There's more information about Web users than ever available these days, but how much of it is actually useful to marketers?
Phil
Davis, CEO of data brokerage Rapleaf, says most of his clients start with just seven pieces of data about customers: Age, gender, location, marital status, presence of children, homeowner status and
income. Those are the “building blocks to everything else,” he says, adding that they “help provide context around other behaviors.”
For
instance, he says, they can offer insight into whether a customer is making a purchase as a one-time gift for someone else, or whether the customer intends to make similar purchases over and over
again.
But the demographic type of information mentioned by Davis isn't equally important to all marketers. Tim Li, senior vice president of the lender Think
Finance, says his company can't legally base decisions about loans on data like gender or marital status. What type of data is important to Li? The length of time a particular email address
has been in use. That's because the “age” of an email address is one of the key factors in sussing out fraud, Li says.