Digital's leaky bucket can be plugged with data

From multi-million mailings for Reader's Digest, with a test matrix that contained thousands of cells, through the emergence of the relational database, neural networks, flat file fast counts engines blah blah. Okay, so I have got the T-shirt.

I have followed digital with a keen interest, an exciting new world opening up to consumers and a new channel for brands to communicate with them. From one-way brand push to consumers setting the agenda with Web 2.0.

A few years ago, I noticed that there was a weakness in this brave new world, a chink in the armour and data was leaking out of it. At first, I just thought it was a temporary thing, but as the years have gone by, the chink is growing into a chasm.

At agencies, we spent a lot of our time trying to integrate the digital offering into the overall agency product, mainly from a creative point of view. We then started getting to grips with the new evaluation and measurement criteria (click through, unique visitors etc).

But hang on a minute, what about data? Well that was easy, can we get mailing lists! At Craik Jones, we did start to collect ‘golden fields’ via microsites for clients like Unilever and Land Rover, but there were occasions when the data went into the ether. Time marched on and digital continued its relentless march forwards.

At HS&P, I really learnt the value of digital. The planning team of Mark Runacus, Dan Thwaites and myself worked hand in glove, and the company really opened my eyes to the possibilities of combining the disciplines working, especially working on Honda.

At The Marketing Planning Practice, I have taken that to the next level, where we have a team of planning specialists covering data, broad digital, digital media, brand and mobile (to name a few) to cover all the bases.

As a new business, I needed clients fast. So my first port of call was small and medium digital agencies. They were in digital and probably did not have much data planning expertise.

My argument is that they work with data:
-    They collect it,
-    They measure it
-    They move it from A to B

But do they understand the key data they should collect and why? How should they generate insight from data? The digital agencies know they should be doing something in this area, but most data planners are connected to the integrated/CRM agencies.

There are a number of areas, which are just fundamental good practice that us old ‘direct mail’ boys and girls have in our blood.

The basics
-    Getting the address/email/telephone/mobile details correct
-    Use tools like PAF to make it easy
-    Getting the name and salutation correct
-    Make data capture relevant and collect only what you need
-    Make it easy to fill in
-    Make sure your permissions are captured correctly

Moving to 1st base
-    Make sure the data captured online is updated back to a central database and not left sitting behind the web/micro site
-    Update on the database on a regular basis that suits your operational and business needs
-    Have rules in place to check the accuracy of the data before being loaded.
-    Have business rules in place on how you handle conflicting pieces of information
-    Have a two-way feed in place back to the web if necessary

Now for some rock n roll
With all this in place we are ready to fly. You have good clean, relevant data, so now you can start to analyse it, segment it, create relevant messaging, deploy it through the correct channels, optimise the offer and channel. And away you go.
Sounds a bit like what we have been doing offline for years. The difference is that is that it is so much easier and quicker to get things done in the brave new digital world.

John Wallinger is founder of The Marketing Planning Practice