FAQ

MarketWide makes only one pass of your campaign data, regardless of the number of queries or filters. Other campaign management systems make a separate pass for each segment. Consequently, because of this reduction in the number of steps required to run a campaign, MarketWide saves you a significant amount of time.

MarketWide’s campaign manager performs extremely complex customer selections not possible with conventional database queries. Our proprietary interpreter reads data from a relational platform and performs internal evaluations of the data for campaign selection purposes. This internal evaluation provides blazingly fast campaign performance.

MarketWide allows you to see counts for each segment as the campaign is running. This feature helps you to detect mistakes immediately, change the selection criteria, and resubmit the query.

A Preview feature lets you examine who is matching (or is being evaluated but does not match) at any segment while the campaign runs. Preview is quite useful for validating before the campaign is finished.

DSI’s prices typically range from 50% to 75% less than those of our competitors. Why? DSI is self-funded and profitable. We don’t have the overhead of our larger competitors. Nor do we have to answer to investors clamoring for a quick return on investment. Moreover, DSI makes sure that every component needed by our system is royalty-free, further allowing us to hold down costs.

Read about the MarketWide Advantage for more details!

2. Was MarketWide designed for a particular type of business?

No. DSI has a wide variety of customers, including the following:

Financial Institutions
Manufacturers
Publishers
Non-Profit Organizations
Food Service Providers
Office Product Suppliers
Business-to-Business Industries

As an open architecture product, MarketWide is easy to integrate with most databases. MarketWide makes very few demands in terms of how your data should be arranged. For companies that already have a relational database, it is not at all unusual for MarketWide to install and begin running campaigns in less than a day. For companies that need both a database as well as campaign management, DSI offers custom database development services.

3. On what database platforms does MarketWide run?

MarketWide supports all major relational, ODBC-compliant database platforms, including SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, and Sybase. The MarketWide product is 100% open-architectured, and adapts to whatever data structure is present in your database.

4. What is the maximum database size that MarketWide can query?

MarketWide easily accesses multiple databases and servers without database size limitations. Current DSI client installations range from small (200,000 records) to huge (over 1 billion records). Database platforms we work with range from Pentium/Windows NT machines to half-million dollar multiprocessor Unix systems. DSI guarantees that MarketWide will operate correctly with any major relational database engine, as long as the database is ODBC compliant.

5. How fast can MarketWide run campaigns?

The throughput speed for MarketWide has been benchmarked at almost 90 million records per hour. This benchmark was measured on a Pentium 500 client accessing a SQL Server 2000 database. These incredible speeds are possible because MarketWide makes one pass of the database regardless of the number of segments.

6. What is the maximum number of conditions that MarketWide can use to segment my database?

The only limit to the number of segments or complexity of queries that you may enter is the memory available on your computer. MarketWide performs its extremely complex customer selections using an extraordinarily sophisticated and powerful interpreter that resides outside the database.

Once you enter selection criteria, PromoTrak makes a single pass of your database, accepting or rejecting customers according to your criteria. Customer records are selected only once - at the highest-level match - resulting in automatically unduplicated customer selections. (You can turn off this automatic unduplication feature, if necessary. We're flexible!)

7. Does MarketWide interface with other tools/applications?

Yes. With its export capabilities and ODBC compliance, MarketWide is easily integrated with other applications.

8. Do I need to know a programming language to use MarketWide?

No. No programming knowledge is required to use MarketWide. MarketWide provides a friendly point-and-click, graphical interface for building and executing marketing campaigns and database queries. Typical MarketWide users are non-technical marketing personnel. In fact, people familiar with standard office applications quickly learn to use MarketWide with less than two days of training.

9. What kind of reporting/analysis capabilities does MarketWide have?

MarketWide includes DataMiner, a reporting and analysis tool, AdHoc Query Window, plus the ability to add your own custom reports (or DSI can set up custom reports for you!).

MarketWide's AdHoc Query Window allows you to enter and execute SQL commands directly, or ad hoc. Available from the MarketWide main window and from within most MarketWide applications, the AdHoc Query Window lets you, if necessary, and if you are familiar with SQL language, create new queries or edit existing ones. For example, you can create a point-and-click query, and then switch to the AdHoc Query Window to view and modify the underlying SQL code.

Finally, MarketWide allows you to develop polished custom reports, which "attach" directly to the main window and appear as a standard part of the product. These reports can run dynamically, interacting with your users to get specific constraints and conditions. Your output is displayed in a polished document-style format, from which it can be saved or printed.

10. Can MarketWide create random samples (proprietary, nth, other random, etc.)?

Yes. True random and/or arithmetic processing is available in MarketWide. You do not have to process all of the customers selected by MarketWide.

Sometimes you may want to use to a smaller portion of your selection such as when you have a fixed budget for mailing or if you want to establish Test and Control groups. In situations like these, MarketWide allows you to enter the number of customers you wish to mail. You can enter Nth values by:

Entering the desired percentage to output as a fraction (e.g., "mail to 70% of my first segment, and 60% of my second").

11. When running campaigns, can MarketWide exclude certain groups?

Yes. MarketWide can easily exclude subpopulations using MarketWide's include/exclude and filter options. Use Include/Exclude when you want to include or exclude a given list of customers from an entire campaign.

For example, you might want to exclude individuals you have solicited within the past month. Building a filter is another MarketWide feature that allows you to limit queries to a specific group or subgroup. With more than one include/exclude method, MarketWide allows you to decide the complexity of the include/exclude criteria.

12. Can MarketWide apply seeds (marketing salts) in campaigns?

Yes. Seeds are handled as standard MarketWide easily defined includes. There are no limits to the number of includes that you can define.

13. How much does MarketWide cost?

DSI offers MarketWide software license s for one, two, or an unlimited number of users. There are no additional "per seat" fees, nor is there a "per record" charge. The MarketWide software license is linked to your database: one database equals one MarketWide license.

Our Sales team can give you a price quote for any of our services tailored to your company needs. Find out about our Try Before You Buy option which lets you see the MarketWide difference on your own data.

14. What operating systems do you support for MarketWide?

MarketWide is supported on Windows 2000 and higher.