The Experts Praise

The Business of Database Marketing

Whether you are an old hand or a newcomer to database marketing, you can profit from The Business of Database Marketing. The explanations of RFM, profiling and modeling are worth the price of the book all by themselves! I found it packed with valuable rules of thumb, clear explanations of sometimes complex topics, as well as wonderful stories accumulated from Richard Tooker’s decades-long career in database marketing.

Richard Tooker is one of the legendary pioneers of database marketing who not only helped to create the concept, but has spent his entire working life improving it and modifying it. He has now written an excellent introduction to the subject—worthwhile for those new to the field as well as a review for experienced hands. His writing style is conversational and easy to read. Throughout, he emphasizes his main points as “Universal Constants.” Particularly interesting is his personal introduction to database marketing in 1975. In his 21 easy-to-understand chapters he includes the “37 best practices” and a summary chapter of scores of “Dos and Don’ts,” plus a valuable glossary of technical terms. No one who works in direct marketing should be without this valuable book.

A history, a primer, a pragmatic work on the business purposes of databases and how they relate to real world results. Richard has written a work that is perfect for a marketer of any experience level with nuggets to take away from every chapter. This will become a must read direct marketing book that will keep company with Bob Stone’s Successful Direct Marketing Methods and Stan Rapp’s Maxi Marketing books.

The Business of Database Marketing is destined to be a classic. In the tradition of pioneers Arthur Hughes and David Shepard & Associates, Richard Tooker nails it with a lucid, practical and robust exploration of the multiple concepts of database marketing and its applications. Filled with case study references, Tooker’s identification of the “universal constants of database marketing” is worth the price of admission. You cannot go wrong adding this one to your professional library. It has so many nuggets of information gold about a complicated subject it clearly qualifies as a mine. My advice: a “must-read” for experienced pros and novices alike.

A fun read. Tooker has a breezy style that makes his innovative reconceptualization of conventional marketing wisdom easy to absorb.

At last, a comprehensive guide to setting up and managing a database marketing database program for your company! If Kinky Friedman had set out to write a book about database marketing, this would be it. It’s a sometimes irreverent, often humorous, and always engaging look at the do’s and don’ts of executing a winning data-base marketing strategy and creating the underlying database that drives it. His complete and pragmatic guide is laid out in very straightforward (read: English) terms so that you can avoid the pitfalls of others and be successful the first time—or this time— around. A bible for anyone whose business is driven by database marketing and a playbook for every company that provides database marketing services to its customers.

From start to finish, for expert or novice, Richard Tooker’s work is destined to be a pivotal work for those who create and maintain sophisticated databases. Richard puts the pieces together so that all parts of the database puzzle, including CRM, outsourcing and the ever-daunting demands for an ROI are addressed. From the section on “37 best practices” to the final “Do and Don’ts,” this work is essential reading for every B2B and B2C marketer. I especially like his “Universal Constants” which are stand-alone pearls of wisdom. One of these sums up the value of this book when he says, “Sooner or later, all database marketers will be asked to prove that what they do has value.” Read this and you’ll be able to answer this inevitable question.

In writing The Business of Database Marketing Richard Tooker has a taken a very complex subject, difficult for most of us to comprehend, and made it interesting, straightforward, and easy to understand. His aim is to cover the “the entire spectrum of fundamentals” and he has done a masterful job of accomplishing his goal. His book is the best one I’ve found in all my years in the Marketing World for explaining the strategies for database development com-bined with the technological tactics for implementation. The practitioners in the Database Marketing World have a great deal to gain by understanding his insights into this important subject matter.

Richard Tooker’s 30+ years experience have allowed him to share a unique perspective about the business end of database marketing, something that until now has been lacking in the available literature. the book is well-written, and entertains at the same time it conveys valuable advice to database marketers on both sides of the desk.