2. Where am I going to get my data?
There is no better place to start a direct mail strategy than to leverage data that you already have. However, most companies have difficulty implementing an effective customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. Your team must be disciplined in recording and cleansing this data or you are going to have to purchase it from an outside source. (In reality, most companies do a little of both.) A disadvantage is that it often requires a lot of clean-up effort both internally and externally—an expense that you need to plan for. Purchasing data is good for finding new customers, but you have to know what your current customers look like before you can go and find more. Purchased data is usually clean and is ready for most postal requirements, but costs of the data, and performing any data modeling, need to be considered.
- Companies:
- Heidelberg
- Xerox Corp.