketing services your team can leverage, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the platforms and technology database marketers use to collect, store, and process their data.

Here are the elements included in the modern database marketer’s tech stack:

• Customer relationship management platform (CRM). A CRM provides a centralized location for data that helps you maintain customer relationships. This information may include contact information, communication history, purchasing behavior, and preferences.
• Customer data platform (CDP). A CDP is like a CRM, but it organizes customer data from a variety of sources to round out your customer profiles. For instance, your CDP may include customer information you’ve collected from your website, app, social media, email campaigns, and offline interactions.
• Data management platform (DMP). A DMP aggregates and processes anonymous audience data specifically intended for digital advertising and marketing purposes. This information allows you to segment your audience into relevant groups and target them accordingly.
• Enterprise data warehouse. An enterprise data warehouse stores data from sources across your entire business. It allows you to perform data analytics and produce actionable insights using data from different departments or business areas.
• Composable CDP. A composable CDP has the same function as a typical CDP, but it works directly with your enterprise data warehouse to extract and process information instead of implementing a completely new tool.
• Cloud data platform. A cloud data platform uses cloud technology to store and manage large volumes of business data from multiple sources. Cloud data platforms are more flexible and scalable than traditional data storage solutions.

These tools can help you successfully leverage the data needed for your database marketing strategy. Work with a data or marketing technology provider to determine which technologies are best suited to your business.

3 Database Marketing Services to Increase ROI

1. database management.

To use your database for improved marketing returns, your data must be accurate and precise. In today’s tech-driven age, you’re able to collect more information than ever before to connect with your brand’s target audience.

That said, it’s also easier than ever to introduce errors into your database—the overwhelming amount of records can easily be led astray with a single keystroke.

When it comes to optimizing your database, there are many services available. These include:

• Data Hygiene and Processing: This encompasses all of the processes involved with discovering errors in your database and resolving them. Data hygiene services often involve an audit to discover inaccuracies, standardize records, verify email and postal addresses, and more.
• Batch Records Updating: Whether you’re dealing with an outdated database or incomplete records, you can invest in batch updating to ensure your data paints the full picture. Demographic, firmographic, and contact attributes are available for batch updates.

Because you need clean, effective, and accurate data to carry out your marketing initiatives, database management is an essential part of any successful database marketing strategy.

Example of this Database Marketing Service

A large, multi-campus university system was struggling to use its alumni database to the fullest extent in a marketing capacity. The university’s alumni records were out-of-date and missing key details, including email addresses, postal addresses, and cell phone numbers.

Without this information, effective direct marketing to their alumni was challenging. Direct mail , email, and phone solicitation were all out of reach. To overcome this challenge, the Deep Sync team created a custom data management solution that included the following:

• Correcting and standardizing all postal addresses.
• Verifying email addresses and identifying when new addresses were needed.
• Conducting batch updates, including multichannel contact information.
• Enhancing the data with additional demographic intelligence, such as income, marital status, presence of children, and lifestyle attributes.

Due to these services, the multi-campus university was well-prepared to connect with alumni and other supporters for fundraising initiatives. Further, the team distributed this information to each of their campuses across the state, equipping all satellites with the tools to conduct successful outreach.

2. Data Enhancement

With so many efforts taking place over online channels—marketing, communications, and even direct sales—your brand has more opportunities than ever before to collect data on its audience. That said, the information you collect still may not be enough for an effective database marketing campaign.

When it comes to data enhancement , the following database marketing services are key to ensuring you have a full picture of your target audience:

• Demographic Append: This allows you to enhance your data with customer demographics, such as age, income, marital and familial status, lifestyle attributes (interests/hobbies), and buying behaviors.
• Email Append: With this service, you can identify customers’ most recent email addresses. Or, with a Reverse Email Append, you can identify contact names and postal addresses based on the email addresses in your database.
• Phone Append: This service identifies and adds missing phone numbers to your database. On the other hand, a reverse phone append uses the telephone numbers in your database to identify the names and postal addresses of those in your audience file.
• Firmographic Append: This allows you to collect information on a business, such as the industry it operates in, its structure, annual revenue and market size, and contact information (e.g. location, phone number, email addresses, and web addresses).

