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Boardroom Inc. has based entire marketing campaigns on asking questions like, “What food should one never eat on an airline when offered?” (The answer: scrambled eggs.) But now it's directing queries at itself.

For one, what should the company do after its house file has been ranked by deciles into likely prospects for cross-selling campaigns? Are there ways of making selections from borderline levels work? And what sequence of products should it offer segment-by-segment or even person-by-person?

These are vital issues for the publisher of “The Book of Inside Information,” Bottom Line/Personal and many other books and newsletters.

Another question for Boardroom was whether it could gain greater control over the querying and analytic functions performed on its house list. At last glance, that file was approaching eight figures in size.

The person asking these questions? Bruce Reznik, Boardroom's director of database marketing.

The result? Boardroom brought its querying functions in-house.

A company detail-oriented enough to survey airline galleries for unpalatable food isn't one to choose its analytics and modeling capacities haphazardly.

Boardroom retained database marketing agency Merkle to physically house its data, and together the two firms picked a suite of products from Alterian, including its data discovery and visualization, selection planner, analytical reporting and campaign management tools. But Boardroom insisted on being able to access and manipulate the data from computers in its own office.

The resulting system allowed Boardroom to more closely manage its outbound campaigns.

“We have a very clear understanding of how many names should qualify” for various marketing efforts, Reznik says. “When things were being done by our vendor instead of us, it took a lot longer if quantities were off. Having the tool in front of me to get counts immediately reinforces the correctness of our query.”

The new tools let Boardroom go deeper into its expires files; in fact, it's been able to go 15 years back and still come up with profitable deciles. And it's not pulling together scraps. A May campaign for the Bottom Line/Personal newsletter had a mail quantity in the seven figures, a 50% increase over the previous year. Many were expires.

But those aren't the only names the firm is mining.

“Right now, we're mailing every book buyer who comes in a newsletter offer,” Reznik says. “It's small volume, compared with the cold mail, but it's very profitable, with regression modeling making it more profitable.” Which newsletter is offered is based, in part, on the purchase the customer made, among other criteria.

“The new system has reduced concept-to-launch time,” adds Merkle COO Don Patrick. “We have seen an equal to slight increase in the number of campaigns [Boardroom] runs, with a lot more complexity in targeting.”

The system also provides better views of individual customers. The previous one grouped buyers by household. “We have age, gender and online and telephone purchase history at a glance — reports we've never had before,” Reznik says.

This knowledge has allowed Boardroom to go into deciles below what had been scored as potentially unprofitable and pick prospects one by one.

“Maybe they aren't in the top-scoring groups, but if they've spent more than $100 or $200 and escaped the model, I can still scoop them up and put them in an RFM model,” Reznik says.

Modeling, as well, has become less cumbersome: When it was being outsourced, the querying and selection process could take more than three days. Now Boardroom can generate modeling results in 14 hours.

Another benefit was that list fatigue was curtailed. After a query's been processed, the publisher can decide not to mail everyone who comes out the other end, according to Alterian's senior vice president of commercial operations Michael Fisher.

“Bruce can give them a rest if he's mailed them six times without a response,” Fisher says. “He can measure that [lack of] activity against the needs of existing programs.”

As Boardroom gets more comfortable with Alterian's systems, it will begin applying models to rented names as well. “We'll look at promotion histories not just for customers but prospects,” Reznik says. “We'll see what the attributes of people who don't respond are, and weed out unprofitable segments.” Reznik is currently developing these models, and hopes to have them in place by third quarter 2007.

Isn't Merkle threatened by Boardroom's increasing sophistication? Hardly.

“Generally, we like it when clients take control,” Patrick says.

He adds that there are greater opportunities for quality control and making sure campaigns are executed properly. Merkle is happy to provide back-end services.

But this is easier said that done. According to Patrick, during the new business process potential clients often indicate their intention to take control of campaigns, Actually, he says, 85% continue to have Merkle manage the selections and executions.

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