Data player - Christian Robinson, MD and head of marketing, Firebox

by Marketing Direct Marketing Direct 02-Jun-08, 14:00

Marketing Direct takes a look at the cv of this months data player.

- What does your job involve?

Mainly it relates to the site and our customers. This includes working out which areas of the country respond well to our catalogue, and analysing how many customers return to us.

- How important is data to your business?

It's immensely important - as they say, retail is detail. By understanding our customers, we can tweak our offering which in turn improves return on investment and turnover. Our unique voucher code means we can include individual codes on the back of each catalogue. These codes allow us to drill right down into our data, looking at who responded well to the incentive.

- What's the most challenging part?

Like any data it can only tell you so much - the figures are only half the story and can't tell you what a customer is thinking. For that you have to rely on instinct and market knowledge.

- What is the biggest lesson you've learned?

To not take the data at face value. Dig a little deeper and you might find some intriguing results.