Data Driven Marketing For Dummies

Introduction

Welcome to Data Driven Marketing For Dummies!

But … what do I mean by data driven marketing? All marketing disciplines are fundamentally concerned with attracting and retaining customers. They’re also all driven by data, in some sense. Marketers don’t just haphazardly develop communications. They take as much information into account as they have available.

Database marketing, or data driven marketing, is a discipline which takes the use of information to an extreme. Data driven marketing, as I use the term in this book, can be characterized by three things:

It’s a form of direct marketing: Database marketers develop communications that are delivered directly to consumers. This has traditionally been done through direct mail and e-mail. But the principles of direct marketing are being used with increasing sophistication to deliver marketing messages via text messages, social media, web content, and other electronic channels.

It’s fundamentally focused on individual customer information: The database in database marketing refers to a customer database which contains purchase history, demographics, and other information about each customer. This level of detail forms the basis for highly relevant, personalized, and customized messages. This relevance drives the effectiveness ...