Robert John Morton†
Contents
Foreword/Contents
01 Background
02 System Overview
03 Requirements
04 Installation
05 Define Market
06 Statistics
07 Writing Letters
08 Sending Mailshots
09 Telesales
10 Telex & Comms
11 Names & Addresses
12 Maintaining Data
13 Target Sectors
14 Prospect Lists
15 Finding Prospects
Index
Licence Agreement
Eastern Business Systems "Marketeer": User Manual
From the Main Menu, please select Option 2. Then when Target Profile No 1 appears with the command words beneath it, enter the LIST command (or press F8). The Target List Menu then appears. Please use the down-arrow key to scan through the explanatory texts for each of the Target List options and study each one carefully.
Please switch on your matrix printer and select Option 1. Then follow the screen instructions for printing out the Target Profile Specification. When printed, study the Target Profile Specification. Its content is self explanatory. It gives you a permanent record of the Target Profile concerned and the most recent Target Shortlist extracted from MARKETEER's database using that Target Profile. It is the central definitive document for any Name & Address List, Name & Key Values List, Name & Address Labels Set, Mailshot Printing List, Telesales Calling List and Telexshot Transmission List derived from that Target Shortlist.
Now please select Option 2 from the Target List Menu and follow the screen instructions for printing out the Name & Address List of all the prospects who were found to fit Target Profile No 1.
While it is printing, the matrix printer, no matter what lengths you go to in fitting it with a silencing hood etc, does make a fair amount of noise. This can be a problem if you have to answer the telephone or somebody comes in for a quick word during a long printout. In such an event, you can press the carriage return key. This will cause MARKETEER to stop printing temporarily. As you do so, the message changes to tell you that to re-start the printout, you should press the carriage return key again. So after you have finished your phone call, or when the person who nipped in for a quick word has gone, you simply press the carriage return key again to cause MARKETEER to resume printing from where it left off.
It is not unknown for people to start a long printout only to discover that the printer is just about to run out of paper! If this happens to you, all you need do is press the 'Esc' key to abort the printout. When you do this, MARKETEER returns you to the Target List Menu. You may then re-load the printer with a new box of paper and start the printout all over again. The ABORT facility is also useful in the now very rare event that the paper becomes jammed inside the printer. Please note that in addition to being able to abort a printout which is currently in progress, you can also abort a printout while in the temporary halt situation.
The top heading line of the listing shows the 'Target No.' of the Target Profile through which the Target Shortlist [from which this listing was produced] was extracted. The 'Serial No' shown is that of the Target Shortlist itself.
The date shown on the top line is the date this listing was printed. The second title line shows the name of the Target Profile through which the Target Shortlist was extracted plus the time & date the Shortlist was extracted from MARKETEER's database.
All the details relating to a given prospect are contained within a single 217-character print-line. This is essential in order to give the listing the neat tabular appearance which makes it quick and easy to read. Every 6th line is skipped (ie left blank) so that the prospect information lines are effectively grouped into blocks of five. This further enhances the clarity of the listing.
Except for the CROSSREF field, the first 37 characters of a listing line comprises 'key' information which MARKETEER uses to ACTIVELY select and sequence prospects for a Target Shortlist. This information is organised into columns to make it easy to scan. The remaining 180 characters of the line contains those details of the prospect which MARKETEER treats only as passive information which it does not use in its process of selecting or rejecting the prospect for a given Target Shortlist or for sorting him into one of the 6 optional listing orders. This PASSIVE information comprises the prospect's name & address, telephone & telex numbers, name & title of contact, plus additional free-form notes and comments.
The ACTIVE (key-type) information relating to each prospect is printed in columns across the first 37 characters of his print line.
The content of each column is identified by a heading within the Heading Line, which appears immediately above the main body of prospect information lines on each page of the listing.
Namecode: A prospect's name & address line begins with his namecode because this is the primary key by which he is identified within MARKETEER and is therefore the most likely one to be used when searching for him in a listing.
Ref Number: Before the seminar, each rep should read up on the background of each of his prospects and review their past correspondence & sales notes. These are kept for each prospect in his numbered file in the filing cabinet. The Ref Number shown on the prospect's name & address line is the number of his file in the cabinet where these 'paperwork' details are stored. Thus, as has been pointed out before, MARKETEER'S virtue is NOT in storing vast quantities of information about each prospect. Rather, it is in identifying quickly those relatively few prospects who are precisely relevant to your job in hand. MARKETEER thus allows you to spend your time far more profitably in studying your few most relevant prospects in depth rather than skating through the details of many, most of whom you will inevitably dismiss as inapplicable.
CrossRef: This is the XREF field as shown in a prospect's name & address box when displayed on the screen. It is included as a separately tabulated field for easy reference. Because of its intrinsic nature it is not usable by the Targeting Subsystem for actively selecting prospects for a Target Shortlist. Its use is for manual on-screen 'who knows who' searches.
