5.1. Introduction

In chapter 3, the application of information in sales and marketing was discussed, and in chapter 4, the business applications of advanced analysis were examined.

Traditionally, business intelligence (BI) analysis focused on an enterprise and its environment. People as a subject were not researched, unless as anonymous clients through their shopping habits. However, when clients began to be unambiguously identified and their behavior registered (e.g., in banking or telecom operators’ billing systems), a close analysis of an individual client emerged. Analyses clustered mainly around analytical systems for client relationship management. The notable benefits resulting from close behavioral analysis of clients inspired similar solutions in Internet and mobile marketing, as well as in what is broadly understood as e-business.

The identification of an individual client enables the full application of the techniques of direct marketing (database marketing),¹ which is defined as directly interacting with a present or potential purchaser of the company’s product. The revolutionary qualities that BI techniques introduced into direct marketing are as follows:

• Monitoring and full recording of a client’s behavior patterns
• Application of advanced analytical techniques
• The chance to integrate data about the client that comes from different sources (i.e., information about transactions by credit cards along with information about his interests taken from social networks)

New telecommunication technologies related to potential constant access to a client by using mobile systems and access to information about the client’s location provide additional possibilities.² As observed by Sean Kelly,³ the marketing message profile (in accordance with the below-the-line, or BTL,⁴ approach), which results from the departure from mass marketing (the above-the-line, or ATL,⁵ approach), is based on one-to-one communication founded on BI techniques.