Just like the locavore movement, every brand has it’s “brandavores,” diehard, loyal customers, who live, breathe and evangalize for you.  Seriously?  Yes, of course.   Every day, a small group of your customers are out singing your praises, telling their friends that they should be buying from you.  I nearly jumped out of my skin recently when a man came bounding up to me to talk about my Saab and tell me about the six Saabs he had owned.  Does Saab know who he is?  I certainly hope so.

Your database can help you find these people, and when you find them you can treat them with extra special attention.  Keeping these people enthusiastic about your brand is extremely important to the health and profitability of your brand.  Does Apple know how to do this?  Absolutely they do.  Apple customers feel very special, and they make sure that everyone knows how special Apple is, and how special they are, because they are Apple people.

This is a very core group within your customer base, they need to be 1) identified, and 2) treated with kid gloves.  Recognize them, thank them.  Very often that doesn’t even include discounting.  We want to be appreciated above all else.  My personal experience is with the Yves St. Laurent cosmetics counter at Saks Fifth Avenue when I lived in LA.  I was an extremely loyal customer and used their entire line of skin care products, bought whatever they recommended, and influenced my friends to buy their products.  What did it take to keep me loyal?  A hug — I actually got a hug from the salespeople when I visited the store.  And, they remembered me, and called me to invite me to special events.  Now, I hate telemarketers, but I actually would return the call if it was from YSL.  They’d have my order ready so that I could walk in, pick it up, sign the reciept and walk back out.  Yes, they did let me know about special offers, but typically that sale included something I was already buying at full price.  The experience and service was far more important to me than the discount.

So, peer into those databases.  See how you can find your brandavores.  Then, love them like crazy and keep them coming back.

Since leaving that company, I’ve reflected on the question.   It still comes up when the Database Marketing/CRM becomes a strategic company priority.  And the conclusion I come to now is that the question itself is inherently flawed.  It’s not a matter of where the bill gets paid.  It’s a matter of understanding what a marketing database really is, having the right resources in place, and, most importantly, retaining people with the right mindset.

A marketing database is extremely different than a transactional or operational database.  It’s all about the data, getting it right, massaging it, understanding it and making it grow.  It starts with messy data provided by us messy consumers.  We move all the time and forget to tell you, so you have to run NCOA.  We expect you to know who we are, so you have to share data with Call Centers and websites.  We buy things and then stop buying things and don’t tell you why.   We do things that change our buying habits completely — things like geting married, having babies and retiring.

The technical team supporting the marketing database needs to know all of these things, and know how to deal with them.  NCOA is a common term surrounding the marketing database, and outsourced providers know how to manage data in and out, and have the vendor relationships set up.  Predictive models make us smarter every day, and in order to be effective they need to be as closely connected to the database as possible.  Triggered marketing programs need to be there when the customer is interacting with the brand, not prioritized in a development cue behind the financial system.

The mindset of the IT group is very important.  Do they value data?  Do they understand why the marketing database is so important to the organization?  One of my greatest meetings recently was with an IT Director who wondered why his organization wasn’t maximizing the opportunities to increase revenue from the existing customer base.  I wanted to hug him.  Wow, this company can have a successful Database Marketing program because the tech team GETS IT!

So the real question is, “Do we have the right skill sets in place to build and manage a marketing database as part of our internal IT infrastructure?”

A successful marketing database is never done, there are always more applications to be built, more models to be refined, more digging into the data.  If you have an internal IT team that can embrace that dynamic, then you have the resources to build a Marketing Database internally.  If your IT team heads for the hills when they hear the Marketing Department calling, it might be best to consider an outsourced solution.