Who Are Your Customers?
October 20th, 2012
You probably have a database of your customers already – it could be as simple as a card file or spreadsheet. The important thing is to use it wisely. If you don’t have a database, or you need to have a bigger list, then you can buy or even rent databases.
To target your best customers effectively and efficiently, you need a deeper understanding of who they are, where they live, what they do, what they like and dislike, etc. This is called profiling. You don’t have to profile to send direct mail, but it will improve your results.
Profiling helps you:
• Visualize the people you want to reach
• Fine-tune your offer to a well-defined audience
• Create more appropriate and more effective mailings
What is a profile?
Put simply, it’s a set of characteristics that help identify and group your target audience.
• For consumer mailings, you can use age, gender, income, geographical area, home type, hobbies, and special interests, or any combination, to provide a profile; for example: men, aged 30 to 40, who enjoy scuba diving, and live in San Francisco, California.
• For business mailings, typical characteristics may be: industrial classification, sales turnover, number of employees, geographical area and technology or machinery used. Are you looking to contact small-to-medium enterprise company car drivers in New York?
What if I have a little in-depth information on my customers?
If your database holds little or no profile information, you can usually get a much fuller view by matching it against external data, such as one of the major demographic or lifestyle databases, such as Experian.
Cross-referencing data in this way can be quite illuminating at times. You might, for instance, find that a segment of your database is actually youngish, just-married and enjoys rock-climbing and other active sports. Not ideal for that cruise you’re trying to sell… but you could position a mailing as ‘a gift for your parents’.
Categories: Direct Mail
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