The ultimate in sophisticated database prospecting is to construct and maintain your own permanent in-house prospect database. As you add names and bits of information to each name, you learn more and more about who, what, and where your prime prospects are. Out of this database you can build a subgroup of prospects for any specific marketing objective.

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Tourism Canada, a branch of the Canadian government’s Department of Regional Industrial Expansion, offers an outstanding example of in-house database marketing. Click here to read more...

°    °    °    °In considering this option, keep in mind that direct mail is no longer a costly medium with relatively low response rates best suited for high-margin direct-marketing offers. Rather, the new targeting capabilities of public and private databases make possible response rates that make direct mail a cost-effective medium even for low-cost, low-margin products.

Historically, an organization wanting to acquire new customers would rent one or dozens of names and contact details of potential customers, donors or constituents.

Then, the organization would supply a data services organization the contact details of the existing customers, donors or constituents who when identify the duplicates between the existing constituency of the organization and the prospects that have been acquired from a company such as American Christian Lists. The matching process between the data sources is often called “Merge/Purge”.

American Christian Lists provides a service that extends the “merge/purge” process to produce a sophisticated, continually maintained prospecting database. Additionally, your private marketing database of contact details can be continually updated with new information added frequently.

The organization can the use their private marketing database of prospects and “Non-prospects” to select and dispatch marketing/sales messages.

If you are considering your media options, call our database marketing specialist at 615-640-6490 for advice on what the suddenly glamorous new world of direct-mail targeting might be able to accomplish for you.

Tourism Canada offers an outstanding example of in-house database marketing. To attract U.S. tourists, the department had been sending mailings to prospects in the United States, principally to prospects who hunt, fish, or engage in other outdoor activities. Around 1982, they decided they weren’t realizing the full potential of the program, and they brought an experienced professional on board, Aimee Britten.

One of Britten’s first moves was to confer with their agency, Business Services Inc., asking how to expand the program and get better results. Might there be a sizable market of people who were not active outdoors? What about tourists who wanted to visit Canada for its cities, history, and culture? Were trips self-planned or arranged through a travel agent? How were tourists travelling?

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There is great value in a Private Marketing Database supplied by American Christian Lists because you pay only when you use data from the database. The prospect (and customer) data in your Private Marketing Database is perpetually updated.

°    °    °    °To begin answering these questions, Tourism Canada restructured one mailing to prequalified prospects to include a detailed reply coupon and questionnaire. It asked respondents for their age, occupation, travel frequency, travel interests, and so on.

The information provided by the replies was entered in the database, along with the keyed source of the advertising that generated the response. This database is updated constantly, and allows Tourism Canada to tailor mailings and ads to appropriate market segments.

At American Christian Lists we understand that collecting prospects data can be tedious and time consuming process. Moreover, keeping the data up-to-date can be a daunting task! We provide a list and database enhancement service where addition micro-targeting can be provided on a “pay per use” basis.

All lists available from American Christian Lists can become a single integrated unduplicated single file. We call it “merge/post”.

What is the difference between “Merge/Purge” and “Merge/Post”?

• “Merge/Purge” was created to “eliminate duplicate names” from a mailing to save money.
• “Merge/Post” is “data integration” where information about the same person is retained...
• ...and a database is born >>>at no extra cost

Example, you choose to do a new customer acquisition mailing of 100,000 individuals. You select 10 lists that are combined to produce one mailing file.

Various data micro-marketing refinements allow the identification of segments such as income, wealth, date of birth and other data that can reach the best prospects.

Call a database marketing specialist at American Christian Lists today to know more about how we can help you build your own private marketing database the most efficient and cost effective way