Data warehousing and data mining: Bringing pinpoint accuracy to sales

For most businesses, the primary means of growth involves the acquisition of new customers. This could involve finding customers who previously were not aware of your product, were not candidates for purchasing your product, or customers who in the past have bought from your competitors. Some of these customers might have been your customers previously, which could be an advantage or a disadvantage as they might have switched as a result of poor service. The traditional approach to customer acquisition involved a marketing manager developing a combination of mass marketing (magazine advertisements, etc.) and direct marketing (telemarketing, etc.) campaigns based on their knowledge. In the case of traditional direct marketing, customer acquisition is relatively similar to mass marketing. A marketing manager selects the demographics that they are interested in, and then works with a data vendor (service bureau) to obtain lists of customers who meet those characteristics.