Database marketing couples information within a brand’s database with third-party information to serve as the foundation of all marketing efforts. This reliance on data can drastically increase the ROI of your marketing efforts—so it’s understandable why so many brands and agencies are turning to data marketing strategies.

In this guide, we’ll dive into database marketing services and the custom services offered by Deep Sync. We’ll take a look at key database marketing services as well as case studies to see these services in action.

To help solidify your understanding of database marketing, we’ll explore the following topics:

• Database Marketing FAQs
• Database Marketing Services to Increase ROI
• Learn More About Deep Sync’s Database Marketing Services

Feel free to use the navigation above to jump to the section that piques your interest. Or, continue reading to explore the full guide. Let’s get started!

Database Marketing FAQs

What is database marketing?

Database marketing involves using your customer data as the foundation of your marketing strategy. The data you collect, store, and leverage may include:

• Names
• Physical addresses
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Purchase history
• Customer support history
• Ages

When you incorporate this information into your marketing efforts, you can personalize your outreach and give each customer an individualized experience.

What do database marketers do?

Database marketers are marketing professionals who base their efforts on the data contained within a customer’s database. This could mean internal data or third-party data that’s appended to the original database. Regardless, all marketing efforts are tied back to the database and the information in it.

Investing in database marketing services comes with several benefits such as:

• Quantifiable and measurable results
• The ability to target audiences with precision
• A more effective, efficient use of marketing dollars

With database marketing, you can obtain a clear view of the exact audience you’re trying to reach and how that audience is best targeted. Rather than dedicating time and resources to efforts that might work, you can dedicate the same resources to efforts that have a proven likelihood of success.

There are a variety of database marketing services that can be leveraged to develop a successful data marketing strategy. This spans from data enhancement to targeted marketing campaigns.

We’ll cover three main database marketing services and how those services have helped businesses increase their ROI.

What are commonly used tools in a modern marketing data stack?

Before we dive into the specific database marketing services your team can leverage, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the platforms and technology database marketers use to collect, store, and process their data.

Here are the elements included in the modern database marketer’s tech stack:

• Customer relationship management platform (CRM). A CRM provides a centralized location for data that helps you maintain customer relationships. This information may include contact information, communication history, purchasing behavior, and preferences.
• Customer data platform (CDP). A CDP is like a CRM, but it organizes customer data from a variety of sources to round out your customer profiles. For instance, your CDP may include customer information you’ve collected from your website, app, social media, email campaigns, and offline interactions.
• Data management platform (DMP). A DMP aggregates and processes anonymous audience data specifically intended for digital advertising and marketing purposes. This information allows you to segment your audience into relevant groups and target them accordingly.
• Enterprise data warehouse. An enterprise data warehouse stores data from sources across your entire business. It allows you to perform data analytics and produce actionable insights using data from different departments or business areas.
• Composable CDP. A composable CDP has the same function as a typical CDP, but it works directly with your enterprise data warehouse to extract and process information instead of implementing a completely new tool.
• Cloud data platform. A cloud data platform uses cloud technology to store and manage large volumes of business data from multiple sources. Cloud data platforms are more flexible and scalable than traditional data storage solutions.

These tools can help you successfully leverage the data needed for your database marketing strategy. Work with a data or marketing technology provider to determine which technologies are best suited to your business.

3 Database Marketing Services to Increase ROI

1. Database Management

To use your database for improved marketing returns, your data must be accurate and precise. In today’s tech-driven age, you’re able to collect more information than ever before to connect with your brand’s target audience.

That said, it’s also easier than ever to introduce errors into your database—the overwhelming amount of records can easily be led astray with a single keystroke.

When it comes to optimizing your database, there are many services available. These include:

• Data Hygiene and Processing: This encompasses all of the processes involved with discovering errors in your database and resolving them. Data hygiene services often involve an audit to discover inaccuracies, standardize records, verify email and postal addresses, and more.
• Batch Records Updating: Whether you’re dealing with an outdated database or incomplete records, you can invest in batch updating to ensure your data paints the full picture. Demographic, firmographic, and contact attributes are available for batch updates.

Because you need clean, effective, and accurate data to carry out your marketing initiatives, database management is an essential part of any successful database marketing strategy.

Example of this Database Marketing Service

A large, multi-campus university system was struggling to use its alumni database to the fullest extent in a marketing capacity. The university’s alumni records were out-of-date and missing key details, including email addresses, postal addresses, and cell phone numbers.

