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March 2001 Page 17
Color Business Report
Personalized
64.3%
Conventional
61.1%
Personalized Conventional
15.5%
6.3%
5.4%
2.4%
Response Rates: Personalized vs.
Conventional Mailings
Source: IIW Institute of Information
Management (www.iiw.de)
Pieces
mailed: 670 748
Telephone Inquiry Conversion Rates
Source: IIW Institute of Information
Management (www.iiw.de)
Number
of inquiries: 42 18
Returned contract rate
Telephone inquiry rate
(continued on page 18)
contact contribute to the database with accurate
information, as-you-go database updating may be
insufficient for some applications. An assumption about
a database is that the information categories, are, to a
great extent, predefined. With the exception of
information that is mandatory, each field will have an
incompletion rate, since not all customers will have
information in all categories. When the fields do contain
information, one has to determine whether the
information is up to date. Therefore, for a given
marketing application, one needs to ascertain if the
database has the required information in the first place,
and if the information is complete enough and current
enough. For Stradtwerke Dusseldorf AGs one-to-one
marketing campaign, the utilitys call center had to
verify all addresses and industry classifications. In
addition, the utilitys customer databases, which had
been developed and maintained for accounting purposes,
had to be converted to suit marketing purposes. (The
summary report provides no details about the need for
this conversion or the nature of the change.) Based on
the experience with Stradtwerke Dusseldorf AG, the
report concludes, it can be said in retrospect that the
establishment of an infrastructure (verification of
customer addresses, establishment of a customer
database procurement, selection and preparation of
content, establishment of customer data record/content
links) does not pay off in just one project.
The more creative one gets about linking customer
information with customer communication, the more
chance one has of needing to collect or update
information in order to launch the campaign. That being
said, once a company starts to use one-to-one marketing,
a new relationship between an organizations customer
database and the companys communications efforts will
be established. No doubt marketing planners will
become skilled at using the standard set of data, and
will learn how to anticipate the need for enhanced or
additional data.
Will the Need for a Long-term View
Thwart Adoption?
In practice, most promotional campaigns are indeed
asked to stand for themselves in just one project. One
wants to foster creative ways of communicating, but
when the sales motive is behind the effort, the
expectation is that the mailing will make a profit. In