3. Audience Building

Effective marketing outreach depends on targeting the right audiences. You could create the highest-quality copy, images, and ads, but if you’re sending them to the wrong audience, the communications will likely go unnoticed.

The prior two services we highlighted focused on building out your organization’s database. Now, we’re looking at how a data provider would use that information to build the ideal audiences for your campaign.

The following database marketing facets are some that this team might use to develop your audience:

• Third-Party Data: This includes obtaining and working with third-party data, such as compiled consumer/business data, specialty data, propensity data, and more.
• Customer Personas: The combination of your internal data with third-party data allows database marketers to build out personas for what your brand’s ideal customer would look like. Further, you can identify lookalike audiences similar to your personas and focus your marketing efforts on targeting both groups.
• Predictive Modeling: With this service, you can go beyond customer personas to predict the response to your marketing efforts and the purchasing behavior of your customers and prospects.

Now, let’s explore a case study that shows how these database marketing facets were used to develop an audience and improve marketing ROI.

A national fitness franchise with 700 locations sought to improve the response rates with its marketing efforts. The project began as a customer persona effort, but that proved unsuccessful. Their ideal customers also happened to closely match those already saturating the geographic area surrounding their locations—so, why weren’t their response rates improving?

This is where the Deep Sync team was brought into the project. Deep Sync applied 200 predictive elements to examine the differences between two key groups within their targeted audience: those that were responding and those that weren’t.

The team was able to discover which elements were most likely to be positive influences on the likelihood of response, such as credit card usage and age. By targeting those within their audience that also had those elements, the franchise was able to improve response rates by over 100%.

Database marketing is a powerful tool for brands looking to increase marketing ROI. When you target your audience using high-quality data, you’ll use your marketing budget more effectively and send more personalized, engaging communications to customers and prospects.

Rather than equipping your team with standardized, out-of-the-box data management solutions as some firms might, the Deep Sync team creates custom data solutions that are tailored to meet your brand’s exact needs. This approach ensures that you access only the most necessary data insights to fuel your marketing efforts for success.

Additionally, all services conducted by the Deep Sync team can be implemented in a way that integrates directly with your existing marketing tech stack. You won’t have to worry about extensive data migrations . Instead, all information will be available for your team in the solutions that you’re already used to using.

To learn more about database marketing and Deep Sync’s services, explore the following additional resources:

• The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide to Increase Your Reach. Learn more about how you can effectively reach your target audience online.
• Data-Driven Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide to Success. Explore the many ways you can use data to invigorate your marketing efforts.
• Marketing Analytics: A Guide for Marketing Professionals. Dive into marketing analytics and how it can help you produce effective audience insights.

Recent Posts

Social media lookalike audiences: now on deep sync one, deep sync’s complete data hygiene, powered by snowflake, loyal customers: how your business can find and obtain them, 4 top strategies to leverage event data for donor outreach, how to create a nonprofit omnichannel marketing strategy, recent comments.

• Audience Targeting
• Business Data
• Company Updates
• Consumer Data
• Customer Database Marketing
• Data Enrichment
• Data for Nonprofits
• Data Privacy
• Data Quality
• Direct Mail
• Enterprise Data
• First-party Data Solutions
• Industry: B2B
• Industry: CPG
• Programmatic Advertising
• Social Media Advertising
• Student and Young Adult Data
• Third-party Datasets
• Uncategorized

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Submit Comment

by Kelly Parrett | Jul 9, 2024 | Audience Targeting , Social Media Advertising

We’re excited to share that we’ve launched new...

by Deep Sync | Jun 25, 2024 | Company Updates , Data Quality , First-party Data Solutions

We’re excited to announce that Deep Sync’s new...

by Deep Sync | Jun 24, 2024 | Audience Targeting

It’s well known that retaining customers is an...

by Deep Sync | May 28, 2024 | Data for Nonprofits

After you’ve hosted a fundraising event, you’ll have a wealth of data you can use to support your nonprofit’s donor outreach. Use this guide to get started.

by Deep Sync | May 9, 2024 | Data for Nonprofits

Given the rise of artificial intelligence (AI),...

Using Data to Improve Direct Mail ROI

by Kelly Parrett | May 3, 2024 | Direct Mail

For marketers and advertisers who rely heavily...

