Question : Are all customers equal? / Iain Lovatt..Blue Sheep

http://www.bluesheep.com/
Marketing people still like to say things like: "I have emailed, mailed or phoned all 100,000 of my prospects. What more can I do?"

Yet this kind of approach to marketing is looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope. Instead of saying how many you should mail or call, you should be asking how many sales you want to achieve. Then work out what is the most cost effective way and least wasteful way to achieve them. And the key to this is information not just data, the right data at the right time and in the right format

To succeed, you need to concentrate on what really matters; you must create 'actionable insight' for use by the whole business not just marketing where all the efforts of all the people are targeted at the same goal.

 You need to build better information about your marketplace. That doesn't necessary mean more information, but more relevant information. You need to create your own universe of customers and prospective customers, drawing on and cross-referencing other databases to build useful information about what they are like...