Marketing management is moving from overall, wide-sweeping marketing to individual, segmented marketing, called direct marketing. The technological and marketing changes taking place in the world demand that managers computerize their marketing and sales plans, in order to remain in touch with active and potential clients.
The computer’s ability to section the data bases on clients and collect information on a single client has made the computer a vital instrument in the new marketing era. As a result, the need to preserve and make optimal use of the vast extent of information flowing through an organization, has increased greatly.
Dan Regev, general manager of Manov of the Formula group, developer of the Control program, said the direct marketing revolution is manifested in the fields of banking and insurance, but also in many other fields. According to him, most organizations are not yet fully computerized in the area of marketing, but the pace of information system penetration into marketing and sales departments is increasing.
Eliezer Rabin, VP marketing at Direct Insurance believes computerization also has negative aspects. "The downside to direct marketing is sending large quantities of ‘junk information’ to people, annoying the potential clients."
In order to avoid this pitfall, Direct Insurance operates a computerized data base with the details of 200,000 customers who expressed interest in the company. The company only approaches these people. "We have reached the conclusion that ‘soft-sell philosophy’ enables us to make educated use of computerization for marketing," he said.
Regev added that technology is changing the face of marketing at an astounding pace. According to him, without the technological developments of the past ten years, we would not have acquired direct marketing ability. "Today anything is possible due to the ability to manage data bases."