Deep Sync’s Data Solutions on Snowflake

by Deep Sync | Apr 30, 2024 | Business Data

Leverage Deep Sync’s Native Applications and...

CPG Advertising: Complete Guide to Consumer Packaged Goods Ads for Marketers

by Deep Sync | Apr 30, 2024 | Industry: CPG

Keeping up with the latest trends is critical to...

The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide to Increase Your Reach

by Deep Sync | Apr 29, 2024 | Audience Targeting , Business Data , Consumer Data , Data for Nonprofits , Programmatic Advertising , Social Media Advertising

Reach your target audience online with a robust digital marketing strategy. Our digital marketing guide will cover the basics to help you get started.

Nonprofit Direct Marketing: Reach Your Audience Effectively

by Deep Sync | Apr 28, 2024 | Audience Targeting , Data for Nonprofits

Cut through the marketing clutter and reach your audience with nonprofit direct marketing tactics so you can raise awareness and funds for your cause.

Building a Perfect Annual Database Marketing Plan

What is your best possible source for generating business? I’ve been saying for a long while that it’s your database and sphere of influence, and a new report from the Nation Association of Realtors seems to prove that I’ve been right all along!

Yes, your database and SOI are incredibly important… But how do you effectively market effectively to them over time? You need to have a PLAN. And a plan is exactly what Jason Pantana is going to give you. He’s going to tell you exactly what kind of database marketing you need to be doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual basis.

You’re not going to want to miss Jason’s brilliant advice on database marketing , so make sure you watch or listen, now!

In this episode on database marketing, we discuss…

0:00 – Introduction

3:55 – Daily: Social media

5:23 – 3 steps of social media

7:13 – Weekly: Email

9:12 – Monthly: Print

11:35 – Quarterly: Personal touch

13:10 – Semi-annually: Events

14:28 – Annually: Comparative Market Analysis update

15:55 – Ongoing: Google

18:04 – Reach out to Jason!

Don't have a Shopify store?

• What is Database Marketing? How to Create an Effective Strategy?

What is Database Marketing? How to Create an Effective Database Marketing Strategy?

CEO Avada Commerce

Drive 20-40% of your revenue with Avada

Think of a situation like this: you work for a corporation that deals with appliances and mobile equipment. This week, you get some new items landing at your shops, and you plan to launch an e-mail marketing plan to residents around your chain stores to spread the news.

Now you wonder: is mailing the most efficient marketing approach for everyone? And what if you want to target consumers having a real interest in technology and gadgets but dwell in places far beyond your vicinity?

You may wish to have a button on a computer that can automatically create a long list of potential customers in these faraway places who could be buying your products.

This is where Database Marketing kicks in. It includes things like data in real-time, actionable insights, complete pictures of consumers’ behaviors; strategies for customized engagement; omnichannel campaigns.

They can sound really complex, but for successful sales and marketing expansion, they are also important. And the secret to all of them is Database Marketing. So what is Database Marketing, and why is it significant? Let’s find out now!

What is Database Marketing?

Let’s start with a rudimentary Database Marketing definition.

Database Marketing is a type of direct marketing that employs consumers’ databases to create targeted lists for personal selling and communications . Those databases contain some personal information of the consumers, such as names and addresses, contact numbers, e-mails, payment records, information requests, and all other data that may be lawfully and securely captured.

You can access such information through discount coupon application forms, sales invoices, registration forms, insurance claim papers, and consumer newsletter subscriptions.

Conventional direct marketing means making items such as brochures and catalogs, then sending them to a list of current or potential clients with the expectation that these items can evoke a favorable reaction from the receivers. However, this approach has been rendered obsolete in the era of technology.

The Database Marketing Strategy further improves this approach’s efficiency by attempting to learn which items the consumers want, which advertisements trigger a positive reaction, and then incorporating those observations through the right medium to satisfy these needs.

Why is Database Marketing important?

Let’s examine some examples we have here.

Imagine a situation like this: An OTT app manager needs a way to grasp the proportion of its frequently binge-watched customers to introduce to them a premium subscription plan.

To increase the turnover rate, they use their customer database to group their loyal, frequent watchers. After that, they send out a bulk combined e-mail offering these users a free month trial of premium (to act as an incentive to motivate them). Using data analytics, they can estimate how many targeted customers will yield Return on Investment.

