These are words we WANT to hear if what our business offers is not at all relevant to a recipient. By the same token, they are disappointing to hear when our business offers something that IS relevant to the recipient.
As marketers our job it to see to it that our message is of relative value.
There is an old adage in direct marketing that is still applicable today. It is an acronym for the sequence our marketing communications MUST achieve in order to be successful. The acronym is AIDA which stands for:
Attention -> Interest ->Desire -> Action.
A library could be filled with books on marketing best practices, rules of thumbs, techniques, etc. that all have to do with achieving AIDA. In this post I want to give you one example of on the common big mistakes I see A LOT: Failing to filter your target audience.
Here is an example of personal business story which should drive home my point . . .
I have a prospect for GoldMine that went into my database 8 months ago. Presumably that is when I went into their database too. They sell a product that is absolutely zero relevance to me! Therefore, there is NO reason at all that I should be receiving their marketing emails. And yet, since the data we “found” each other I have received almost 100 emails from them!
I’m sure that I’m not unique – in other words there must be many others who are receiving this firm’s appropriate emails. Most of those people have probably marked them as spam or asked to be removed.
“Dirty data is the enemy of marketing.”
Bob Ritter
It is one thing to do a poor job maintaining a database and another thing to do poor job of filtering your marketing communications.
Below are some links to articles I’ve posted on GoldMineSuccess.com in the past regarding data integrity:
Dirty Data is the Enemy of Marketing
Good CRM Data Entry Practices
Using Lookups to Control Data
Time for Some GoldMine Spring Cleaning
The are two another old direct marketing expression which relates to data:
1. Later is never. ” – this expression speaks to the need to be constantly updating your data when you find errors.
2. “When you need the list is it too late.” – this expression speaks to the fact that it is almost always to late to clean up this when you need to use it.
Often times the issue with poor filtering is the consequence of poor database best practices. We also find the many organizations lack the knowledge of the tools and ways to clean up and/or filter their CRM data.
If you’re organization needs assistance please contact me. This is one of the many services that First Direct offers. Let’s discuss your data concerns and ways to address them. Give me a call at (845) 221-3800.
