If you just come up with a great new product or service, your next move is to effectively spread the word about it. However effective direct marketing may be, is it the best method for your particular sales campaign? You may want to consider a database marketing campaign in order to cut through the incredible an ever-increasing amount of noise in the modern business landscape.

What exactly is a database marketing campaign?

A database marketing campaign is a form of direct marketing that includes consumer mailing lists as the basis for contact instead of other methods of list building. With the right software, these lists can be targeted very precisely and organized in different ways for different campaigns. They can also be automated so that the manpower of the company is not lost when communicating with them. However, each email can be personalized based on the demographic of the niche as well as the personal information of the potential customer.

A database marketing campaign will usually include much more information per listing than the average direct marketing campaign. Instead of just a list of names and emails, each unit will consist of information that can be used to automate a personalized email such as name, address, job title, information requests, purchase histories and many other legally obtainable information about the potential customer.

How can database marketing be used?

Companies in many different industries will make use of database marketing in order to refine and hone their outreach techniques. The larger the firm, the more useful that the database usually can be. It works especially well for industries with no-nonsense clients like finance. Companies such as American Express, Pitney Bowes and Experian use database marketing quite often in order to segment their customer base and market to them in a personalized way.

Using workflow software and CRM tools in conjunction with a database marketing strategy can also be used to establish processes that can help identify and test demographics of who will respond to a certain product. In many cases, different databases are partnered against each other in order to see the age or type of person who engages most readily with a certain type of advertisement. In many cases, these tests will be conducted in small, Midwestern towns in the United States and then utilized over the entire nation and world.

Database marketing is also effective when customers have already expressed interest in company products. This is a type of permission marketing that can be very effective when utilized within a digital database. Now that a company knows which customers are actually looking for updates on a product, they can step up their marketing to those people specifically without wasting that increased vigor on other customers who are not as likely to make a purchase.

How can my company develop a database marketing campaign?

The first thing that your company needs is data. The more data that you have, the better. Fortunately for many small and medium-size businesses, there is more data that is more readily available on social media than ever before. As a matter of fact, people are giving their needs and wants away. All that a company has to do is to engage these people on social media sites and organize the information that they are given.

Data can also be collected through transactions on existing customers if a business is already selling. Although this is a very effective technique for the companies who already have a customer base, there is absolutely no shame in obtaining lists of data from third-party sources. As a matter of fact, many businesses will sell their customer lists to competitors, such as Borders bookstores did to Barnes & Noble.

A company can also collect data from a process that is known as “real-time business intelligence.” Real-time business intelligence is a fancy name for interacting with customers face-to-face. This is the most effective type of data to get, as a company will be able to put names with faces and demographics.

In order to take advantage of all of this data, it must be properly organized. The software network and the types of analytics that are used make a huge difference in the effectiveness of the database marketing program.