So, using Database Marketing, you can group Loyal Customers and find Possible Upsells

Or, imagine a customer service person from an e-Commerce app is being delegated with cold calling. With Database Marketing in place, that person can see the information of the phone recipient automatically. Based on that information, they can determine whether the cold-calling recipient is a potential buyer or not. Also, the service rep can easily see through a customized support interface with this knowledge and respond to the recipient’s questions quicker.

In short, Database Marketing allow you to provide Personalize Customer Service

Or, imagine you are the manager of a travel app aiming to widen its service line. With a customer database, you can now reach into their consumer profile to view their purchasing habits and travel patterns before allocating resources to the initiatives. First, this endeavor is to decide whether their potential customers will book its guided trips or not. Second, it is to learn which customer types would yield a high Return on Investment.

With Database Marketing, you can know which items and services to promote to a particular audience

Or, imagine you run a food delivery app. To stay ahead of the curve and improve conversions, you need more customers ordering food on your app. You may be thinking that spamming users at any mealtime are one way to do that. However, an even better way is to anticipate which consumers are most likely to order, using customer database predictive analytics. That way, you can offer updates on which food is hot selling and promo codes to the right people at the right time, making it easier for your company to win over those customers.

See, Database Marketing helps you to predict who will buy your products and when they will do that

Let’s narrow things down a little bit. With a decent Database Marketing Strategy, you can:

• Group your customers: from the most committed, high-value clients to first-time consumers and casual users.
• Develop broad segments of consumers based on demographics, ideologies, or even personal preferences.
• Create highly tailored communications for both potential and existing clients.
• Determine the optimal time and channel for client interaction.
• Boost your marketing success by reducing spending time and resources sending campaigns to people that are reluctant to respond.
• Establish active loyalty programs that offer exclusive benefits for frequent transactions.
• Understand your customers’ experience with your brand.
• Enhance the customer experience by offering customized support services.

What are Database Marketing’s setbacks?

Database Marketing is tremendously beneficial, but it still has some challenges. Advertisers need to consider the obstacles in order to implement promotion campaigns effectively.

Look out for these problems in Database Marketing:

Deterioration of Data. Your profile becomes out of date if a customer quits jobs, receives a raise, gets to a higher status quo, transfers to a different address, changes their name, and gets a second e-mail address. Basically, any life transitions could render your data obsolete. Per month, a well-managed database declines at an average of 2-3 percent, which means that a third of the data might be inaccurate in only a year span. To minimize data degradation , you may want to concentrate on information that is least likely to change (for example, name and phone number rather than company e-mail)

Precision of Details: Customers will not always provide accurate data. Besides, typos, handwriting readability, or missing details can negatively influence the accuracy of your Database.

Acting in a timely fashion on customer data: Collecting and reviewing details from customers is just the first stage. To hit on a customer’s curiosity in your company, you have to move fast enough. Otherwise, your data will become out-dated.

How to Create an effective Database Marketing Strategy?

The critical advantage of Database Marketing is that it encourages a company to stay connected with its consumers to make sure that they are engaging with the brand one-on-one. Needless to say, understanding clients’ desires, wishes, expectations, patterns, and even potential habits help the brand make them feel heard and valued, without wasting their time with meaningless messages.

To this end, you need to understand how to get started and create your own Database Marketing Strategy to meet your needs. You may want to begin with the following steps.

1. Identify the main group

Consider these factors: How old are your main targeted customers? What is their amount of income? What is the job title? Where are they living? What are they actively involved in? What else are they purchasing?

Once you get these criteria, you may create your product with a comprehensive perfect customer profile. Then, you use this profile to assess what kind of details is needed. Finally, include them in your Database.

2. Collaborate with other departments

Marketing, distribution, and customer service are also in close touch with clients and prospects. To be effective, you get to figure out what data does each team needs?

3. Find the right platform

Customer insights will not be of any use to anyone if the people in your company cannot access it. Therefore, it is vitally important to choose a platform that facilitates the sharing of information process. Also, you need to organize consumer information to fit the various categories of goods or services.

4. Gather Customer Database resources

Database Marketing begins with… you guess it … data. The more helpful information obtained, the more successful the initiative is.

