You use the information in your Marketing Database to develop a relationship with each of the people you have identified. You want your suspects to become prospects. You want your prospects to become customers, and you want your customers to believe your company is the one to rely on for the products and services you offer. 

When you keep complete and accurate records about an individual you are empowered to address that individual in a meaningful way as perceived by that individual. This affords you the opportunity to build a relationship that will be rewarding to both of you. 

A Marketing Database Is What All The Buzz Is About...

"One-To-One Marketing", "Customer Relationship Marketing" and other "buzz words" are really addressing the processes of collecting, organizing, selecting, providing, receiving, responding to and analyzing the information stored in your Marketing Database and using the information to build a longer-term, stronger, more profitable, mutually rewarding relationship with each of your customers. 

A Marketing Database is not an Accounting Database. It is not an Operations Database. It is a carefully orchestrated system for collecting all of the information your company has about an individual in one place where Marketing executives can access the information in the same way they think, to help them build your business. 

Your Marketing Database will include four classes of data…

• Demographics
• Psychographics (also called Lifestyle Interests) 
• Technographics 
• History 

Demographics are facts that do not change easily or often. These include age, education, gender, family composition, pet ownership, type of dwelling, home ownership, income, credit cards available, assets and any other information available to you that will help create a picture of who a person is. 

Psychograpics can change. They are interests. They include the things a person likes to participate in - hobbies or sports. They are the things a person chooses, such as a type of car, or where they vacation. Understanding a person's psychographics can lead to successful up-selling and cross-selling, and a longer term, stronger, more profitable relationship with your company. 

Technographics define capability to respond to offers and communications in the form they are presented. They include a person's ability, capability, willingness and patience to interact with media forms and forms of communication. As interactive and electronic media continue to proliferate, technographics will play an increasingly important role in marketing planning. 

History is an aggregation of experience-related data available to a company through its internal resources and from other companies. It includes information about offers sent and subsequent response (or lack thereof). It includes information about purchases, correspondence, special requests and complaints. History often can be a strong predictor of future action. 

An effective Marketing Database 

• collects information from many sources 
• stores the information 
• organizes the information the way users want 
• allows specific information to be selected 
• reports information in a pre-defined structure 
• offers free-form reporting "at will" 
• supports ad-hoc querying 
• generates responses or feeds the response process 
• analyzes information 
• supports ad-hoc analysis query requests