Marketing with Your Database

5. Categories and Identifiers

By cleverly coding information, you can retrieve data on any selected group of contacts.

5.1 Break the data in each segment down into categories and sub-categories, and give each one a code.

• The first level of categories might divide your contacts into customers, prospects, influencers and others.
• Customers might then be sub-categorised according to size and frequency of orders.
• Prospects might be sub-categorised more subjectively, as hot, warm, and cold, or as having large, medium or small potential.

5.2 Use 'identifier' codes to flag specific facts that will help you in your marketing.

• These can be unique to you and can carry precisely the information that matters to your business.
• Unless it has been set up to do so, your system won't turn 'm' into 'male' automatically. Keep a 'data dictionary' that logs exactly what each code means.