Know: ‘timing is everything.’

44
Marketing Insights from A to Z

---

mation on individual customers or dealers. The first company in each
of these respective industries to exploit database marketing could
achieve a substantial competitive lead.
There is a growing threat to effective database marketing that is
coming from the inherent conflict between customer and company
interests (see box).
Database Marketing
45
What Customers Want
• We want companies not to have extensive personal infor-
mation about us.
• We would be willing to tell some companies what we
might like to be informed about.
• We would want companies to reach us only with relevant
messages and media at proper times.
• We would want to be able to reach companies easily by
phone or e-mail and get a quick response.
What Companies Want
• We want to know many things about each customer and
prospect.
• We would like to tempt them with offers, including those
that they might not have awareness of or initial interest in.
• We would like to reach them in the most cost-effective
way regardless of their media preferences.
• We want to reduce the cost of talking with them live on
the phone.

---

The irony is that as companies learn more about each customer
in order to make more relevant offers, customers see this as an inva-
sion of privacy. The matter is made worse by intrusive junk mail, junk
phone calls, and junk e-mail. As privacy concerns rise and lead to leg-
islation curtailing what companies may know about individual cus-
tomers and how the companies can reach customers, companies will
be forced to return to less efficient mass marketing and transaction-
oriented marketing.
One answer is for companies to practice permission marketing,
as promoted by Seth Godin.
27
You should ask your customers what
information they will volunteer, what messages they would accept,
and what contact media they would prefer.
esign
Design is a big idea, covering product design, service design,
graphic design, and environmental design. Design provides a set
of tools and concepts for preparing successful products and ser-
vices. Yet too few managers know what design is or value it. At
best, they equate design with style. Style is important, of course:
We must accept that the Jaguar automobiles’ success in the past
was based on style. It certainly wasn’t based on dependability,