The NCDM Database Excellence Award Winners

Talk about strategic brilliance: Every one of the companies featured here devised a complex, data-driven solution for a marketing problem. And they've won the rarest of all marketing honors — an NCDM Database Excellence Award. There's nothing subjective about the judging. Each entry is assessed by a panel of database experts and ranked according to strict criteria. Above all, the judges want to see results. These awards are presented every December at the NCDM conference run by Direct and the Direct Marketing Association. Are there are other vendors and clients that deserve to be listed? Sure. But there's much to learn from the 10 presented in the following pages.

MULTICHANNEL MARKETING

Award: Platinum, Gold

Marketer: National Australia Bank

Vendor: Teradata

National Australia Bank decided a few years ago to decentralize. It gave control to local branches over staffing, business hours and marketing.

But the latter couldn't be done without a proper CRM system, one that would provide users with analytics and event-driven triggers. So the bank, which has 8.3. million customers and $605 billion in assets, worked with Teradata to develop a program.

This led to a total marketing overhaul. But getting buy-in from potential users was no small task. As the entry form states, “We had to re-educate approximately 4,000 sales staff whose past experience included high volume, traditional product-focused marketing leads with low probability of success.”

Then there was the challenge of making it all work. The bank sought to:

• Involve bankers in creating event-driven triggers.

• Enhance and create sales tools per trigger requests.

• Create new channels and models for delivery of push and pull triggers. These included teller conversations, call center interactions and Internet banking.

• Increase return on investment.

Teradata also devised online reporting mechanisms like the Banker Dashboard. It helps the sales force track results, and provides custom reports. One is on the cross-sell opportunities in each portfolio.

Local branches can now log on to select up 40 different trigger types, which are delivered the next day to Siebel screens. Triggers might occur when the customer:

• Does something out of character, like making a large transaction.

• Has a product/service nearing maturity, such as a fixed rate home loan.

• Shows a sudden change in spending habits — say, by purchasing baby products.

But the triggers are also designed to stimulate a conversation and uncover specific needs. Instead of calling their banker, for example, the customer might call the bank's contact center to request a statement on their home loan. This could signify that they are looking to refinance their loan. The lead is sent to the bank's mortgage retention unit.

The results?

• The bank is now consistently above its target of generating “1,000 unique opportunities per week.”

• It reached 75% of its dollar-value goal within three months, and is now running 66% above target.

• It surpassed by 150% its goal of having half of its bankers requests its new sales tool.

The Database Excellence Awards judges call this a success.

“The dashboard allows bankers to monitor their effectiveness and follow up with customers,” one writes.

Another adds that “the project exhibits forward thinking and sophistication not seen in most marketing systems. By enabling the user to customize which triggers are important, they essentially have a customized system for themselves.”

Award: Silver

Marketer: Merchants Bonding Co.

Vendor: Relationship Marketing Inc.

How's this for an assignment? Merchants Bonding Co., an insurance provider that offers contract and commercial surety bonds, wanted to engage its top agents, those who provide 90% of its revenue. But how?

The answer was an integrated marketing plan.

The firm's vendor, Relationship Marketing Inc., started by analyzing several years of transactions. The purpose: To understand behavioral trends.

Based on this analysis, it grouped agents (or customers) into three primary subsets: steadies, up and comers, and faders.

Phone interviews established that the top agents needed marketing and educational tools. So Merchants Bonding launched an interactive forum where agents and industry surety experts share their expertise. The program, called The Leaderboard, “taps into “the agents' sense of competition and elite accomplishment,” the company says.