Special Report: Direct Marketing

Datamining in New Zealand is maturing and marketers in medium-sized companies are seizing the opportunity to unearth more detail than ever before about customers, markets, products and profitability, says Datamine director Sally Carey.

She reports business which had previously seen datamining as a cost now realise it can actually save them money. Carey also notes that the trend towards more graphical representation of results means it's easier for management to understand the value proposition.

Aim Proximity's Geoff Cooper points to a growing focus on testing. "International best practice stresses the importance of using testing to help optimise communications and contact management, but New Zealand's lack of scale has meant marketers have been restricted in testing a broad range of communications."

However, Aim Proximity has developed an advanced testing framework which is overcoming these issues.

"We recently completed a programme for one of our clients that enabled them to test over 128 different campaign executions focusing on six different concepts ranging from channels through offers, different creative and having different methods of fulfilment. We were able to test these combinations with only 15,000 customers," says Cooper.

"We did this in a 10th the time at 20% of the cost and ensured that the bulk of consumers would receive a highly differentiated communication targeted against their individual needs."