The general concern seems to be related to the overall availability of data and what this means in terms of campaign execution. In reality, the increase in consumers wanting their data to be excluded from the available ER pool currently presents no real threat. There are certainly spikes in the number of consumers ticking the box in certain areas within the UK but, across the country as a whole, the majority of ER data is still available to marketers.
Furthermore, the ER is not simply a direct marketing file. It is usually overlaid with other data sets, such as lifestyle data or census data. This means that it is perfectly possible to retrieve missing data from other sources, so campaigns need not suffer at all. Indeed, most marketers already use this approach.
The second issue raised by the increase in ER opt-out relates to the breadth of the range of data used in generating effective predictive models. Again, any concerns in this area are unfounded. Lifestyle companies predicted that data availability would present such a problem and, partly in response to this, developed hybrid files, such as The Lifestyle Universe (TLU), which can be used to generate sound predictive models even as ER opt-out rises.
Consequently, it is still possible to procure sufficient good quality data for use in both targeting and modelling. The only real issue that marketers face is that more than one supplier may be needed to provide the entire solution, and this issue is more likely to crop up in the future. This has implications in terms of cost and poses problems to those who prefer to purchase data as a commodity.
Over time, the pool of data available to mailers will certainly change, but the industry landscape has and will continue to adjust to such developments. The range of sources through which consumers can opt out of receiving direct communications in part allows them to express a channel preference.
An individual consumer who registers with the Telephone Preference Service is, in effect, saying no to cold calls but leaving the direct mail channel open. The most recent research from the Direct Marketing Association clearly shows that consumers do have channel preferences but, more positively, that they do respond to effectively targeted direct marketing.
The only marketers who have grounds to fear the future are those who favour the scattergun approach and who prefer to buy data on the pile it high, sell it cheap basis.
As wider environmental concerns related to the way that our industry uses resources grow, however, we are probably only a few years away from a crackdown on such cowboys. Responsible marketers who grasp the sheer commercial folly of contacting those who have stated that they do not wish to be contacted will applaud when shoddy practitioners are driven out of business because of the leakage of bad will that spreads across the industry as a whole.
The future is certainly nothing to fear for marketers. Change is inevitable. Businesses and practitioners must adapt in order to survive. The notion that commercial organisations will cease to undertake marketing is unfeasible. In a purely Darwinian sense, the thriving businesses, marketing practitioners and agencies of the future will be those who are simply head and shoulders above the rest in terms of devising and executing effective direct communication strategies, and who are willing to meet the real costs of taking this approach.
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