17 Jan 2012: Ask a database marketer worth his salt to do some profiling work on a prospect or customer database and watch his face light up as they contemplate the task in hand. They’ll think nothing of spending hours and days pulling the database apart in any number of ways to reveal the valuable secrets lurking within – and all with very good reason, which can be summed up in a deceptively innocent sounding three letter acronym: ROI.

Yet ask that same database marketer for a bit of advice on where to find a new online data cleansing supplier, a new suppression file, a new source of data, or a new marketing automation tool and as likely as not, the response you will get will be decidedly unscientific.

Perhaps a solution will have been recommended by an industry colleague; perhaps they’ll vaguely recall reading about a likely sounding product in a magazine; maybe they remember using something that was quite good a few years ago; or you might just end up on Google.

That may seem fanciful to many of our more erudite and experienced readers, but this is indeed the reality for even more. The process of identifying a potential new supplier and evaluating their offering is the subject of so many articles in this magazine for good reason.

And it’s with this in mind that we launch this first in a new series of Profiling The Industry features where we offer some insight into some of the key players in the wider database marketing industry. With so much consolidation and change, the series couldn’t come at a better time – and remember, there’s no such thing as too much insight.

First up are:

• Callcredit Marketing Solutions
• Involve Millennium (Mortascreen)
• Aprimo
• UKChanges

Callcredit Marketing Solutions: Delivering the data and insight today’s marketers need more than ever

Accessing the right data and then transforming it into intelligence and insight is more important than ever in the multichannel, ‘always-on’ world that today’s consumers live in – which is exactly where Callcredit Marketing Solutions and The Trading Floor can help.

At Callcredit Marketing Solutions we are continually striving to find new ways to unlock value for marketers through the innovative transformation of data into intelligence and insight, enabling businesses to transact profitably across multiple channels and markets. We pride ourselves in helping our clients make smarter marketing and operational decisions; whether it be through using consumer information to identify, engage and convert more customers, optimise existing customer profitability or maximise the performance and proximity of ‘clicks and bricks’ channels.

The key to a business not only surviving but succeeding is the ability to clearly understand their customers. So often we assume what our customers want rather than listening, learning and subsequently acting. It is now more important than ever that businesses engage with both new and existing customers in a manner, at a time and through the channel that suits them and then delivers the products and services they require – all of which is impossible without the benefit of insight.

Our focus going forwards is to leverage the collective strengths of the core data assets across our entire portfolio which now includes The Trading Floor, to create the most responsive consumer database in the UK. Comprising over 41 million consumer records, 500 targeted selections and segmentations and 55 million multi-channel touch-points, it includes an unrivalled depth of e-mail, landline, mobile and postal contact details.

We believe that by bringing together our combined data assets we have created something totally incomparable within the data arena – something which is already evidenced through our vast reseller arrangements.

The integration of these powerful and valuable datasets provides a completely unique multi-dimensional view of the UK consumer; spanning lifestyle, lifestage, demographic, financial, technological and attitudinal insights through to known consumer intent and actual transactions. 

We are continually identifying new real-time triggers and successfully closing the ‘marketing gap’ between traditional offline, online, mobile and new social markets, to deliver the most definitive 360 degree view of today’s consumer in tomorrow’s ever-moving market.

Already innovatively leading, our vision is to become the multi-channel integrated marketing solution provider of choice in the UK by 2014, supplying products and solutions into a broad base of vertical sectors and to leverage our data and people assets to expand into new geographic markets.

Mortascreen: The deceased suppression file you can trust

With over 1,500 deaths every day marketing databases must be kept up to date to ensure cost-effective campaigns and to avoid the negative publicity that mailing the deceased can create - so using a trusted deceased suppression like Mortascreen is vital.

Data recency is an essential requirement for any direct mailing campaign and marketers should optimise mailing efficiency by making sure their data is accurate and reliable. If you are unsure of your data, your direct marking campaigns will not achieve success and there could be knock-on effects for the brand, environment, customers and your own company resources. 

If you’re mailing deceased names on your database you’re not only wasting your precious marketing budget but risking your brand’s reputation too. It’s a staggering and poignant fact that on average over 170,000 pieces of direct mail are delivered to the deceased everyday causing unnecessary upset and distress to bereaved family members. Mailing people who have passed away creates negative PR and could cause lasting brand damage.

Deceased suppression is not a complicated science and using Mortascreen makes financial sense; saving significant amounts in wasted mailings, increasing ROI, protecting your brand, and helping the environment. It is the deceased suppression file of choice for most of the UK’s top direct mail companies.

