Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age

SEGMENTATION BASED ON NON–DATA WAREHOUSE INFORMATION

If you have no customer base or available data about it or if the DW data simply do not give you some actionable segments, you can be forced to go for non–DW segmentation. You can segment your customers based on many sources as well as combined sources. Typically, however, your segmentation logic will be based on input from subject matter experts or simply will be dictated by your organization or external business partners. If your segmentation logic is based on questionnaires, the types of segmentation can be the same as with DW-based segmentations, such as needs-based or value-based segmentation; however, often this methodology allows you to segment only those customers in your customer base who replied to your questionnaire, since for obvious reasons you do not know anything about the needs of the nonrespondents. The benefit of segmentation based on non–DW data is that you can base it on a wider set of information, since in questionnaires you can ask about whatever you want, as opposed to segmentations based on the DW, where the customer attributes that your segmentation is based on is limited to the data currently stored by your organization.

Often larger companies with subscription-based funding need both DW– and non–DW–based segmentation, since they wish to run campaigns through the mass media and at the same time have CRM activities below the media line, such as emails and direct mail. Often there is no alignment between ...