Good Data in BigData?

How to Find the Good Data in Big Data

Guest Blog by Ray Schutz, TellAllMarketing

There’s one thing wrong with Big Data. A lot of is is “a little big like overhearing a conversation,” says John Miglautsch, chairman of Miglautsch Marketing Inc., in the second in a series of videos on data. .

 Ray Schultz contributes a summary of my second video in the series 'Making Money With Data'. 

Ray Schultz, journalist and author, has written so much about marketing that he is now a marketer himself. He has launched TellAllmarketing, an agency specializing in content marketing.

TellAllmarketing is devoted to the idea that relevant, well-done content attracts leads and moves them through the B2B purchase funnel. We produce white papers, case studies, email newsletters and other forms of content for clients like IBM Netezza, KBM Group, InfoGroup, NextMark and Reach Marketing.

Founder Ray Schultz has solid grounding in both marketing and journalism. As editor of DM News, he tracked the growth of direct marketing as it evolved from a business backwater into a global force embraced by Fortune 500 companies. From there, Ray moved to Direct, where he documented the online and CRM revolutions.

Spinning Straw Into Gold (overview)

Find out why so few turn their data
into money and also how to do it.

It IS  possible to turn data into money. I’ve seen millions of extra dollars generated on one mailing, catalog response rates of over 100% because of modeling. In the past 6 years, we have beaten 8 modeling firms in 11 massive tests... Gold can happen, but it generally does not happen. People think it is a systems problem and it is NOT a systems problem. It is a thinking problem, it is a brain problem.

Consider the Grimm's story of Rumpelstiltskin. A miller says his daughter can spin straw into gold (a big lie). The king sends for the daughter and says, “Here is a room filled with straw. Spin it into straw or you die in the morning.” 

The database marketing industry also has lies. Only by exposing the lies, can we spin straw into gold. 
more...  

Just posted a short version of my book Spinning Straw Into Gold finished the audio recordings today as well.  

Why am I promoting a book that is almost a decade old?  When I first wrote this, I knew that I was on to something.  Being largely self-taught in statistics and modeling, I kept being amazed that we not only beat mature mailers, but also seasoned modeling companies.  However, since we have continued to pile up wins (so great that we've been accused of 'cheating') I knew I needed to reiterate WHY our system WINS.  It is because we think about the process and have spent over 20 years molding and perfecting a system to achieve it.  Last week I opened our doors to a company that builds databases.  We spent a day showing them everything we could.  Why?  Because this isn't a system that can be easily copied, even if the technology were simple (it isn't) it could take years to prove that it was working as expected... then more years to run all the tests which ours has won.  In addition, it incorporates so much that we have learned from our world class clients - yes, we also include their variables in their systems.  There is a reason why it works and the time has come to share this amazing breakthrough.

Look over this article and see if it makes sense... and if it does, perhaps we should talk about how you handle your customer contact system.

I'm working with Author Marketing Club to promote my book on Kindle - click this picture to check it out.

Marketing Database Interface and System for Junction Solutions/MS DAX (Microsoft Dynamics AX)

One of our major clients with more than 11 million customers is successfully migrating from MACS by Smith-Gardener/Ecometry/Escalate to Junction Solutions MS DAX system.

We have been handling their circulation modeling and list pulls for several years. There are many significant challenges migrating from one legacy system to another. An area often neglected is the connection between the old data and the new. Not only does a new file structure require a new interface into the marketing database, but also, new product categories, customer types, division codes, group codes, suppression codes all have to be unified on the database. Most importantly, if customer segmentation is required, old product classifications must be converted to new systems so that customer preferences will include both new and old (so we can figure out what kinds of products they prefer).

Jim Berry, our database guru, said, "Most people don't realize that conversion of an existing marketing database to a new operations system is more difficult than building one from scratch."

Bottom line, if you have either, MACS or DAX, we have an interface and database ready for you.