Marketing & Web Database Systems   Marketing databases form the platform companies need to integrate their direct marketing, web, social, and other marketing efforts to build long-term, strong relationships with all of the segments attracted to your products & services.  However, while the concept of a marketing database is relatively clear, the development and successful deployment of these marketing systems is a challenge for most organizations.  While a marketing database is a technology project, success is determined less by the technology deployed but the ability of marketers to use the system to change the way they are developing relationships with their customers and prospects.  This means a marketing database deployment must not only create a database platform which is accessable to marketing but - in many instances - must integrate new, more sophisticated market targeting systems, web data platforms, tracking and measurement systems, test design capabilities and other marketing management and marketing process components to make it a profitable system for a company. When Marketing Synergy works with you to develop a marketing database system, we not only provide you with the technology support required to determine the best database system for your needs, we use our analytics and processing capabilities to improve the quality of your customer feeds, add enhancement data to better profile and analyze your customer and web visitors, and even add sophisticated clustering and predictive modeling systems to allow you to "hit the ground running" to provide immediate bottom-line impacts using your new marketing tool.  We have found successful deployments are not just technical but educating and developing the marketing requirements and systems needed to address traditional data issues and give your marketing team new tools to improve the effectiveness of their marketing programs. While each marketing database project is custom designed by Marketing Synergy to your unique marketing requirements and user groups, many of our larger database projects use the following methodology: Discovery Analysis - In the discovery process, we work with the senior managers, marketing leadership, marketing/sales, marketing support, IT, and other involved parties to determine the needs of the business and the marketing organization.  During the discovery process, we also analyze your tracking and measurement systems, your targeting technologies, your testing methodologies, and assess the skill sets each marketing group brings to the project.  Generally, we also process samples of your marketing database to identify quality and processing issues and to form initial recommendations on processing improvements / requirements. By the end of the discovery process, we can provide initial scope and design of the project and possible investment / ROI numbers for the marketing database system Development of Database Specifications - Creation of technical and marketing requirements to both outline the specifics and requirements of the marketing database, web database, and support systems as well as the marketing tools and systems necessary to make the marketing database a more actionable marketing system.  If the client wants to develop / test new segmentation, reporting, measurement and/or testing tools, these are developed in a parallel effort with items 3 - 7 of this example project. Potential Vendor Selection and RFP Development - We work with you to determine the vendors & companies which both meet your needs as well as any IT requirements of the organization.  In addition to the database RFP, RFPs are also developed for overlay or processing capabilities and web integrated systems required to develop a full solution.  RFPs are sent to all vendors. RFP Assessment - Assessing responses to select the final 3 vendors Top 3 Presentation Follow-up Presentations Negotiations and Final Vendor Selection Database Development - Actual building and acceptance testing of the system Database Deployment - Deployment across all marketing and support teams Database Marketing - Development of new targeting and segmentation capabilities to further increase the value of the marketing database system To learn more about our marketing database options, click