why you need a Marketing Database Manager / Consultant

In the last post, I talked about the importance of a marketing database for your organization if you want to benefit from the advantages of direct marketing, direct response marketing, relationship marketing, integrated marketing or whatever you want to call it (pick any term and mix'em up salad style...i just stick with pRM because the patient or consumer is who the target is- oh, almost forgot another term - target marketing).

Anyway, the marketing service providers out there do a good job of hosting and delivering campaign management, email, and other operational services to marketing organizations. They work with pharmaceutical DTC marketers to attain customer segmentation and develop marketing data process business rules.

There is a gap here though. Marketers have very little time to work with the vendor and often don't understand how or what processes need to be implemented. Marketers just want thing to work. So what happens?

Marketers bring in others in their team to direct the vendor. These may be their creative agencies or internal areas such as IT. The problem with that is that they also have little time and they have their hands full already.

What is needed is a Marketing Database Manager /Consultant - this is the role that

• directs and manages the vendor
• serves as sort of the project manager when it comes to translating the marketing needs to processes such as campaigns, segmentation, and customer fulfillment
• understands and is a marketing expert in the integration of different response channels including marketing data from telemarketing, data entry, and web vendors and platforms
• understands and prepares data for marketing analytics experts

The key here is to see that this role is an expert in this field...he or she is not a generalist. When you need plumbing work, you dont call a general contractor, you call a plumber. Marketers who expect their IT folks to understand marketing campaigns and segmentation are kidding themselves and hurting their chances of success. IT folks are very important to an organization and they have play a key role here - they can work with this role in the backend to make sure things do work after all.

it takes a marketing database

in order to have an effective and established pRM platform, pharmaceutical consumer marketers first needs a database. A marketing database - not a sales database - not a financial or accounting database - a marketing database. You need a place where you can get the 360 degree around you customer:

• how many times have you contacted that individual
• how many times has he/she responded
• what were the questions/answers from that individual
• how often
• how recent

these and so much more...there are many things you can learn about your customer - you just need a place to hold it all in.

The best analogy for this is that of a local corner store owner back in the good ol' days...the store owner knew each of his customer's likes, preferences, and dislikes. His marketing database was in his head. In the pharmaceutical area, people are still just people and they have their preferences as well (consumers and health care professionals - yes doctors are people too).

There are marketing database providers out there. Which is the best one? It depends on what you're looking for. They all are comparable just make sure you deal with a vendor with pharmaceutical experience with consumer/patient marketing. I have worked with many if not most and for the most part they do a good job.

Here's a recommendation though: have an internal and or external expert manage them. Whoever it is, the expert must have expertise within this niche. This expert must represent you and manage the vendor according to marketing objectives. I'll talk more about the Marketing Database Manager role in the next post.