Marketing strategies driving the database: Customer Relationship Management and the future of variable data printing

Print Action, Apr 2003 by Robinson, Jon

This holds particularly true if your client base is going to be predominantly corporate, because these larger entities have the resources to grow their internal communications into a web of internet, ethernet and secure databases - all based on CRM. Their marketing departments are proponents of using the internet because to them Web interfaces are data collectors.

A surfer can often be prompted, through tricks of the trade, to enter their name and any amount of information into fields. And they are usually doing it voluntarily because they are inviting customized information. This is the ultimate tool for any marketing team to build a database around CRM strategy. Quite a leg up on potential response rates when compared to cold calls and mass mailings.

Some website backends are so sophisticated in their tracking systems that they can decipher what information the surfer was most interested in as they click through different links and pages.

That information is sent to a database, which then triggers a versioned print piece to be produced and sent. The next thing you know you are frustrated and walking through an ordinary lobby when a woman (or man) in a bathing suit pops up on the wall, says your name and asks, "Need to escape? Blue can take you."