Postcode: The first two letters of a postcode specify the post area. Please scan down the postcode column of your printout. Notice that all the prospects in the same postcode area [ie with the same two initial postcode letters] are grouped together. Now please take a coloured felt tip pen and a ruler and draw a line right across the printout at each point where the initial letters of the postcode change. The printout is now visually divided into the different postcode areas within the ANGLIA sales area. Thus, for our working example of the Cambridge seminar, what appears between each pair of coloured lines is the list of prospects to be looked after by each of your respective reps. Now please scan down the Namecode column. The namecodes between each pair of lines are in alphabetic order. Each rep thus has an alphabetic list of his own prospects.
Sales Area: To save space and leave sufficient room for the prospect's name & address details on the same line, the sales area here is shown as a single letter A through R. The sales area's name can be determined by counting through the alphabet down the sales area names column on the Target Profile Specification printout.
The 9 passive 'name & address' fields can contain anything up to 27 characters each. So there is insufficient space within the 180 characters available to print them as separate columns. However, we also know from Chapter 11 that as these items are typed into a prospect's name & address box, MARKETEER imposes an automatic restriction which ensures that together their lengths can never add up to more than 156 characters.
There is enough room, therefore, to fit them into the 180 characters of remaining line-space provided they are printed in free-form, that is, provided they are printed one after the other 'as they come' straight across the line. This leaves 24 characters worth of space still to spare. But since the fields are not separated into columns, extra punctuation characters have to be inserted in order to separate them visually. These account for the remaining 24 characters of spare line-space.
Since none of this information is ever used for selecting or sorting, you will never need to scan any of these fields individually to search for a particular 'value'. Nothing is lost, therefore, by having them printed free-form rather than in separate columns.
Please select Option 3 of the Target List Print Menu and follow the screen instructions for printing the Name & Key Values List. Once printed, please study this listing also. This printout is self-explanatory apart perhaps from the following:
Unlike the other key columns which contain the full name of the currently selected key value for each prospect, the Product/Service key's column contains one or more letters A through R. This is because, unlike the other keys, the Product/Service key can have more than one value selected for each prospect at any given time. The interpretation of the letters in the Product/Service key column is given at the bottom of each page.
The interpretation of the characters shown in the Selector Code column for each prospect depends on what meanings you have allocated to them yourself. You may find it useful to produce an 'interpretation card' which you can lay on the printout to interpret each character or group of characters as illustrated in the example below:
You can then line up the card on the listing as shown to interpret the Selector Code settings for any prospect.
For each prospect, the figure in the first LAPSE [elapsed time] column is the number of days between 'today' and the prospect's Last Event. The figure in the second LAPSE column is the number of days between 'today' and the prospect's scheduled Next Event. Please note that here, 'today' is the date the Target Shortlist was extracted [which is not necessarily the same as the date the Listing was printed]. A positive LAPSE means that the respective Event is in the past. A negative LAPSE means that it is in the future.
Although both the Last Event's LAPSE and the Next Event's LAPSE may be negative or positive, normally the Last Event's LAPSE is positive [past] and the Next Event's LAPSE is negative [future].
The names & addresses of the prospects whose details appear on a Target Shortlist can also be printed out as a set of name & address labels. As with the Name & Address listing, whose name & address does, and whose name & address does not, get printed as a label is determined entirely by the current Target Profile. The label format in which each prospect's name & address is printed is illustrated below:
As can be seen above, the name & title of contact appears at the top rather than at the bottom as in the case of the familiar name & address box which appears on the screen. We could have arranged it as in the name & address box by putting the company name & address followed by:
Attn. MR BASIL DAVIS
PURCHASING MANAGER
But we feel that in today's less formal sales/marketing environment the chosen style with the contact's name & title at the top is the more appropriate. The reference data at the top of the label is made up as follows:
You can, if you wish, print your name & address labels on the normal listing paper and then cut it up into labels afterwards. In fact, there are various machines on the market that will cut up standard size listing paper into labels, gum them and then stick them on to your mailpieces. However, these are expensive and can only be justified where your volume of mail is extremely high. As an alternative, you can buy special computer stationery which has sticky address labels ready mounted in rows across continuous form waxed paper. MARKETEER requires stationery with 3·2 by 1 & 7/16 inch labels mounted 4 across the web with a 0·1 inch horizontal separation.
Please open the cover of your matrix printer and remove the listing paper. Then mount the special sticky label stationery in its place. Please refer to the printer's User Manual if you have any difficulty. The gauge of the sprocket holes on the special stationery may be slightly different from that of the normal listing paper. So you will probably have to adjust the width of the printer's tractor feed.
Please fit the sprocket holes of the sticky label stationery onto the tractor spikes such that the top of the print head is lined up to print on the top print line of a row of labels. The very top of the print head should in fact lie slightly above the top edge of the label. Now close the tractor clamps and check that the stationery is hanging straight and freely beneath the printer.
Some boxes of sticky label stationery have a 'leader' of waxed paper so that the printer's tractor can get a grip on the stationery with the first row of labels in the right position for printing. However, where there is no 'leader', you will have to waste the first row of labels so that enough of the stationery is resting in the tractor to allow it to grip. You can use the so-called 'wasted' row of labels in your typewriter for 'one-off' letters or parcels.