Without this information, effective direct marketing to their alumni was challenging. Direct mail, email, and phone solicitation were all out of reach. To overcome this challenge, the Deep Sync team created a custom data management solution that included the following:

• Correcting and standardizing all postal addresses.
• Verifying email addresses and identifying when new addresses were needed.
• Conducting batch updates, including multichannel contact information.
• Enhancing the data with additional demographic intelligence, such as income, marital status, presence of children, and lifestyle attributes.

Due to these services, the multi-campus university was well-prepared to connect with alumni and other supporters for fundraising initiatives. Further, the team distributed this information to each of their campuses across the state, equipping all satellites with the tools to conduct successful outreach.

2. Data Enhancement

With so many efforts taking place over online channels—marketing, communications, and even direct sales—your brand has more opportunities than ever before to collect data on its audience. That said, the information you collect still may not be enough for an effective database marketing campaign.

When it comes to data enhancement, the following database marketing services are key to ensuring you have a full picture of your target audience:

• Demographic Append: This allows you to enhance your data with customer demographics, such as age, income, marital and familial status, lifestyle attributes (interests/hobbies), and buying behaviors.
• Email Append: With this service, you can identify customers’ most recent email addresses. Or, with a Reverse Email Append, you can identify contact names and postal addresses based on the email addresses in your database.
• Phone Append: This service identifies and adds missing phone numbers to your database. On the other hand, a reverse phone append uses the telephone numbers in your database to identify the names and postal addresses of those in your audience file.
• Firmographic Append: This allows you to collect information on a business, such as the industry it operates in, its structure, annual revenue and market size, and contact information (e.g. location, phone number, email addresses, and web addresses).

3. Audience Building

Effective marketing outreach depends on targeting the right audiences. You could create the highest-quality copy, images, and ads, but if you’re sending them to the wrong audience, the communications will likely go unnoticed.

The prior two services we highlighted focused on building out your organization’s database. Now, we’re looking at how a data provider would use that information to build the ideal audiences for your campaign.

The following database marketing facets are some that this team might use to develop your audience:

• Third-Party Data: This includes obtaining and working with third-party data, such as compiled consumer/business data, specialty data, propensity data, and more.
• Customer Personas: The combination of your internal data with third-party data allows database marketers to build out personas for what your brand’s ideal customer would look like. Further, you can identify lookalike audiences similar to your personas and focus your marketing efforts on targeting both groups.
• Predictive Modeling: With this service, you can go beyond customer personas to predict the response to your marketing efforts and the purchasing behavior of your customers and prospects.

Now, let’s explore a case study that shows how these database marketing facets were used to develop an audience and improve marketing ROI.

Example of this Database Marketing Service

A national fitness franchise with 700 locations sought to improve the response rates with its marketing efforts. The project began as a customer persona effort, but that proved unsuccessful. Their ideal customers also happened to closely match those already saturating the geographic area surrounding their locations—so, why weren’t their response rates improving?

This is where the Deep Sync team was brought into the project. Deep Sync applied 200 predictive elements to examine the differences between two key groups within their targeted audience: those that were responding and those that weren’t.

The team was able to discover which elements were most likely to be positive influences on the likelihood of response, such as credit card usage and age. By targeting those within their audience that also had those elements, the franchise was able to improve response rates by over 100%.

Learn More About Deep Sync’s Database Marketing Services

Database marketing is a powerful tool for brands looking to increase marketing ROI. When you target your audience using high-quality data, you’ll use your marketing budget more effectively and send more personalized, engaging communications to customers and prospects.

Rather than equipping your team with standardized, out-of-the-box data management solutions as some firms might, the Deep Sync team creates custom data solutions that are tailored to meet your brand’s exact needs. This approach ensures that you access only the most necessary data insights to fuel your marketing efforts for success.

Additionally, all services conducted by the Deep Sync team can be implemented in a way that integrates directly with your existing marketing tech stack. You won’t have to worry about extensive data migrations. Instead, all information will be available for your team in the solutions that you’re already used to using.

To learn more about database marketing and Deep Sync’s services, explore the following additional resources:

• The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide to Increase Your Reach. Learn more about how you can effectively reach your target audience online.
• Data-Driven Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide to Success. Explore the many ways you can use data to invigorate your marketing efforts.
• Marketing Analytics: A Guide for Marketing Professionals. Dive into marketing analytics and how it can help you produce effective audience insights.