Finding the Humour in Database Marketing

Found this interview at 'MineThatData' blog:

"Jim Fulton wrote his first SPSS program in punch cards in 1981, and began his database analysis career at Lands' End in 1986. He founded Customer Metrics, Inc., a database marketing consultancy, in 1999, when his doctor told him he wasn't getting enough airline food."

"...The growth of the Web has brought with it – in a lot of organizations – a considerable degree of wishful thinking, in the sense that they somehow hope that the Web is a game-changer in terms of customer file dynamics, that maybe if we do all these contortions on Web site usability and optimize our SEO and line up the right affiliates, then we won’t have to do all of that icky nasty customer acquisition and wouldn’t that be nice?"

"I have one client who.....jokes that if he put together channel P&Ls, then the fax machine would be the most profitable channel he has because it doesn’t have all the fixed costs associated with development and maintenance of the web site."

"....A brand’s relevance to a consumer is critical, and in my view advertising or sloganeering can be borderline irrelevant to that objective, if not counterproductive......a brand is the sum total of a customer’s experience with a company: quality of products, quality of service, taste levels, whatever."

"My view is that customer loyalty can never be bought, it has to be earned, one customer at a time. And that’s as true today as it was when pre-Biblical merchants sailing the Mediterranean first contemplated whether to add PayPal to their payment options."

Read the whole interview here.