If you found out that eight out of every ten dollars of your profits came from only twenty percent of your customers, what would you do?

If you answered, "Find them, keep them, and find more like them," you are one of a growing number of marketers who are aware of the value of database information and analysis. A few of you know that information is power. But surprisingly, only a few are using these power tools effectively.

Become one of the few.

Start building your INFObase today. Begin with the basics -- name, address, phone number, date of purchase, amount and item purchased. But remember, this is only the record of a single transaction. To build an INFObase, you need to build an understanding of your customers' ongoing relationships with you, so you can create one with them. You need to know the frequency of their purchases, their average purchase, the quantity and category of their purchases and the promotions or ads to which they responded.

This accumulation of information will begin to show you that:

1. Not all customers/prospects offer the same marketing opportunity.
2. The more relevant the information you collect, the more effective your marketing will be.
3. Too little knowledge, without the whole picture, could lead you down the wrong marketing path.

Get the whole picture.

Once you have a basic database of at least a thousand customers, you can begin to append or overlay information from various data collection agencies and credit bureaus, such as Polk, Metromail, NDL Lifestyles, TRW, Equifax or TransUnion, to help give you a clear profile of your current customers.

Depending on which agency you use, you will begin to see categories of customers emerge (there are up to 50) with names such as "Upscale Singles," "DINKS" (Double Income No Kids), "Empty Nesters" and "Young Families." Once you begin to discover the size and nature of the categories where your current customers are clustered, you can begin to develop programs to target new customers with similar characteristics. In marketing, too, birds of a feather flock together.

When too much info is not enough.

For the last three decades our information resources have grown from simple geographic data, with the introduction of the zip code in 1963, to the sophisticated socio-economic lifestyle information of today. So many tools are available now, the challenge becomes which ones to use. Like Alice through the looking glass, you may find yourself asking, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" The answer, as the Cheshire Cat well knew, lies in your own objectives: "That depends a good deal on where you want to go."