These data come from a multitude of places, both internally and externally. For example, since finance and insurance agencies already need to obtain name, address, and other sales information, it takes no additional time to keep the information in the Database. More data may come from customer service - the department that keeps track of all their customer interactions. Meanwhile, extra customer data are generated by marketing and sales leads.

Although it is possible to gather data on current consumers through sales, oftentimes, you primarily collect (buy) data on potential customers from third parties. Different nations have different regulations that regulate what data can and can not be sold, mostly narrowing it to names, locations, phone numbers, and specific characteristics, perhaps. A great number of companies will capitalize on this; others may have to conform to contracts with their customers that prohibit them from doing so.

These data may include:

Acquisition information: when and how the customer first came to your site/app, from which channel/affiliate, which advertising campaign they respond to, etc.

Demographic data: Age, ethnicity, marital/family status, schooling, address, etc.

Website/app usage history: which sites do they view, what is the number of visits, what are the items clicked or games played, what are the features used, etc. (including activity reported before login or first buy)

History of purchase/spending: how many times they have purchased from your site, what is the number of purchased items (total items and average items purchased each time), how much do purchased items costs, what is the average expenditure per one purchase; what are the dates/intervals between each purchase.

Campaign response history: how often consumers interact with your campaigns, how and how much they have reacted, what kinds of campaigns they have responded to, and through which channels.

Loyalty program information: what is the loyalty level received, the number of points received, redeemed discounts, etc.

Customer surveys and questionnaires: what are the customer survey results and how long it takes the customer to complete a survey.

Collection of interaction: details of all communications between a client and the company

Location data: geo positions reported from the mobile devices of the customer

Activity in social media: what are the often discussed subjects and brand names, what are your app reviews, your visitors’ profile info, etc.

Third-party data analytics details: what are the other websites browsed, advertisements clicked, purchase provoking data, socioeconomic indicators, etc.

It is necessary to merge the different data sources in such a way that the information is clean (free of mistakes), up-to-date, and properly connected to each particular customer. Each of these criteria can present difficulties, especially the need to align all customer information from disparate sources with a unique customer identifier. Only if all data points are correctly gathered and connected to individual customers can you achieve Database Marketing goals.

Fortunately, over the last few years, technology has proven to be of tremendous help in all of these sectors. A reality that renders it practical, maybe even compulsory, for corporations to deploy marketing tools for databases and enjoy the rewards.

5. Maintain up-to-date and back-up information

It takes lots of time and resources to create a consumer database. You do not want to waste it all just because of some power failures and technological bugs. This is where CRM software or a customer data platform will help you.

Also, CRM software can synchronize profiles periodically, for example: when consumers access new details. By integrating with your software and upgrading each contact as they search your website with interaction data, online tools can protect your Database against decay.

Check out: 15+ Best CRM For Small Business

6. Value consumer confidentiality

Social media has greatly facilitated the process of getting detailed insights into your customers’ hobbies, opinions, and life changes. Successful customization is about presenting an informed user with a tailored message, not proving how much personal knowledge you have.

Besides, there is nothing more important than your customer trust. Your effort will be all for naught if someday, they wake up and see all their private information online.

7. Create segmentation

Once you’ve built your Database, you can start with some basic user segmentation. For example, campaigns designed primarily for first-time customers or potential clients, or customized campaigns for users in your loyalty scheme.

There are several levels of market segmentation; each one refers to a company’s strategy to support, sell, and locate its product to the target audience or its consumers, respectively.

Mass Marketing

Mass Marketing approach relies on the whole consumer segment of potential buyers instead of concentrating on a selected group of consumers. Baygon cockroach spray or Mortein mosquito repellent coils are examples of a Mass Marketing campaign that reaches all its future clients with a single advertising message.

Segment Marketing

Segment Marketing translates to a technique in which the organization splits its target audience according to their specific preferences and requirements into separate categories. The brand targets various advertisements to different segments, drawing them to the particular features of the product. This approach creates product distinction, depending on the buyers’ gender, age, earnings, and location, for clients with everyday needs and desires.

The clothing industry perfectly exemplifies the Segment Marketing Strategy. The focused clientele may be male, female, casual, trendy, and business clothing segments.

