An avatar represents the chosen alternative personna of an individual. It is important because it can be an indication of a behavior and/or lifestyle of individuals in your target market. Although it is not (yet) possible to link an avatar with a real person, it is important to recognize that through an avatar, individuals are offering up additional lifestyle and behavior information about themselves.

So why are avatars important? Avatars often do not represent a pure demographic. Rather, they represent lifestyles and behaviors. When translating this to marketing, it is clear that demographics alone do not define a market segment. Lifestyles and behaviors capture the true essence of an individual. Therefore these factors must be included in your market segmentation strategy.

It strikes me that many marketers continue to focus only on response rate.  However if you think about it, although it has some relevance, it does not necessarily lead to revenue generation- and revenue generation is THE role of marketing management.  Hence, we need to begin shifting our focus further downstream.  We need to shift the primary focus from response rates and on to revenue generation.

This week AccuData launched a new product called Snapshot.  It’s a big deal around here.  What is it?

Snapshot is an ecommerce application on our leads site, www.acculeads.com.  Snapshot allows a user to upload a customer list (b2B, B2C) at which point the system automatically appends data (demos, lifestyle, SIC division for B2B lists, etc.) and produces a profile report or a “Snapshot” of the uploaded customers if you will.  Beyond producing the profile, Snapshot automatically scores a target geographic area for prospects that statistically look just like the customers uploaded into the application - leads that are available for purchase online.

For many of our clients Snapshot is a big step-up from simple selects or heuristic targeting methods.  The Snapshot approach applies statistical rigor and can improve lift while at the same time providing a good deal of information helpful in channel selection and in the development of creative and offers.

What really excites me about Snapshot is that we’re offering what was formerly a time consuming analytics process on the web with extremely attractive economics.