Target-Marketing An Increasingly LargerPart Of Budget

NEW YORK - (08/24/05) -- A new survey has found that morethan one in five organizations spend more than 45% of their entiremarketing budgets on “target marketing,” and anadditional two-in-five spend between 15% and 45% on such activity.According to “2005 Executive Report: Target MarketingPriorities Analysis,” underwritten by Harte-Hanks, Inc. andprepared by CSO Insights, Inc., nearly three of four companies planhigher investments in database management this year; three in fivecompanies are planning to spend more on e-mail, web design and dataquality initiatives; and more than one in two on search marketing.A total of 281 companies participated in the survey, reflecting across-section of vertical markets among them retail, manufacturing,high-tech and services, among other categories. According to thestudy, 43 percent of respondents have a regular or constant programto support personalization and one-to-one marketing; 33 percentfeel they are “good” or “very good” atcalculating customer profitability; but more than a third ratetheir database management as “poor” or “verypoor” (just 12% rate themselves “very good”).Further, 53% of respondents believe that their own customer dataare at least 75% accurate ­ and 40% of respondents believe thatless than half their prospect data are correct.