RETAILER LINK CALLED KEY TO DATA-BASE MARKETING

JOHN KAROLEFSKI

NEW YORK -- Partnering with retailers has emerged as a key to building an effective targeted data base marketing program. Monika Torrence, vice president of Spectra/Market Metrics, called partnering with retailers "a very hot new area of interest," and said it's one of three requirements for targeted data base marketing.

Torrence listed these requirements:

Partner with retailers: link mailings to households with in-store promotion/merchandising efforts.

The data base must contain fields to target on: address, demographics, purchase behavior and lifestyle characteristics;

The data base must be analyzed through a common framework and methodology: segment the data base for targeting and integrate with other in-house or third-party data bases. Torrence spoke here last month at a packaged goods data base marketing conference sponsored by International Business Communications, Southboro, Mass. She said that a good data base is expensive to build and maintain. She recommended partnering with retailers to optimize merchandising performance. "Mail around high-opportunity stores, set up displays in the same stores and provide custom point-of-sale materials," she said. Her other recommendations were: partner with complementary brands, target competitive consumers, segment all households on the data base (identify the best consumers and find more like them), target offers and values more efficiently against existing data base records (link to other data bases where feasible), and maximize value and spread costs with multibrand, corporate/cross brand initiatives. Spectra/Market Metrics is a Chicago-based firm that supplies micromarketing services and geodemographic tools for manufacturers and retailers in the grocery industry. It integrates data on consumer lifestyles, lifestages, purchase behavior and media habits to yield a profile that can be used by marketers. and store management. VNU Marketing Information Services, parent of the former Spectra Marketing Systems in Chicago, acquired Market Metrics, Lancaster, Pa., last month, combining the two firms into a single business entity called Spectra/Market Metrics.

John Larkin, previously president of Spectra, was named president of Spectra/Market Metrics. Jim Weaver, previously president of Market Metrics, runs the new company's research and development division. Tom Morgan, previously chairman of Market Metrics, is vice chairman, reporting to Larkin.

VNU Marketing Information Services is a unit of VNU Business Information Services, a global information and media company based in the Netherlands.