Marketing Databases – A prologue

Over the years I have had the opportunity / challenge of overseeing the construction of many marketing databases, discuss feature needs with clients and operations practicalities with end users. As one of the most important pieces in an accountable marketing environment, you might be surprised at the disconnect between customers / users and software vendors related to features, functions and their ultimate importance on success. When a prospective client asks to see a systems campaign management capability – the software vendor is happy because it is an easy component of the software to understand and the client/ users are happy because they can see how the software will affect their daily lives.

Unfortunately, this is the first step towards many unsuccessful projects and unhappy clients. Marketing databases are first and foremost about the data and vendor qualification should be more about the data integration experience of the deployment team and systems toolsets used to clean / transform and express business rules on incoming data. Software vendors / consultants and their clients approach data integration many times with a “don’t ask – don’t tell” policy and begin assuming the data is clean and will work when imported into the system. Beyond that, many vendors / consultants commit to implementations that make minimal or no impact on outdated business processes. Both of these too common behaviors and user tool focused sales process contribute to both misguided expectations on all parts and dissatisfied clients / users.

By focusing on getting the data right first (even if it takes a lot of time & pain) and then supporting process changes where best practices indicate (they are best practices right?) the resulting database will be an accurate representation of both current and future activity and deliver results that can be trusted and audited within a well designed continuous improvement environment. Worry about the painful things first and the rest of the eye candy (campaign management / reporting tools) will not only look good, but will delivery sustainable competitive advantage.