Marketing systems and methods that preserve consumer privacy

Details Marketing systems and methods that preserve consumer privacy Marketing systems and methods that preserve consumer privacy

1999-03-19

2001-09-04

Gravini, Stephen (Department: 2163)

Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co

Automated electrical financial or business practice or...

Discount or incentive

C705S014270

Reexamination Certificate

active

06285983

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally relates to product and service marketing and, more particularly, to on-line consumer marketing.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Marketers have long made use of data on spending habits, demographics, behavior patterns and other information regarding consumers in order to guide the marketing of financial products, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, and other products and services. Direct marketing efforts targeted at individual consumers have become more and more common as marketers leverage the growing wealth of individual consumer data available. Growing use of credit cards and the emergence of electronic commerce and the Internet have expanded the amount of consumer information available in electronic form. Data-driven marketing in general and direct marketing in particular have increasingly taken advantage of expanded electronic marketing data On-line marketing activity has grown rapidly as Internet-based communications has expanded. Such on-line marketing activity includes, for example, offerings directed to individuals through e-mail accounts and the use of web browser cookie files to target web page banner ads. As is known in the art, cookie files may be installed by a web site server on the computer hard disk drive of a browsing consumer. Cookie files typically include information indicating that the browser has visited that web site.
Businesses are increasingly utilizing a combination of marketing information such as consumer lists, demographic profiles and customer segmentation to learn more about who their customers are, what new products they may wish to purchase, how to best maintain their existing customer base, and how to entice new customers. Some businesses seek to integrate both external and internal customer data with a heavy emphasis on consumer behavioral data. The phenomenal growth of the Internet has spawned a new area of interest. As the number of Internet users, and more specifically the number of Internet shoppers, increases, the demand for Internet market information and online purchase behavior has boomed.
Database analysis tools enable marketers to test hypotheses regarding consumer behavior across large consumer data sets. For example, a conventional database analysis can test the hypothesis that consumers living in the 30338 area code are more likely to make a major furniture purchase within six months of buying a new car. Data mining tools, on the other hand, enable marketers to learn about consumer behavior by applying sophisticated learning algorithms to large consumer data sets. Data mining enables marketers to reveal new consumer behavior hypotheses rather than simply test existing hypotheses. For example, data mining can reveal a hitherto unknown strong correlation between purchases of beer and disposable diapers among married men between 6 PM and 10 PM on weekdays. With such new knowledge at their disposal, marketers can develop marketing programs accordingly.
Armed with knowledge gleaned from the application of data mining algorithms to consumer data sets, marketers can target specific offerings to particular individuals described by a unique marketing profile. These targeted marketing efforts strike many as an invasion of privacy, so governments in the United States and abroad increasingly are restricting the uses to which individual marketing data can be put.
Unfortunately, conventional marketing systems are built around the capability to target individual consumers in the systems' marketing database. These conventional marketing systems by design thus do not shield personal consumer data from marketers. Moreover, conventional marketing systems are often built around databases containing old data, so offerings are sometimes targeted to individuals no longer described by the marketing profile. In addition, conventional marketing systems do not enable marketers to access marketing information on-line and/or do not accumulate data from on-line consumer activity. Conventional marketing systems, moreover, are focused on a few specific market segments (consumer packaged goods or pharmaceuticals, for example) and are therefore not useful to a broad range of businesses serving other market segments; forcing those businesses to rely on anecdotal market information or to perform costly market research on their own.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide real-time marketing systems and associated methods for creating marketing profiles and for directing customized offers to consumers that are associated with the marketing profiles while preserving consumer privacy.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide marketing systems and associated methods for enabling marketers to frame real-time offers according to a marketing profile describing elements of class records and to then direct those offers to individual consumers.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide marketing systems and associated methods for enabling marketers to take advantage of on-line consumer data collection.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide marketing systems and associated methods for aggregating consumer behavior information, for abstracting from the aggregated consumer behavior information, for thereby enabling marketers to develop marketing programs, for determining which consumers should receive a targeted offering from a marketer in such a way that consumer identity is shielded from the marketer, for communicating such targeted offerings to particular consumers, and for learning from the consumers' response to the offering.
These and other objects are provided, according to an aspect of the present invention, by a marketing system for directing customized offers to consumers comprising a secure server that includes an individual records database derived from a consumer data set and first communications facilities to enable the secure server to communicate with individual consumers. The system further comprises a marketing server that includes a classes database derived from an abstraction of the individual records database and second communications facilities that provide access by marketers to the marketing server. The system further comprises a third communications facilities to enable the marketing server to communicate with the secure server. According to an embodiment of the invention, the secure server, in response to instructions received from the marketing server, communicates offers to individual consumers.
These and other objects are also provided, according to an aspect of the present invention, by a method of directing customized offers to consumers that comprises the steps of creating individual records in an individual records database by aggregating consumer data; generating class records in a classes database, where the class records generating step further comprises the steps of abstracting the individual records to create the class records and creating an index tracing the class records to the individual records, creating marketing profiles describing elements of the classes database in response to a request from a marketer, generating an offer to individual consumers in response to offer initiation by a marketer, and communicating the offer to individual consumers.
These and other objects are also provided, according to an aspect of the present invention, by a method of directing customized offers to consumers that comprises the steps of creating an individual records database including a plurality of individual records that describe consumer behavior, storing the individual records database on a secure server, abstracting the individual records of the individual records database to generate class records that are stored in a class records database, wherein the step of abstracting generates class records devoid of information identifying individual consumers, and wherein each of the class records is traceable to a corresponding individual record, identifying a subset of the class r

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