News
Roll Up Your Sleeves, Show Me the Data
By Bill Singleton, manager of analytics and consulting services at the Allant Group
Do you take a top-down or bottom-up approach when
you do your post-campaign analysis? Do you look at
households, individuals, items, orders or recency?
Your answers will tell a lot about your data
processing, and what you can expect from your
planning.
Like most mailers, you probably have stuffed your
database with mailing treatment keycodes, household
and/or individual ID numbers, names, addresses,
shipping addresses, order and shipping dates, units,
SKUs, cost and retail dollars, order numbers and
line numbers.
But have you really looked at all this in a holistic
way?
Let’s start with an apparel purchase. Several line
items ordered on one day can be summed to a single
order number and purchase dollar total, giving you
one address and ID number.
You can add up the line items on this customer’s
record by ascending or descending date, by state or
ID number—you will end up with the same information
in your summary. Your modeling and geography will
not change.
Second, imagine the student who buys a notebook
computer that she plans to load with games and music
at home. Several days later, she orders accessories
to be delivered to her college in a different state.
Your system records several line items under
different order numbers that share the same ID
number. Typically, you will sort the file by date.
The date and address on the last record will be the
one you keep.
But here’s the rub: Your RFM data will be accurate,
but your geographic summary will put all the dollars
in the same state as the college. If you know that
split orders such as this often appear in your data
and sort your file to capture the correct address,
you will keep the first order date and your recency
of the buyer’s activity will be incorrect.
This is a very picky view of how customer
transactions can be handled. But you may not
understand your customer’s purchasing habits until
you align your analyses with real behavior.
---Source: Reprinted with permission from Multichannel Merchant Magazine's List and Data Strategies Jan. 7 2008 newsletter www.multichannelmerchant@pbinews.com. Bill Singleton writes “Show Me The Data” each month and is a manager of analytics and consulting services at the Allant Group. He can be reached at:
bsingleton@allantgroup.com
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