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Three Essentials for Successful Database Marketers
By Arthur Middleton Hughes
Do you want to earn a lot of money as a successful
database marketer? Arthur Middleton Hughes, a
well-known database marketing specialist, gives his
first three (of six) tips on what you need to know
about being one. See if you have what it takes.
Database marketing is expanding all over. There is a
mad rush to find candidates to fill the positions.
Since I lecture on the subject, I am often asked,
"What are the qualities that we should look for in
seeking the ideal person to do database marketing?"
This article is an attempt to answer that question.
The ideal database marketer must:
• Apply winning strategies
• Understand the customer’s point of view
• Be a leader
Ability to put winning strategies to use. In
database marketing, strategy is everything. Most
people don’t realize this. They think that database
marketing is about databases and computers. It
isn’t. It is about marketing, and specifically, how
to apply profitable strategies to a marketing
situation.
Think about the MCI Friends and Family program – one
of the most successful database marketing strategies
ever devised. It has been so successful that it has
forced AT&T and Sprint to spend a significant
portion of their advertising budgets just fighting
this program. A successful marketer doesn’t have to
be the creative person who thinks up the strategies.
Others can think them up. Some of the best
strategies in marketing, and everywhere else, are
ideas stolen from others. What the successful
strategist does is to:
• look for and grasp creative ideas which can be
applied to the present situation
• sell these ideas to top management, the rest of
the organization, and the external business partners
• get the budget for the strategy approved
• mobilize the drive and resources to implement the
strategy
• stay with it, day after day, month after month
making modifications where it falls short
Ability to see things from the customer’s point of
view. Why is this important? Because it is the one
quality that is most overlooked. What we are trying
to accomplish with database marketing is to build
lasting relationships with customers that will
promote loyalty, retention, referrals and increased
sales. There is only one way to do that: offer
programs, products and services to the customers
that they want, need, like, appreciate, value, and
wish to have more of. So many database marketing
programs fail. The key reason for the failure in
most cases is that the customers didn’t want what
they were being offered.
Leadership Ability. Successful database marketing
involves many different parts of a company. It can
seldom be carried out by the marketing department
alone. Consider the Hertz Number One Gold Club. When
you rent a car from this club, they get your car
ready before your plane lands. They put your name up
in lights with an arrow pointing to your car. The
trunk is open. The motor is running and the heater
(air conditioning) is on. All of this takes a lot of
coordination in the company. It is not just a
marketing gimmick. It was dreamed up by the
company’s marketing staff. But to work, top
management and thousands of employees throughout the
Hertz system had to be trained and clued in on the
program. Successful database marketing is like that.
A successful database marketing executive has to
have to have a vision of what customers should see
in your company. She has to have the leadership
ability to get others to see this vision, and take
the necessary actions to make the vision a reality.
---- Arthur Middleton Hughes is vice
president/solutions architect at KnowledgeBase
Marketing. His website is dbmarketing.com. Contact
Arthur at Arthur.hughes@kbm1.com or at (954)
767-4558.
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