articles

The Worst in Database Marketing

Database marketing is a very powerful approach to marketing. With a good customer or prospect database, a company has the ability to serve those people better than ever. Communications can be developed to better meet the interests and needs of people and can be delivered more cost effectively. This is how we hope everyone will use the power of database marketing.

Database marketing, unfortunately, can be used in ways that are not to the customer’s or prospect’s benefit. When companies create good databases, they can be used in good or bad ways. Some of these bad uses are reprehensible. Others are simply foolish and do more harm to the company than to anyone else.

The documents in this section are fictitious examples of the worst of database marketing. We have attempted to use some humor to make a point and dramatize these misuses of database marketing. All companies, products, company representatives and recipient names are fictitious. We hope you will enjoy these examples. More importantly, we hope they will make a point and keep you from using database marketing in a bad manner.

North Atlantic Breaded Seafood Corporation — Databases can provide marketers with a lot of valuable information about people. This information can be used for the legitimate purpose of identifying people who are likely to be interested in your company’s products. However, some companies access more information than they really need. Then they make the bigger mistake of telling consumers just how much they know about them. Use the power of databases to identify those people who are likely and not likely to be interested in your products. But don’t overdo it like the North Atlantic Breaded Seafood Corporation.

Molten Mountain Snow Boot Company — Children are an important audience for many database marketers. Well-meaning companies can use database marketing to bring joy to children, educate them or enhance their experience with the companies’ products. Kid’s clubs are often an effective device for collecting children’s names and in bonding with them. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous businesses such as the Molten Mountain Snow Boot Company may take advantage of impressionable children and the trust they place in adults.