Data enhancement is gaining ground as a popular product add-on to letter shops, direct mail printers, direct agencies, mailing list brokers, and specialized marketing firms working with businesses who serve direct mail advertisers.  Data enhancement involves appending elemental data (demographic, behavioral, or firmographic) to an existing database of names and addresses.  This existing database of names and addresses is typically an internal customer file provided by the business seeking further segmentation analysis.  Ideally, after database enhancement, the file can be divided into segments for more targeted mailing.

Data Enhancement Example

Let’s consider a popular multi-location bank.  The existing customer database includes infor...

Nationwide, newspapers continue to better understand their subscriber customers, how they compare with their non-subscribers, and why they continue to renew their subscription year after year.  What was once a major investment in time and money, data mining of the subscription list has become more affordable and a more easily adapted process.

Data Mining
Database mining is a process of sorting through and looking for patterns within a given database.  It sometimes involves just looking at the names and addresses and drawing conclusions on where people live in relation to a given geographic store location.  More often it involves enhancing a database of with demographic, psychographic, or firmographic (in the case of a list of businesses) data...