Resurgence – Does Database Marketing Still Have It?

Well it’s a question every marketer wants to be answered. Emergence of new online technologies alongwith the changing priorities of customers have made online marketers to move away from this traditional medium and look for greener pastures. It all started during 1980’s when the term database marketing had been first coined leading to numerous articles and entire conferences were devoted to the subject. 

While the buzz around database marketing has cooled off but not its importance to B2B marketing.

The entire internet is filled with definitions of database marketing, but let’s discusses the working definition that would hold certain weight among the current marketers. 

“Building a permission-based contact list of suspects and prospects in order to facilitate re-marketing efforts.” I have carefully used the term permission as you cannot practice good marketing by buying a list of contacts that have no desire to hear from you and promoting to them relentlessly. You would either end up annoying people or at worst you will find your emails blacklisted. 

Database marketing has been invariably used to increase lead flow, lower the cost per inquiry and improve sales close rates. In the early days of direct marketing era, we used push marketing techniques like direct mail and telemarketing to generate leads. Though today we have oriented to online methods like pay-per-click(PPC), search engine optimization(SEO), social media and permission based email. But while the media has changed the principles of database marketing are same:

• Give a reason to opt in to your offers and continue to welcome communication from you. 
• Properly educate your customers so that they know you are the branded authority in your area of  expertise. Making you the obvious choice when they want to buy what you offer. 
• Make it easy to opt out as you do to opt in.
• Find out the right frequency for your email communication. For some messages emailing once a week is o.k. for some communication in a month does the work. 
• Put real, genuine thoughts into your database marketing efforts, do not consider it as a pass by tool for your marketing duties.

Old is Gold. Well if you put all your database marketing efforts into the right direction you will reaped with excellent quality leads. So what are you waiting for? Try and share your experiences with us, we are eager to hear from you!!