Hachette Launches Phase Two of Database-Driven Marketing Strategy

The publisher tries a more aggressive modeling and analytics approach.

By Bill Mickey
Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. yesterday announced it has completed another enhancement to its database that will allow the company to take a much more data-driven approach to its direct marketing. The publisher has partnered with smartFOCUS to bolster its multiplatform marketing capabilities.

In November 2009, Hachette—publisher of ELLE, Woman's Day, Road & Track and other titles—rolled out its Equifax-hosted database marketing platform, under which the smartFOCUS solution will also be housed.

"This database is dramatically different than our first-generation database," said Pegg Nadler, a consultant to Hachette and its former VP of database marketing who managed the publisher's database overhaul. "Now we're going to be into hardcore database marketing. We're able to capture all of our campaign information, all the transactional information and we can integrate data that's coming from our online and offline worlds and use all of this to drive a new way of handling our direct marketing activities."

That new data-driven approach is what the smartFOCUS solution will enable—helping the company to capture more timely information on campaigns and uncover new insights, particularly in customer performance.

"Previously, we had an excellent database with over a thousand datapoints, but what's different this time is we're capturing transactional information," added Nadler. "Before, it was a snapshot in time. Now it's looking more at customer performance and we're integrating online data as well."

The online data is another key differentiator for the new system, which Nadler said was driven by the company's inroads in digital. "The imperative was to be able to merge online and offline data. More and more of our business is coming from our digital presence, and Hachette is focusing more on digital offers, and so on."