Some organizations have whole departments of experts who can bring together the basics of a customer record (name, address, purchase history) with everything from credit scores and attitudes towards various media vehicles to help predict where they will get the next sale. Others struggle to keep their mailing list clean enough to get it through the U.S. Postal Service.  

"lifestyle, values, and geo-cultural marketing is light years beyond marital status, age, and income."

-- Ken Will, Director of Consumer Research for D&A Solutions

Like anything else in life and business, skills and competence falls within a range of abilities. Most of us know more can be done, we’re just not sure what to do, or how. The place to start is with an assessment of what you can do on your own, and what areas might benefit from some help.  

Aside from internal resources, you could ask one of your media partners, or direct mail service providers to help. Many will do so for a low fee, or for nothing at all if you spend enough money with them. They can take your database and run it through some simple steps to learn the basics about your customers: age, income, education level, presence of children, etc. They might even return the database to you with that information appended, so you can incorporate it into your customer relationship management software. You can conduct some basic analyses with this information, and begin to understand what their makeup is, and create simple demographic segments. 

While these exercises are low- to no-cost and can improve the efficiency and accuracy of your programs, these fall short of providing the kinds of insights that lead to real competitive advantage.