Modeling in Direct Marketing

With the explosion in both “Big” and “Massive Mobile” Data, driven by highly sophisticated data acquisition technologies and methods, the ease with which consumer data can be collected, sourced and stored can feel equal parts tantalizing and overwhelming.  Absent an analytical approach to unlocking insights from this information, the effort to compile this valuable data will not yield the return that you can (and should) expect.  The question becomes something akin to “what approach(es) will ensure that we are harnessing the true power of all this newfound data?”

Enter Direct Marketing Models or DMMs for short.  For retailers and restaurants, a DMM effectively combines the shopping habits of your customers with demographic and psychographic data to optimize your marketing spend.  For healthcare providers, DMM factors in encounters with various providers/facility types over time, and can be leveraged both for campaigns that will generate short-term responses (primary care visits) and for campaigns meant to create “top of mind” awareness for episodic needs (new da Vinci technology).  Regardless of the application, DMMs allow marketers to develop a more informed understanding of their existing consumers (helpful in retention and reactivation) while seeking out new prospective consumers (acquisition).

How does it all work?

Ever wonder why your neighbor receives a different set of offers in the mail then you?  Smart marketers are scoring every household on your block, in your ZIP code, etc. to determine how likely its inhabitants are to shop in your store, dine at your restaurant, and visit your urgent care clinic.  Not all products and services appeal to every consumer, even those that “look” alike when purely viewing them through a demographic/psychographic lens alone.  Why waste time and money (both finite resources) on consumers that, for varying reasons, will never be valuable to you?

By combining best-in-class household data and analytical knowledge of your business (how consumers interact with you), a DMM can be developed to meet your specific marketing needs.  More targeted marketing plans can be developed and executed, ensuring that you are utilizing the correct medium at the right time.  These “intelligent” campaigns will deliver higher ROI while removing the guesswork out of selecting your target audience.  Mass, blast, saturation marketing is ineffective, a relic of yesteryear.  There is a better way.