Year-old Maker of Data Mart Software Adds to Marketing Toolbox

A year after entering the data mart market, Informatica Corp. is embarking on its first-ever direct marketing campaign.

Data marts are a lower cost outgrowth of the data warehousing market. Data warehouses - massive databases of customer information - can cost between $3 million and $5 million and take up to three years to build. Data marts, on the other hand, are about one-tenth the size of a warehouse and are tightly focused. Informatica's data mart product, the PowerMart Suite, costs about $125,000 and takes 60 to 90 days to set up.

PR-driven marketing

Until last month, Informatica's marketing efforts consisted of a heavy dose of public relations, trade shows and its Web site (http://www.Informatica.com). "In the data warehousing market, we ignited this technology shift," says David Downing, Informatica's director of marketing. "An innovative product got us publicity. The publicity drove people to see us at trade shows. The hot new technology resulted in a halo effect."

But the company wanted to get more aggressive in its marketing, so it developed its own in-house lead tracking system and turned to Connect Direct, a Redwood City. Calif.-based direct marketing business that focuses on high-tech companies, to design its first direct mail campaign, a $35,000 effort.

Educational campaign

"Informatica's marketing challenge is that they are new and, although they've paved the way for data mart technology, they don't have a big market presence," says Howard Sewell, president of Connect Direct. "The challenge is to generate qualified leads for a company that doesn't have a lot of market exposure. Data marts, their niche, is a relatively new concept. First we had to educate people about data marts."

To do that, Connect Direct developed a Jump Start Your Data Mart direct mail kit that included jumper cables, information about data marts from outside sources such as Seybold Group, product information on the PowerMart Suite and a CD-ROM that features step-by step instructions on setting up a data mart.

It was sent to 12,000 names culled from lists from Data Management Review, a data warehousing publication; DBMS magazine; and Informatica's prospect list. The mailing, which went out in mid-April, targeted purchase influencers, usually in the information systems department, ranging from management-level executives to database implementation administrators at companies with more than $100 million in sales.

Informatica further targeted its mailing by focusing on areas where it has direct sales offices: Boston, New York, Chicago, the Bay area and Los Angeles.

Toward 3% response

As of late May, the company had a response rate of 2.8% and was projecting an eventual response rate of 3%, which is a successful campaign by direct mail standards. Mr. Downing says so far about 25 of the respondents have been identified as qualified leads.

Interestingly, though the campaign offered four ways to respond - via mail, a toll-free phone number, fax and e-mail - this high tech crowd chose mail for the lion's share of responses.

Mr. Downing says he's happy with the results. "I would have done direct mail earlier. It is a very cost-effective way of getting to a high-end buyer in the business-to business environment," he says."Because our products are so high in price, we can pay a higher cost per lead. Direct mail has been a great way to generate leads cost effectively and target specifically who we want to reach with the right offer at the right time."

Informatica and Connect Direct will launch a second direct mail campaign early this month.

Howard Sewell comments:

The article above is reproduced exactly as it appeared in Business Marketing Magazine. Some inaccuracies merit explanation, however. We did create a "Jump Start Your Data Mart Kit" for Informatica - however, that kit was the OFFER, not the actual mailing. Neither the kit nor the mailer contained jumper cables. The mailer included a color brochure featuring a photograph of jumper cables as one of the graphic images.

For a sample of this campaign, send e-mail to info@connectdirect.com.
For further comments by David Downing, see client comments.