Niche Marketing

This strategy of marketing concentrates on smaller customer segmentation. Customers may like or want an item that is not entirely fulfilled by the products available on the market. As firms step forward to create highly customized products meeting their customers’ individual preferences, they offer items that only cater to certain consumer segments.

An example of a Niche Marketing category is mountain biking. Individuals interested only in mountain biking would be the target of this market segmentation. It is a Niche Market, as not every bike production corporation caters to mountain bikers. Companies that manufacture mountain bikes address the niche market of mountain bikers and accommodate their unique demands, tastes, and specifications.

Micro Marketing

Micromarketing is an even smaller marketing approach for segmentation. It caters to the characteristics of a well-defined prospective buyers’ group, such as people of a specific geographical area or a very particular lifestyle.

Luxury cars that are prohibitively priced and have excellent features such as high speed, personalized appearance, etc. are examples of niche marketing. The demand for these vehicles comes from wealthy motor enthusiasts keen on the exclusive features and have the financial resources to afford them, as these models are very costly and small in size.

Bear in mind that marketers can achieve the level of consumer micro-segmentation, or even individual-level segmentation (which is also called segment-of-one customer-marketing), by integrating different segmentation approaches. This results in highly meaningful targeted experiences in today’s marketing-saturated environment that demonstrate emotional intelligence and effectively stand out from the crowd.

Successful Database Marketing Examples

1. amazon database marketing.

Amazon is a perfect example of a company that has perfected ads using databases. Some may contend that Amazon does not participate in an intense content promotion (even for its B2B commodities). Still, it is evident that Amazon is very successful in exploiting and analyzing consumer data.

Amazon closely monitors what users have seen, ordered, or posted on wish lists, and also cross-references this data with what other buyers have purchased to “cross-sell” and “up-sell” its shoppers (e.g., “You may also need it too”). This tactical algorithm is sometimes referred to by database advertisers as a “recommendation engine”.

Also, Amazon is very efficient when it comes to positioning its brand.

• Multi-segment positioning: Amazon delivers a wide variety of goods and services, exploiting more than one market at the same time effectively. In total, this shopping giant has sold more than 130 million goods, attracting the needs and desires of a wide variety of consumer segments.
• Targeting adaptively: The online shopping giant closely tracks developments in the external marketplace and regularly repositioning goods and services based on changes in the segment, tackling growing consumer preferences.

2. Netflix Database Marketing

Netflix is another perfect example. To be specific, Netflix uses a recommendation-based algorithm. It then cross-references it with other audiences of similar tastes to recommend shows based on your viewing pattern.

Netflix is so effective at using its Database that its recommendation system affects an average of 80 percent of the content streamed on its website.

So, how does Netflix do it?

Netflix’s large customer base of over 148 million users gives it a significant edge when it comes to obtaining data. It then concentrates on the metrics below:

• What is the date on which users watch Netflix’s content?
• What is the computer on which users watch Netflix’s contents?
• How the devices affect the contents watched?
• What do the users search on its Mobile App/Website?
• What is the percentage of re-watched contents?
• At which point the users drop the contents?
• What is the location of the users?
• What is the time of the day and week users watch its contents?
• How the time impact the type of content watched?
• Third-party metadata like Nielsen.
• Facebook and Twitter’s social media data.

Netflix’s recommendation system is skillfully created in a way that:

• Netflix focuses on giving each user exactly what the user prefers via a custom “content ranker” that arranges the content selections of each Netflix user based on the information obtained from each user.

What we are trying to say is that, like Netflix, you can use Database to make sure that the content shown to each user is chosen by the personal behavior and engagement with your brand, meaning that every user has a specific content experience.

• Netflix not only lists leading and trending content depending on how famous the content is, but also on the user’s preferences. They promote content based on the user’s Netflix interaction.

The main lesson here is that while your customers may be interested in what is trendy, they still do want to watch shows that fit their interests. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure that the content you promote is relevant to your customers’ personal desires.

• Netflix sort “Recently Watched Content” on the basis of an overview of whether users are likely to continue watching or re-watching, or they have dropped watching because the content does not fit their taste.

This sorting is critical in ensuring that Netflix does not bore its users. If user interaction reveals a lack of curiosity, you may want to demote the content and provide something more exciting.

