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As professional direct
marketers, we continuously look at data that could yield information
useful for guiding our ongoing marketing programs. Upon review of
several reports from the latest build of a PC product-buyers database,
I noticed a very interesting phenomenon that occurred with the buyers
at business address. Let's take a closer look.
The phenomenon occurs
when stratifying the buyers at company level by the employee size.
By viewing the data by employee size, highly definitive patterns
evolve depicting 'who' is making company-wide purchasing decisions.
In the smaller sized
firms with 1-20 employees, it was evident that the presidents and
company owners were the ones responsible for product purchasing
decisions. This was concluded by seeing that in the smaller-sized
firms, there were only a few unique individuals making multiple
purchases, with a high incidence of 'President' or 'owner' in the
job title field. This makes sense as the entrepreneur of the company
has the hands-on role of purchasing and decision making. As the
company size rises, the involvement of the presidents and owners
in the buying capacity drops sharply. Note that while job titles
are not a highly populated title in a product buyers file, the amount
of sample data available was enough to provide information that
could be used for marketing purposes.
Moving up the scale
to companies with 25 to 50 employees, we still see a high incidence
of presidents and owners, in addition to a clustering of additional
individuals who, in addition to the owners, are making multiple
product purchases. We can consider these individuals as 'super users',
which are most likely individuals with an early adoption role within
the organization.
A change of major consequence
starts to occur in companies of 50 to 100 employees. You have two
distinct groups as buyers. Group one would be the 'deJure' buyer,
and this decision usually resides at the 'Help Desk.'
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The second group is the
'deFacto' or informal buyer - they are the 'super users' and early
adopters. In most cases, the 'super users' are the ones with the
early adoption roles within the organization. They are the enthusiasts
and the champions, if you will, who get excited with the release
of new technologies. They play an important role in corporate buying
decisions, influencing who we've identified as the 'logical' buyer
while also possessing buying authority at their level.
In the larger-sized
organizations, purchasing decisions are driven by the MIS/IT type
individuals, who are responsible for the corporate data centers
as well as the client-side activities throughout the organization.
So how does this information
help the High-Tech marketer? It may help limit the number of pieces
mailed to an organization. Not only how many pieces, but to whom.
In a large scale (multi-million
name) B-to-B mailing, multi-corporate records (different individuals/same
company) occur most frequently in larger organizations. This makes
sense, since in smaller-sized companies, the same buyer (the president)
shows up (the traditional multibuyer).
If you had to make a
decision to mail only two records per company on a specific mailing
rather than the five records found after the merge, which do you
mail?
First - mail
those records from your best lists. That's common sense. Second
- remember that these are larger companies, so send your mail
to the most likely 'deJure' title possible, such as the MIS/IT.
Third - if you can't accomplish the two above, you should
get a new List Broker!
Overall, intuitive direct
marketing knowledge combined with common sense can often compensate
for statistical surety when the latter isn't available.
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