Remember playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors?” The basics of the game consist of each player shaking a fist a number of times (priming) and then extending the same hand in a fist (rock), out flat (paper), or with the index and middle fingers extended (scissors). Each of these is referred to as a throw, and which one wins is dependent upon the opponent’s throw.

• Paper wins against Rock (paper covers rock)
• Rock wins against Scissors (rock smashing scissors)
• Scissors wins against Paper (scissors cut paper)

Does your marketing organization use the old rock, paper, scissors strategy? You know … prime the CFO for funding, and then throw out a campaign hoping to rock your prospects with creative copy, cover your market with mass communications, or finally, cut the price to encourage greater response? Since marketing campaigns are generally not limited to one dimension you may be throwing all three at once!

Some RPS players use strategies hoping to get inside their opponent’s mind to guess their next throw. Many players unconsciously throw in distinct patterns, so an observational player might pick up on those patterns and occasionally defeat their opponent. For example, some patterns a strategic player might look for:

• What was my opponent’s last throw?
• How frequently does my opponent seem to repeat that throw?
• How many total times has that throw been favored?

The trouble with RPS strategy is that it cannot be used consistently. You may not have the benefit of enough historical data to logically guess your opponent’s next throw, or worse, data latency, which means you can’t predict your opponent’s throw until it is too late. The same can happen when marketers use the age-old practice of merging historical response lists to develop prospecting files, and then push their marketing activities toward all those consumers.

Your entertaining commercial copy might rock. In fact, your agency said it was “right on target.” And your list may cover consumers reported to have the attributes of a potential buyer; however, your prospects may still cut-off your message faster than you can scream “don’t run with scissors!”

The proliferation of media and distribution channels, combined with consumers increasing demand for communications relevance, has created the perfect database marketing storm.” As a result, the need for more rigorous marketing discipline and data competence has never been greater. Many marketers are beginning to approach the database marketing storm by activating their data warehouses by blending current and historical data from across the enterprise, allowing them faster and more relevant marketing communications. Now marketers are able to prime their CFO with measurable ROI through focused campaigns that rock their prospects with relevant communications, cover only the right customers through the right channel, and cut costs by optimizing the offer.

The Active Data Warehouse

Timely and accurate communications provided in a consistent manner and available through a variety of channels will inspire customer trust and loyalty. However, less than consistent interaction often occurs because information silos are created when customer data is stored in different source systems on different platforms and maintained by multiple lines-of-business or product areas across the enterprise. As a result, the first key challenge to insuring a loyalty building customer experience is for an organization to create a common and reliable view of their customers by eliminating the silo effect.

Customer data collected and stored in front office and back office systems, as well as third-party data, must come together. And you have to do more than just collect data; you need to help users make sense of it by transforming it into relevant information, storing it, and then delivering it in a timely, usable format where accuracy is never in question.

Once a repository of consistent and reliable customer data is in place, the second key challenge is to leverage customer intelligence by utilizing specially configured marketing applications and advanced analytics that are tightly integrated with customer data to reveal customer insight and opportunities. In other words, delivering customer interactions that are built around a carefully tailored dialogue ensuring that every message communicated to a customer is timely, relevant and considers all other current aspects of the relationship, including channel preference and profitability.

An active data warehouse provides this integrated information repository to drive both strategic and tactical marketing decisions within an organization. By integrating real-time data with historical data, businesses such as Harrah’s Entertainment are able to take the customer experience to new and higher levels by using real-time customer intelligence to make the right marketing decision. In today’s competitive environment you need more than a “rock, paper and scissors” approach to your marketing strategy.

By moving beyond games of chance and informed guesswork to the high-stakes marketing arena driven by real-time customer intelligence, marketers can grow their acumen and their return on campaigns.

Alan See is Senior Director at Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation. He also serves as an associate faculty member for the University of Phoenix’s College of Business & Management. Contact him at Alan.See@NCR.com. Teradata, Division of NCR Corporation