Why Analytics is so Important Today

Like us, you probably read many different direct marketing periodicals. Over time, we’ve all heard every single buzzword out there that was going to be the end-all, be-all in direct marketing strategy.

In our sputtering economy, we need more than the newest acronym to pull us through. This is why we are such huge fans of using an analytical approach. In fact, we’ve built our business on it.

Using analytics can help you realize the full potential of every single marketing dollar spent. Put simply, those who implement an analytical strategy into their business will survive, and those who don’t . . . well, we’re not so sure they will.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve posted about everything from how to integrate analytics into your retention, cross-sell/upsell, and acquisition campaigns to how to use analytics with your credit-data-driven campaigns. Are you sensing a theme here? Using analytics within all marketing campaigns can make everything you do more profitable. And, as time goes on, you’ll market smarter and smarter.

So, what to do when you run into someone who simply won’t listen? Let’s take a look at an example of a company that we work with who shies away from using an analytical approach. This company specializes in selling land that they purchase from landowners nationwide. They are very successful and like many of our clients, are lean in terms of resources and do a lot of marketing by the seat of their pants. It’s tough to get an audience with them because they have little time to spend planning or strategizing. They’re too busy executing.

As you can imagine, this is a very frustrating experience for us, the consultants who work with them. We love these guys, they’re a blast to work with but we can’t get them to implement the ideas that we know will make their business more successful — and save them money. It just drives us crazy!

We’ve done a ton of analysis on their customer base. We know precisely what those people who buy from them look like — demographically, ethnically, and financially — the whole enchilada. Today, we are helping them purchase the right data to target better than they were when they were just buying prospect lists willy-nilly. So, from that perspective, we’ve been successful and saved them money, increased response rates, yadda yadda.

However, now that we’ve gone down this path, we know how much more we can really assist them in targeting better, smarter — getting better response rates and more purchases which equals greater profit. It is so hard to not take the next step — but its tough to make the case because this is new, uncharted territory for these folks. They’ve drank the kool-aid around the customer profiling exercise, and they got some “aha’s” out of the read-out, but getting their bandwidth to build a full response model is proving hard to accomplish. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll continue to try to convince them because we believe in it so much, and we believe that one day we will win them over to our way of thinking.

Why do we try so hard? It’s a matter of profitability. When we look at what they’re doing, we know that they could be doing it so much better. And, we know that the investment that they’d make with us would be a fraction compared to the financial gains that they’d receive from that investment.

If you find yourself in the same position in your company or with the client that you serve, don’t give up. Sooner or later someone will come along who will listen to you — or the someones that you are working with today will finally come to understand that they need to listen to you. Analytics prove themselves — and in this economy you need proof on a daily basis that what you are doing is the best thing for the business right now.

We’d love to hear your experiences in this arena. How did you convince your powers-that-be to move forward with an analytical strategy?