Database Marketing
Data, unless safely stored, properly structured, and easily retrieved, can be useless. Information becomes knowledge only when it can be made usable and applicable.
The membership database is typically an organization’s most valuable asset. It is unduplicated intellectual property unique to the association. Its value depends on the information that has been stored and how well it can be used. Improving data utility often presents a challenge when legacy systems are difficult to upgrade or to migrate to more modern and robust systems.
Organizations sometimes own member file structures that include little more than names, addresses, and a dues schedule. Other systems may include dozens of other pieces of information—sometimes useful, sometimes not. The challenge is to design membership files that have the greatest utility.
Marketing General Incorporated routinely conditions and stores the files we receive from outside vendors for acquisition programs, member files of the clients we serve, and files of the lists we manage through MGILists.
Once converted into consistent layouts so they can be integrated, MGI uses member databases for two primary purposes.
Member Finder & Matchbacks
Tracking the sources of new members—what list they came from, what offer they responded to, what creative succeeded—is a strength of direct membership marketing. It guides marketers by showing what works and what does not. But this has become more difficult as increasing numbers of respondents sign up for membership online where tracking codes sometimes fall short.
MGI’s Member Finder compares prospect names with the organization’s membership file. When names match, we know that the mailing had some influence on the decision to join. Member Finder matchbacks have discovered as many as five times the number of prospects who became members than were reported through traditional direct mail channels.
Hard Core Non–Responders
Over time, some association prospects are mailed repeatedly because their names appear on a strongly responding list that is used multiple times.
MGI has developed a process that identifies how many times a prospect has been mailed before choosing to accept a membership invitation. This way we can also remove prospects who have proven to be less likely to respond. This saves processing time and cost and reduces the size of the mail file saving a number of production costs.
