But the best gifts are the ones that take you by surprise

But the best gifts are the ones that take you by surprise. A birthday wish from an old school buddy who you haven’t been in touch with, a surprise birthday party with all your close family and friends there, a visit from a relative who lives in another country, or even an unexpected email from your favorite clothing store giving you a special discount to celebrate your special day!

Yes, who wouldn’t like to receive a special something from their favorite stores or restaurants, offering a discount, free gift or even a personal sale?

Customers don’t expect you to know their birthdays and thus this is a very smart way to market to them. Most people only like to shop when the stores are offering sales or eat at restaurants where they can use discount coupons. So harnessing this as a marketing strategy is a great idea as your customers will appreciate your intelligent and relevant 1:1 marketing skills. They will also take advantage of this offer and return to your store or restaurant in the future!

Keeping in mind that not all customers are a fan of receiving what most people consider ‘junk mail’ and don’t like the constant email blasts, they will definitely appreciate the thoughtfulness of the offer and even take you up on it. The $20 off coupon, 30% discount on their next purchase or a free desert on their meal offer, might even turn out to be a great celebration on their birthday!

Databases can also be stored in two ways – As a flat data source or by an application called Relational Database Management System.

When you group a number of related fields, you create a record and the simplest way to create a record is by making lists using a column format and mentioning with the field names on the top. When you group a number of related records, you create a data table.

Below is an example of a customer data table:

Company	Street Address	City	State	Agent
ABC Corporation	123 Main Street	Philadelphia	PA	US101
XYZ Industries	222 South Avenue	New York	NY	US102
LMN Company	321 NE West Blvd.	CapitolCity	CA	UX202
Massive Dynamic	890 Central Road	Denver	CO	US102

Usually, this type of data also contains other facts that can be associated with it. In the data table above, each company has an agent and these agents have a column of their own that contains Agent IDs. Such fields that are common for two tables are called key fields. Most times key fields have the same field name but that is not a necessity because when there are multiple tables to be considered, they can be linked directly or indirectly through these tables and this is known as a Relational Database. 

Databases can also be stored in two ways – As a flat data source or by an application called Relational Database Management System. 

Flat data sources are tables that can be stored as text files sing a symbol known as a delimiter, which is often a comma or tab, between the values or by entering it into a spreadsheet like MS Excel. Such databases don’t have any specific method for properly describing the data or to associate their key fields with other tables.

For this purpose, RDMS applications like MySQL, MS Access or SQL Server and Oracle were built to handle large amounts of data, data tables and how they relate to each other.

So, these are the fundamentals of data as an important part of variable data printing and cross-media campaigns. Check out AudienceOne for more insight on databases and how to utilize them in cross media marketing.

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