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Customer Profiler helps you find
new customers for your business. It will extract people and/or businesses that match
the profile of your current customers. This will provide you
with a list of prospective customers who could have already
bought products similar to yours, have a need for your product
or are more inclined to buy your product or service. You'll have a highly
targeted prospect list to work from. For example, you
wouldn't try to sell a fur coat to an animal activist or a
pack of cigarettes to a health advocate. Customer profiling
also helps reduce spam and junk mail as it enables you to only
send information that is relevant to people.
Some of the categories in which lists are available: New homeowners, Mortgages, New Businesses, Foreclosures,
Foreclosures Sales, Tax sales for property, Bankruptcies,
Judgments, Lis pendens, Building permits, State & Federal
tax liens, Divorces, Mechanic liens, Criminal Misdemeanors,
Felony arrests, DUI arrests, Suspended & revoked
licenses, Probate cases, Name changes, Forcible detainers,
Income, Age group, Profession, Marital status etc..
IBM is one of many companies tapping into what many believe
is the next big step in target marketing � online Psychological
and behavioral
tracking. Tracking's goal is to know so much about consumers'
interests and preferences that every product for which they see
a banner ad, email, or sales pitch will be one they really,
really want to buy. "It's a pretty exciting future," says Bill
Daniel, senior vice president of products at
Vignette, an ebusiness application provider and maker of
tracking software that allows retailers to target customers. How
exciting? "It goes to infinity," he purrs.Infinity, predictably
enough, is a long way off, but that hasn't stopped marketers
from salivating. Vignette is one of a few companies (along with
net.Genesis and
Net Perceptions, among others) that offers "collaborative
filtering" software. The software can compile purchasing
information on lots of customers, pool them into like-minded
groups, and then use the preferences of some to predict the
buying habits of others.
For example, say two people who have never met buy a few of
the same CDs over time. Would it stand to reason that they might
have similar musical tastes? Collaborative filtering bets a
marketer can predict that if one buyer likes a particular CD,
then the other will like it as well. The obvious plus for
marketers is that they have the sudden ability to make dead-on
sales recommendations in real time. Multiply the principle by
millions of consumers, and the prospects become compelling.
"This is a boon for marketers," says Gary Arlen, president of
Bethesda, Md.-based Arlen Communications. "The old days of
up-selling was pretty much about what sales clerks needed to
push. Now, marketers can start making guesses on single data
points. This is all about focus, and the Web enables it."
Target marketing and segmentation is as old as direct mail,
but the Internet allows marketers to spread data widely and
seamlessly. And while direct mail requires time to tally
information and target products to consumers in future mailings,
cyberspace is a real-time phenomenon, allowing finely tuned
up-selling to occur right at the point of sale. In a virtual
world, where "driving" to the next retail store is as easy as
clicking a mouse, such flexibility has become vital. "Not only
do your sales increase, but loyalty increases as well," says Ken
Stockman, vice president and general manager of ecommerce for
iGo.com, an online mobile technology outfitter geared to
business travelers. |