Please now select Option 4 to print the name & address labels for the prospects on the Target Shortlist you created in Chapter 13. A box appears beneath the menu asking you to load your printer with label stationery and then switch it on. Since you have just done this, please press the carriage return key. The printer will then start to print the labels. The Temporary Halt and Abort messages then appear in the box beneath the menu. These halt and abort facilities are exactly the same as described earlier for the Name & Address listing.
Once the printing has finished, you are returned automatically to the Target List Menu.
Now please press the 'Form Advance' key on the printer to throw the last of the printed labels clear. However, in the interest of economy, do NOT tear off the stationery at the next perforation as you would with normal listing paper. Instead, peel off the last two rows of printed labels and stick them on your mailpieces. Then cut the waxed paper to leave a 'two row' length of blank 'leader' for your next printout. This prevents you wasting two entire rows of labels each time you do a printout.
You will notice that the sticky label stationery is divided into 'pages' by means of horizontal perforations such that each 'page' contains 8 rows of labels. However, these 'pages' are irrelevant as far as MARKETEER's label printing program is concerned. It deals only in 'rows' of labels: not 'pages' of labels. The only purpose of the perforations is to allow the stationery to be conveniently folded to fit in the box.
Now please switch off the printer and open its cover. Then remove the special sticky label stationery and put it away in its box. Then re-mount the ordinary listing paper and close the printer cover again and switch the printer on again. We shall now take a closer look at the labels themselves and how they can be put to good use.
The first label of a label printout does not contain a name & address. Rather, it forms the heading of the printout as a whole, giving information concerning the Target List from which it was printed.
We have already discussed the format of a MARKETEER name & address label. We shall now show two examples of how they can be used to good effect.
When sending out a mailshot, it is very helpful to the recipient if you enclose a reply-paid card for him to fill in. Such a reply-paid card could include a list of request options each with a small blank box at the side. Then, all he has to do to make his request is put a tick in the appropriate box.
If, on this same reply-paid card, you provide a sticky label containing his name and address details, he is further motivated to respond because he does not even have to fill in who he is. A suggested layout for such a reply-paid card is shown below. Your business reply address and licence number should be printed on the reverse in the Post Office standard format.
The card is the area of an A4 sheet when folded in three the way you would fold an A4 letter to put it into an envelope. The position reserved for the label is such that when the card is placed in a standard window envelope the recipient's name & address will show through the envelope's window. Thus the one label can be used both for sending the mailshot out in the first place, and for showing who returned it if and when it arrives back at your sales office. A typical reply-paid card layout is shown below:
Since the label also bears the responder's reference number and sales area, you can immediately put your hands on his file and also know who (which rep) should be handling his response. The serial number of the Target Profile which produced his label tells you which Target Group of prospects the response is from. This is valuable when you have more than one mailshot active at the same time.
You could have the card produced as a one-third A4 size item on its own for enclosure with your brochure or sales letter (or both). Or you could make the card an integral part of your brochure with a perforation so that the recipient is able to fill it in and tear it off. Finally, if you enclose it with a sales letter, the name & address block on the sales letter can equally well serve as the 'show through' name & address on the out-going journey.
By sticking the name & address labels on to 5 by 3 index cards and then putting them in a drawer of an index cabinet, you can provide an 'off-line' profiled card index which can be used independently of the computer.
This means that each of your sales reps can have his own personal card index covering his own group of prospects. He may even have more than one such card index. For example, he could have one arranged in alphabetic order for looking up a prospect's file number from his namecode. And he could have another arranged in postcode order for planning his visits according to the best route order without having to 'draw' a fresh listing off from the computer each time.
Also, whenever he contacts one of his prospects, he can note the date and the type of contact plus any change in his status or other key values on the back of the card. Then, at the end of the week or month, you can update MARKETEER'S database in one grand session by going through all your prospects' card notes. Updating MARKETEER'S database this way ensures that it is never updated impulsively thus greatly reducing the likelihood of error.
Any of the up to 18 Target Shortlists which can exist [for each user in a multi-user environment] on MARKETEER at any one time can be used to generate a Mailshot List, a Telesales Calling List and a Telexshot List. However, only one Mailshot List, Telesales Calling List and Telexshot List can exist [per user] at any one time. Each of these lists has a separate existence from the Target Shortlist from which it was generated. Therefore it continues to exist as originally generated even if the Target Shortlist from which it was derived has since been re-extracted and therefore now contains a different set of prospects.
The Mailshot, Telesales and Telexshot lists are used by MARKETEER's Mail, Phone and Telex subsystems to print mailshots, run telesales calling sessions and transmit telexshots. Information regarding the progress and outcome of a mailshot, telesales session or telexshot transmission is added to each respective list by the subsystem concerned and is later presented in the appropriate end-of-session report.
As an exercise, assuming that the Target Shortlist you extracted does contain some prospects, please use options 5, 6 and 7 of the Target List Menu to create a Mailshot List, a Telesales Calling List and a Telexshot Transmission List. Then press the 'Esc' key until you return to MARKETEER's main menu and switch off your printer.