Using the Database for Direct Marketing

Develop your marketing database into an effective and profitable direct marketing tool

The purpose of this course

This course will help delegates to avoid many of the problems associated with databases and CRM systems. It will show them how to reap the considerable benefits of direct marketing, by constructing a database that meets their real-life requirements.

Delegates will learn what a marketing database is and how it can be used to plan direct marketing activities, implement the plan and measure the results. Those who attend will also be shown how to ‘mine’ data to find patterns that reveal opportunities. Although there will be a short presentation on the structure of a database, this is not a technical course. The emphasis will be on the use of a database to guide and enhance direct marketing.

Who this course is for

This course is designed for people who wish to know how they can use marketing data to improve the quality of their marketing campaigns and obtain better results from direct marketing activities. Delegates do not need to have programming knowledge as the emphasis is on how the data is captured, analysed and used to promote an organisation.

Benefits for your organisation

If your organisation has databases of customers or has a fully fledged CRM system, this course will explain how the data can be analysed and used to plan and implement direct marketing plans. If your organisation is about to introduce a database or CRM system, this course will help you to avoid many of the pitfalls that have adversely affected other organisations.

The major benefit will be that you can target better prospective customers, retain your most valuable customers and reduce the wastage in direct marketing campaigns. In short, it should make your organisation more profitable by directing marketing resources to those areas where they can produce the best result.

Benefits for you as an individual

If you wish to put forward the case for better database marketing practices or you have responsibility for building a direct marketing database, this course will be particularly beneficial to you. It will strengthen your argument when you have to convince colleagues of the need to change. It will give you greater control over how direct marketing is conducted in your organisation.

It will also enable you to construct direct marketing campaigns that have a higher success rate and it will help you to understand which activities are more profitable. In short, it will increase your stature as a direct marketing professional within your organisation.

You will learn how to

• Develop and use a marketing database to enhance your business
• Understand database structure
• Acquire new customers, existing customers and win-back lapsed customers
• Build loyalty and increase customer value
• Determine the type of data to be collected and understand how it will be used
• Use your database to drive direct marketing plans and measure results achieved
• Understand how to maintain a database and enlist the support of other people
• Improve marketing planning and sales force support
• Mine your database to find opportunities
• Analyse and make sense of your database
  Understand the pitfalls of CRM and contact management systems
• Construct a direct marketing plan which uses customer data effectively
• Present a sound financial case for investment in a customer database

Course content

• What a marketing database is and how it is used
• How a marketing database is structured
• Sources of data and buying-in data
• How to use existing data and acquire new data
• Using direct marketing tools
• Using a database to improve direct marketing communications
• Using the database to acquire new customers and retain them
• Building customer value
• Establishing feedback channels
• Mining and analysing the data to target more effectively
• Measuring the results of marketing activities
• Using database marketing to support the sales force and distributors
• Maintaining the database
• Stages in establishing a workable marketing database
• Managing the strategy, cultural and leadership issues
• Arguing the case for finance to build the database
• Practical examples of direct marketing campaigns that are data driven

To take away from the course

• Templates for use in your organisation
• A guide - focused on your business and acting as a catalyst for improvements that can be applied in the work place after the course

Professional Standards

CIM’s Professional Marketing Standards have been developed through extensive research with employers and leading academics. All of our marketing qualifications and training courses are based on this framework ensuring that marketers at all levels of seniority gain the practical skills that employers require to improve business performance.