• A “Content Similarity Algorithm” recommends contents that are similar to those a user just watched. It is critical to note that people are more inclined to consume content similar to the ones they are familiar with.

3. Spotify Database Marketing

Three hundred million registered monthly users of Spotify. Despite this colossal number of users, Spotify can still successfully filter and prioritize the content using user data and patented algorithms to construct a superior, customized user interface.

Using Databases to make individualized content sounds simplistic and not all that innovative. Still, the trick here is just how well it works. Without any additional work, consumers will enjoy a complete, personalized service. All they need to do is use the network like they usually will. Around that activity, the algorithm constructs more content ideas.

It is useful to use algorithms to track and forecast customer behavior to the point that the customer feels like the app is working for them in every activity. Therefore, customers are more loyal than ever. In fact, Spotify has millions of loyal and active customers of the paid service (138 million are Spotify Paid subscribers) who enjoy the benefits

One example of Spotify’s individualized content is playlists. Via their predictive recommendation engine, Spotify uses AI that helps users to curate custom playlists like “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar.” Many Twitter users appreciated the use of Spotify database and machine learning to make such a highly tailored and individualized playlist, joking that the “Discover Weekly” playlist is even more of a spouse than their real ones.

Daily Mix is another cool thing. After you’ve been listening to your favorite Spotify songs for a while, Spotify collects your listening pattern and makes these playlists exclusively for you to enjoy your favorite songs. Not only that, Spotify uses clustering technologies and then creates recommendations around your favorite songs, mixing your existing favorites with new suggestions. These playlists get refreshed every day, so the head-bopping never ceases.

In fact, around 4 billion playlists are existing on the platform, according to Spotify itself. Around 30% of Spotify listening time is spent on Spotify-curated playlists. Approximately 55% of that amount is for playlists individualized to each user based on their listening habits.

Who needs Database Marketing?

Who can profit from Database Marketing? Any company can, in short. Numerous companies use database technologies to optimize their direct marketing campaigns, such as financial firms, suppliers, software companies, home internet companies, insurance companies, and B2B companies.

But before that, we must consider the pros and cons of it, like every other decision. There are substantial costs for installing and managing a Database Marketing system, and the expense, time commitment,… And total resource utilization must be compensated by improved earnings earned by Database Marketing Strategies.

Therefore, the best Database Marketing applicants are usually organizations who already produce sufficient website traffic and sell several items.

And suppose they have long-term client partnerships consistently investing in content marketing. In that case, B2B-targeted enterprises will go hand in hand with Database Marketing.

Besides, for big corporations, which have large customer bases and produce vast volumes of transaction data, Database Marketing is incredibly useful. The more comprehensive the original data collection is, the more possibilities arise to identify groups of clients and/or potential customers to generate habit patterns.

Social networking advertisement networks and Google AdWords have perfected the marketing tactics of databases by exploiting geographical data and site behavior to reach customer segments more accurately.

While all businesses may inevitably participate in marketing practices for databases sooner or later, the world is just beginning to see these developments grow significantly right now.

We seldom see marketers reliably monitor customer behavior through various networks and browsers and rationally incorporate the data to sufficiently address their desires and expectations.

Take in mind that we must be able to monitor and classify clients using behavior-based algorithms aggregated from several sources to achieve this “ultimate goal” of a personalized, automated marketing experience. Sadly, these types of technology are diverse and rarely well incorporated. However, the world is still learning and improving and getting closer to the “ultimate goal” every day.

For many B2B firms, Database Marketing Strategies closely align with Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies. They offer insights that marketers can use to “hyper-target” key segments, a necessary ABM component. Recently, owing to the growth of ABM and the imminent proliferation of machine learning (which executes “human-like” activities based on data inputs), Database Marketing firms and their in-house counterparts have become increasingly important.

When technology evolves, it will undoubtedly transform what used to be “a novel experience” to merely be “industry standard” or “basic prerequisite”. This progression from “uniqueness” to “ordinary way of working” is likely to be comparable to the trajectory we experienced with the Internet’s rise.

Therefore, today’s consumers seek customized experience from your company. To make your customers satisfied, marketers need a single view of each customer at every step of the way. Only then do they comprehend the journey of the client and approach them more substantively.

Marketing strategies using databases will help you do just that.

• --> --> --> -->