The unique Mortascreen database contains the details of over 9 million deceased individuals with around 50,000 new records added every month. This accounts for over 99% of all deaths in the UK, significantly higher coverage than any other deceased suppression file on the market.  Data is contributed from known, trusted and declared sources. We work with the largest funeral directors in the UK, government bodies and financial services organisations.

Mortascreen also has exclusive rights to data from the deceased registration wallets in register offices across the country allowing deaths to be notified to us when the official registration takes place.  We also offer our own consumer registration service www.deceasedpreferenceservicee.co.uk whereby relatives provide details of their deceased loved ones online, by phone or through the post. 

No other file can compare to Mortascreen in terms of recency or accuracy of data. With daily feeds from our data providers the majority of our records are added between two and four weeks following death. This benefit is passed on to our subscribers through the new weekly as well as monthly feeds to help them ensure that the most recent deaths are removed from their mailings. Over 3,000 organisations, many of them household names, rely on Mortascreen year in year out to update their customer databases and to screen their cold lists.

Our clients include charities, financial organisations, mail order companies, High Street retailers and online businesses.Mortascreen is the preferred, proven and trusted choice of direct mailers throughout the UK. It guarantees you more accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date data than any other deceased file, providing a one-stop solution to your deceased screening requirements.

Aprimo: Get every ounce of value out of your data

Digital channels such as the web, social networks, email, web-enabled phones and tablets have created an explosion of data. As marketers create a continuous dialogue with their customers via these channels a marketing automation tool like Aprimo is key to extracting every ounce of value.

Marketers need to use the data they collect in order to better understand their customers and integrate that knowledge into campaigns. Doing so allows them to understand what resonates with individual customers, and what doesn’t, so they can continue to effectively target and message customers. This requires a high level of knowledge and a sophisticated marketing process that can leverage data to dynamically offer campaigns in real-time. Using a campaign management tool is an essential part of successful customer engagement.

The right technology solution allows marketers to focus on messaging rather than implementation, so conversations with customers remain timely, relevant and effective, With an integrated technology solution, data can be integrated across multiple platforms and put to work where it is needed, delivering insight and informing marketing decisions throughout the entire organisation.

This is especially important in an era of stretched budgets, when every pound invested in marketing needs the right information behind it.

Step Into a New Era of Digital Campaign Management with Aprimo

With Aprimo Campaign Management you can connect to multiple sources to reach the data you need, and you can integrate this data into multiple campaigns to hone in on the right offers and messages based on customer behaviour and response. 

You can optimise offers and track results, and create relevant, focused landing pages that increase your brand appeal. And continue to contact your customers in exactly the ways they want to be contacted, delivering precisely the messages that will resonate with them. You’ll avoid sending meaningless, repetitive, or conflicting offers. The results? Increased sales and customer loyalty as well as a greater ROI.

Uncover Valuable New Treasures in Your Campaign Data with Aprimo Performance Analysis

Aprimo Performance Analysis lets you measure the results of any campaign you create with Aprimo solutions. Dashboard views make it easy to keep an eye on your performance as you continue to manage multiple concurrent projects. Up-to-date information on open rates and click-throughs is never more than a few seconds away. With Aprimo, you can create a marketing data mart and access it with third-party business intelligence solutions of your choice.

The data mart can also incorporate data from other corporate solutions, Salesforce.com automation, or CRM systems. Plus, as new data becomes available, reports can be modified with new variables, or act as foundations for new reports.You will uncover valuable new information to make informed decisions about your online and offline campaigns and refine specific initiatives for better individual outcomes.

Aprimo & International Speedway Corporation 

Aprimo’s marketing automation tools have worked effectively for motorsport giant, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), helping to reach out to its 70 million fans. In an event business, with an audience now spread across dozens of channels, ISC recognises that these days, every touch point is critical. 

“Our decision to partner with Aprimo provides us tremendous opportunity to maximise existing consumer relationships, build new relationships, and understand what is most important to all of our customers in our marketing.” says Jim Cavedo, senior director of relationship marketing at ISC. 

“Having analytical marketing minds who can really think about data and understand the value of post campaign insight and research and really look at that to help drive future decisions – that’s critical.” Clearly, it’s time for marketers to band together to redefine processes and innovate internal marketing systems by integrating and automating – just as other key business functions have already done. 

Product Portfolio

Aprimo Marketing Studio On Demand

The power of true Integrated Marketing Management comes to the cloud with Aprimo Marketing Studio On Demand. As a SaaS (software-as-a-service) solution, there is no software to install, upgrade or manage. That makes Aprimo Marketing Studio On Demand a cost-effective choice that you can implement at lightning speed to quickly begin adding new visibility and efficiency to your marketing.Choose from packages devoted to Online Marketing (Campaign Management) or Marketing Operations. Both options include planning calendars, project dashboards, digital asset libraries, flexible reporting tools and more tightly integrated capabilities to help improve marketing performance. Additional options are available to leverage your marketing potential even further.

