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Purchase History

<FIRST PURCHASE DATE, LAST PURCHASE DATE, PURCHASE FREQUENCY, PURCHASE VALUE (ACTUAL PURCHASES OR AVERAGE PURCHASE), PRODUCTS PURCHASED, PURCHASE DRIVER (WEBSITE “WALK-ON,” EMAIL RESPONSE, BANNER CLICK-THROUGH … )>

Because past purchases are among the leading predictors of future interest, you should use the information contained in the customer’s purchase history to determine the timing, offer, targeting, and personalization of your promotional communication. If, for example, you bought book from BarnesandNoble, you’ve probably been identified as someone who’s interested in high-tech business books, which means there’s a good chance you’d be interested in Geoffrey Moore’s Inside the Tornado. The level of detail you compile in your email marketing database is a function of the type of marketing programs you plan to execute. In many instances, getting a complete purchase history is overkill, and simple roll-ups indicating total spent by each customer, last purchase date, etc. will be enough. But if actual past purchases could be relevant to future communication, you need to keep, and take action on, this information. Modeling purchase behavior can help you predict possible future behavior. Identifying potential defectors, for example, gives you the opportunity to do whatever is necessary to retain them before they leave. (For more on this see “Modeled Information,” below.)

Email Contact and Response History

<EMAIL SENT, EMAIL BOUNCED, EMAIL OPENED, EMAIL CLICK- THROUGH, EMAIL CAPABILITIES (HTML, AOL, BROADBAND) …>

For a relationship marketing database to be successful it must include a complete history of all contact and interaction between you and your customers. This will, among other things, enable you to control the number of messages each customer receives, allow you to return to previously successful emails, and initiate follow-up communications with people who’ve received, responded to, or been successfully converted by those emails. For example, when eBags sends out emails—whether they’re to My eBags nonpurchasing members or members who are also customers—it tracks all response activity. As a result, the company can identify not only which members have converted to customers but also which members are paying attention to the messages and staying engaged with the program regardless of their purchase activity. It then tests various offers and other email content to optimize sales and other program response levels.

Web Activity

<FIRST VISIT, LAST VISIT, DURATION OF VISITS, VISITS BY TOPIC …>

Until recently, most Web activity information has simply been used to inform the marketing and IT departments about how many page views, unique visitors, return visitors, etc., the website receives over a given period of time. Today, though, web marketers are showing increasing interest in integrating and leveraging customer-level website activity in marketing programs. Integrating web-tracking capabilities and your email program may, for instance, give you the capability to generate automatic email follow-ups when registered members or customers visit your site. Someone who spends a lot of time in the baseball section of a sports site could receive email featuring baseball more prominently than the other sports he might have expressed interest in when he registered.

EBags uses web activity reports to anticipate and predict interest among its prospects, members, and customers. For example, the company targeted its “Pack to School” promotion within online banner ads placed where it knew it would generate shoppers for its “Students” section, one of seven lifestyle categories within the eBags website. It not only prominently featured this “Make any purchase and get a free CD” offer across its website but, in particular, within its “Students” section, where users with the highest probability of responding to this offer would see it. In addition, My eBags members whose customer profiles indicated they had an interest in “Students” were targeted with email containing this promotional offer. As a result, this two-month promotion helped eBags sales jump 84 percent over the similar previous period; it also reaped a 2,663 percent ROI from this promotional event.

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