Database size vs quality
When people first think about starting up a new database, they tend to measure their success in terms of how many patrons there are in there.
Let’s talk honestly, having patrons on your list is important, but it’s not the only, or even the best, measure of a good database.
In this case, size really doesn't matter.
Why is it, then, that so many venues and promoters fear doing anything that might result in a reduction in the overall number of patrons in their database?
Mark Brownlow, a knowledgable internet guru in enewsletters has published an excellent article discussing our obsession with list size. To summarise he makes the following good points:
- There are other metrics that we can and should measure: message open rates, clicks and conversions, for example
- Quality is far more important than Quantity in regards to the type of patrons you have in your database
- It’s “much easier to do what we’ve been doing — with adequate results — than change things and risk a disaster” (in this case, any drop in your list size)
We have analysed the performance of several emails that have gone through MyGuestlist this year, and every single time we came up with the same exact outcome:
Any venue or promoter which has a smaller sized database but full of patrons and members that have been to the venue/event or had some sort of interaction with them, will always have a higher success rate in their promotional campaigns as opposed to those who believe just quantity is important.
I guess depending on what you’re doing this is somewhat true. I used to run heaps of parties where I would use nothing more than my friend’s birthdays as a way to fill up the place. This would be all that I would do and the place would then run itself. I know its easier said than done but I really didnt go about hiring girls on clipboards to take down details of people who were probably going to opt out in any case
Wow man.
Where have you been promoting? Let us know so we can all get a piece of this pie.
Tony, I’ve ran some events in Sydney and will be looking to start a regular night soon. Just looking for the right venue.
But I didnt mean to be a smart ass. Just sayin. There is no need to be all obsessed over how big your database size. Whats that saying about the motion in the ocean? I think it applies here.
I use facebook and myguestlist both but dont actually make it really easy for people to come on to the database so that i keep it full of only people who are really interested in my promos.
I run a couple of restaurants both in Melbourne and Sydney and can safely say that since we purposely initiated an effort to reduce our database size, we have seen great results in our email and competition campaigns.
It almost feels as if we weeded out all the pests in our garden and left only the nice, colourful roses to work with.
I call bullshit on this whole thing!!!
Yes i’m not denying that quality doesn’t matter, but if you have 80 000 entries in your database over someone who has 800…how can it not matter???
There’s a reason why people sell databases to begin with!!!
Dude there are so many flaws to your argument, where to begin? I work as a marketing manager for 3 venues with completely different data sizes in each 3. I do the facebook and email/sms side of things and can safely say that the amount of people you have in your database matters, but not too much.
You see, in one venue, the owner is a little bit tech savvy and understands that you don’t just blast shit out for no reason just so you can say “I’ve sent something out this week.” We do birthday gift vouchers, competitions and all sorts of cool innovative stuff that ties in the patrons that are interested in our venue to their hobbies, likes and behaviours.
On the other hand, at one of my other venues, the owners have specific guidelines on how to do weekly tasks and get me to send out emails and sms to just everyone in their database.
So here are the questions:
Who do you think has more optouts?
Who do you think has a higher open rate?
Who do you think has a better ROI?
Who do you think has a better brand image and reputation?
Well said. Completely agree.
Great reply. So true!
It’s a balance of a bit of both really. It’s good to get a nice steady stream of growth of your target crowd without just adding randoms.
Its the biggest debate in online marketing but as some others have commented above me, it really is a mix of quality and quantity that make it more successful. Thing i find funny the most is when promoters or venue managers get worried about their people in their database opting out. Its not that big of a deal. They arent interested and arent going to come to any of your venues or nights anyway, so why have em there???
You dont want people coming over to your place that dont wanna be there do you??? Same thing goes here really.
Brett…could not have said it better myself.
What’s the point of having thousands of entries if they are not people who have heard of your venue, interested in your venue or more importantly never gave you permission to send them info to begin with which makes the whole act illegal!?
I think too many people within hospitality are still stuck in a very old-school way of thinking and don’t embrace social media, clean databases, and segmented marketing the way other industries have.
Hi guys
You are completely correct about some of the points you make in the debate over quality vs quantity.
Here at MyGuestlist, we are able to observe which campaigns work best and under which circumstances.
Although we do not disclose personal campaign information, I can say without a doubt, that the size of your database is only one factor in an algorithm of what makes a perfect campaign work.
Here are some more:
- Timing (both date and time of day)
- Source of recipients (did you source this data from a clipboard, the web, your personal contact list etc)
- Date of acquisition (how old is the data? Patrons can move on their lives and fall outside of the barriers of your target crowd)
- Have they been only once, casually, frequently or never to your venue
- Content you have in your promos (this one is by far the biggest)
- Subject Lines in emails
- Presentation of campaign
- Nature/source of campaign (is it pushed to a person, referred to by a friend etc)
- Size of database (there it is)
- HTML vs Image
- Opt out procedure
- Nature of previous promos
There are most likely some that I am missing out on, but have a think about all the above and see whether you may be doing anything wrong.
There is probably enough info that we could share on each one of those points to fill up a blog post for each.
Thank you……
Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!…