Aprimo Relationship Manager

Adding relevance to every customer interaction is essential to creating highly personalised—and highly effective—marketing initiatives. With Aprimo Relationship Manager, you have the automation tools needed to communicate with the right customers at the right moment with the right offer. Aprimo Relationship Manager delivers easy access to: advanced segmentation and selection; multi-channel dialogue; integrated optimisation for offers and contacts; distributed self-service marketing; and other important capabilities that will help enhance your interactions with customers. It’s an ideal platform to accommodate high volumes of users and detailed data analysis, as well as complex segmentations, analytics and event-based trigger marketing. With Aprimo Relationship Manager, your marketing will have what it takes for increased personalisation across multiple channels, as well as the ability to use shared local knowledge about customers and markets to add even greater relevance and ROI to your results.

Aprimo Real-Time Interaction Manager

Customers respond to relevant offers. But simple segmentation is no longer enough to connect with customers whose current behaviours could be driving their decision to purchase. To succeed today, you need to market on a one-to-one level, with real-time offers that make an immediate connection with a customer’s needs.Communicate with your customers at precisely the right time with Aprimo Real-Time Interaction Manager. This cloud-based inbound marketing and offer management solution analyses all customer interactions to ensure the best offer for each individual customer is delivered in real-time. Offers can be centrally managed in a content repository and delivered on demand across all touch-points including the web, call centre and retail point-of-sale to provide intelligent interactions with customers in real-time.

UKChanges: Cloud-based since 2000

The general economic uncertainty of 2011 has affected everyone, with marketers caught between a drive to control costs and an undeniable need to keep in touch with their customers. Despite this backdrop technology marches on, changing the consumer landscape and with it the demands of marketers.

Our UKChanges>online user base keeps growing, with new customers embracing the value and flexibility of web-based (or cloud-based – as seems de rigueur in 2011) tools. Increasing numbers of existing clients have matured and moved on from typical ad-hoc processing requirements to planned use of the UKChanges>online Scheduler. This ‘soft’ integration of data management tools enables users to build regular, timely processes or emulate event-based triggers to proactively manage their data. They also provide an excellent introduction to the concept of integrated data management tools.

The UKChanges Developers’ Toolkit is the natural progression from Scheduler, allowing customers to integrate single record or batch processes into their CRM systems. The wide range of integrated data cleansing and enhancement services is being used to support a variety of web capture, data verification and customer service functions, along with triggered marketing and customer contact activity.With services called from the ‘cloud’ as needed, data managers gain all the advantages of holding the files in house, without suffering the IT infrastructure costs or the headache of maintaining data sets.

Growing confidence in the ‘cloud’ is also reflected in the number of customers adopting the Hosting Tab. Marketers are transferring data to the secure UKChanges>online servers and taking advantage of quick, easy tools to build data visualization and segmentation models. In particular, the RFV cube’s ability to help identify the largest, smallest, oldest, newest, most / least active segments of a database with speed and ease has made it a huge success. Selected segments are being extracted on the fly and fed into the Campaign Management tool, with users adding campaign / pack codes, test cells, control groups and costs; then uploading and reviewing results through the live online response dashboard. 

Further additions to the suppression, validation and enhancement services of the ‘Clean’ tab – including access to the National Deceased Register with its 30 per cent unique records, millions of opted-in mobile and landline numbers and the introduction of a multi-file deduplication tool – have reinforced our offer to traditional users. With more options available, customers can select their preferred suppression files, use bigger source files and improve their customer understanding by applying a range of location and lifestyle attributes, including age, email address, wealth, family type, car type, relative household value, etc.

Recent User Workshop feedback showed that UKChanges>online is stronger than ever, with new features making marketers’ lives easier. Special mentions were made of the multi-file dedupe option, multi-file import and export capability – including splits by result or campaign code type – and the ability to vary flags and record coding. Users also loved the time-saving Quick Start options which allow them to create templates for regular jobs.

Alistair Buckley, Data Manager at The Phone Room, offered a typical customer reaction:“We have used UKChanges for a number of years as our go-to provider of data enhancement services.Their UKChanges>online product provides both the turnaround speed and flexibility we require, so that we can tailor our requirements on a job-by-job basis. It allows us to quickly set up and collect jobs to meet deadlines and has proved to be an invaluable resource.

"UKChanges have regularly improved and upgraded their offering, bringing new services and pro-active enhancements on stream: with feedback being both listened to and acted upon.Our account management experience has always been outstanding, with a prompt response to queries coupled with a team that are always on hand to provide back-up and advice on data related issues or new business opportunities.”