Profiling Your Customers Using the Internet

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Profiling Your CustomersUsing the Internet

• Stephan Spencer
• President, Internet Concepts
• sspencer_at_netconcepts.com
• www.netconcepts.com
• Greg Stromberg
• VP-Marketing, INX International Ink Co.
• strombeg_at_corp.inxintl.com
• www.inxink.com

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Profiling Your CustomersUsing the Internet

• Objectives
• Understand and anticipate our customers needs
• Target the most profitable customers
• Instill customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Communicate to the key decision makers
• Track the sales and marketing process
• Measure results

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Profiling Your CustomersUsing the Internet

• Strategies
• Leverage customers, employees, and vendors
• Compel users to profile themselves
• Tap into online knowledgebases
• Obtain, consolidate, and integrate data from
  multiple sources
• Integrate with the intranet and extranet
• Centralize the storage of customer data

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Leverage Your Customers, Employees, and Vendors

• Allow customers, employees, and vendors varying
  levels of access to the same supersite
• Customers -gt extranets
• Employees -gt Customer profiles / intranet
• Vendors / partners -gt restricted access to
  augment the customer profiles with their own data
  / research (Example Find/SVP)
• General users -gt external yellow pages site

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Leverage Your Customers, Employees, and Vendors

• Search and monitor customers and vendors Web
  sites (competitors too) using search spiders,
  offline browsers, etc.
• Tools
• Compass, Ultraseek, Harvest, Netattaché,
  URLMinder (www.netmind.com)

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Leverage Your Customers, Employees, and Vendors

• Challenges
• Getting employee buy-in
• Requiring that they store their data centrally
• Being prepared for disgruntled employees
• Tying into legacy systems

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Compel Users To Profile Themselves

• Yellow pages directories - a new sales
  marketing channel for INXs customers
• PrinterSpace - a directory of printers it helps
  print-buyers find printers
• LithoQuoter - a matching service it delivers
  printing quotes to printers in the database who
  then bid on the job
• MetalDecorators.com - a directory of metal
  decorators (a subset of the printing industry)

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Compel Users To Profile Themselves

• Online Communities - get inside their heads
• PrinterSpace Roundtable (a Web-based discussion
  forum)
• misc.industry.printing Usenet newsgroup
• Printing email list (listserv)
• Personalization - get personal tastes interests
• Personal View and Personal Home Page for
  PrinterSpace (in progress)

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Compel Users To Profile Themselves

• Other opportunities to get your wired customers
  to profile themselves
• E-commerce transactions
• Extranets
• Web site traffic data

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Compel Users To Profile Themselves

• Requirements
• Benefit Statement
• Privacy Policy
• Security
• Auditing?

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Tap Into Online Knowledgebases

• Link to the customer profile
• Tools
• Hoovers (www.hoovers.com), Dun Bradstreet, Wall
  Street Research Network (www.wsrn.com), Deja News
  (www.dejanews.com), PR Newswire
  (www.prnewswire.com), NewsPage (www.newspage.com)
  MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com)

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Obtain, Consolidate, and Integrate Data from
Multiple Sources

• Sources include
• American Business Lists
• Dun Bradstreet
• Trade magazines associations lists
• INXs Customer list
• INXs microsites (PrinterSpace, LithoQuoter,
  MetalDecorators.com)

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Obtain, Consolidate, and Integrate Data from
Multiple Sources

• Challenges
• Deleting the duplicates between the various
  lists, both initial and ongoing
• Keeping the data current
• Checking the integrity and validity of the data
• Tracking changes to the data (modification
  history)
• Assessing the cost/benefit for each list

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Integrate With theIntranet and Extranet

• Intranet
• Customer Reports
• Technical Service Call Reports
• Sales Call Reports
• Project log (status, assigned to, date started)
• Related customer/project file attachments

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Integrate With theIntranet and Extranet

• Customer extranets
• Update profile
• Billing shipping information
• Ink requirements
• Pressroom information
• Submit technical service requests
• View projects (status, assigned to, date
  started..)
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys

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Centralize the Storage of Customer Data

• Disparate database systems lead to duplications
  and inaccuracies
• Dont let your sales force hold your company
  hostage. Get their data off of their laptops and
  on to the intranet.
• Challenges
• Rewriting legacy code
• Restructuring and migrating databases

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Before
DBM DB
PrinterSpace
MetalDecorators.COM
MS SQL DB
Oracle DB
LithoQuoter
Intranet
Corporate Site
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After
Oracle DB
MetalDecorators.COM
PrinterSpace
Central Database of Current Potential Customers
LithoQuoter
Intranet
Corporate Site
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Summary

• Remember these strategies...
• Leverage customers, employees, and vendors
• Compel users to profile themselves
• Tap into online knowledgebases
• Obtain, consolidate, and integrate data from
  multiple sources
• Integrate with the intranet and extranet
• Centralize the storage of customer data

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Questions?

• Feel free to email us at sspencer_at_netconcepts.com
  or strombeg_at_corp.inxintl.com