Knowing your users

One of the most important issues of a successful direct marketing program is knowing who's in the database.

Some information can be gathered on a behavioural basis, some information needs to be given by the user/client himself.

Some examples of declarative only information are :
- First name
- Last name
- Birth date
- Address
- Marital status

The rest of the information can be gathered without the user's having to fill in incredible forms.
This kind of information will be incremented over time according to the user behaviour.

Some examples of behavioural tracking can be te list of items bought for a given client account, links clicked on a received email (if you link each link of your newsletters to relevant profile fields in your database).

The analysis of behavioural information is one of the most usefull tool of direct marketing, online marketing in a whole and database management.

After some while, that will allow you to send relevant information and offers to your user, to enter a one2one relationship with him.

Today's challenge in direct marketing has changed, users are receiving more and more emails each day, if one receives irrelevant information in his inbox, he will unsubscribe or even on some webmails report spam.

To create a profitable relationship with your users, you need to target as well and as precisely as possible.