TRACKING is an important – sometimes CRITICAL skill.

Tracking has implications throughout the marketing process, from monitoring movement of customers to the dissemination of literature. One client called on AIM to evaluate their fulfillment system. The client had everything in place: collecting leads, sending out the literature, sending the leads to the rep sales force. Only one thing was missing: collecting them in a centralized database. The client said, “Why should we do that when that’s the job of our representatives?” Today, that client has a database second to none, with over 16,500 registered engineers who hold their catalogs, making it easy to “talk” to these important specifiers through their rep organization.

Profiling

Profiling is gathering characteristics and then using those characteristics to find others of the same ilk, whether people or products. A profile of the perfect customer leads to the perfect offer.

While running a loyalty program, AIM was able to track purchases of a specific product for a client. The profile that emerged was that this product was used more in restaurants than in other types of establishments. Further investigation found that it was the contractors’ preferred product in restaurant installations. We targeted a specific nationwide promotion around that product to contractors, achieving significant success.

Readership analysis

In 1990, AIM published its evolutionary “Behind the Numbers” in Market Research Magazine. The article recognized the relationship between seers and readers of advertising as determined from the raw research studies available and included the “AIM Ratio.” While a simple ratio, the AIM Ratio revealed the relationship of readers to inquiries. That is, unlike seeing scores, which are based solely on the size of the ad (larger brings more seers), the AIM Ratio shows that there is no direct correlation between size and readership. Rather, the content – or Readership Chain – determines whether or not a reader will move forward along that chain to become a response. This ratio became the basis of the AIM Advertising Database – hundreds of thousands of measurements in diverse markets – that led to a thorough understanding of what drives response in advertising.

Data management

One of our clients turns over their file for a customer mailing that they pull from their million-dollar Enterprise system. After each mailing we sent all undeliverable returns to the client, pleading withthem to delete them from these records. But their Enterprise system couldn’t delete the records! Eventually, AIM’s maintenance of the database became the control and served as the basis for subsequent client mailings. It wasn’t that the Enterprise system couldn’t delete the records; it was that the “process” required complex programming, and no one had the singular knowledge to direct it or carry it through.

Data Management begins at the top; the CEO must embrace it, or it will not get done. AIM gives presentations on this topic, including our most recent in Orlando, Florida at a major trade association. If you would like more information on how to control your data within your own company, call us.