1. KEEP all channel and primary source data that lets you segment deeper than recency, frequency, monetary. RFM segmentation is no longer enough when mailing your housefile.
2. CAPTURE the original source for Web buyers whenever possible because you’ll want to segment by it. Price-comparison, shopping-engine buyers may respond differently than affiliate buyers, paid and organic natural search buyers, or Web buyers driven by your catalog.
3. DIVIDE your buyers by purchase channel. Segment traditional telemarketing buyers, Web buyers who purchased after receiving a catalog and Web buyers who’ve never received a catalog. Tag each order by purchase channel so you can identify multichannel buyers.
4. FLAG Web-driven buyers in your database. Define those Web buyers not identified as catalog Web buyers in your matchback as pure Web buyers.
5. CAPTURE all list hygiene for address changes and corrections back to your database so you’re always mailing the freshest, most complete address.
6. USE advanced list hygiene services like AEC, AEC II and Cognitive Data’s Intellidress to flag the 15 percent of U.S. households that move every year.
7. SEGMENT your housefile into many small segments. You’ll see segments to suppress and segments to mail more frequently.
8. MAINTAIN all purchase data at the order level so you can segment and model customers based on what they’ve purchased.
9. SEGMENT AND MEASURE the value of customers by merchandise type and look at the response rates and lifetime value of different types of customers. Catalogers always combine different types of merchandise in a single catalog.
10. KEEP your promotional history of every single contact so you know how much you’ve spent and how much response you’ve gotten from individual customers.
11. SEGMENT one time Web “triers” to see if they’re profitable.
12. TEST a co-op database’s overlay of your house database to reactivate or suppress marginal buyers. Keep each customer’s score within your database.
13. MAINTAIN bill-to/ship-tos and convert ship-tos into buyers.
14. IDENTIFY businesses every way you can (four-line addresses, business names, overlays, Delivery Sequence File data, etc.) and flag business addresses in your housefile. — JC
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