Computer system for merchant communication to customers

In a computer system, a method for providing a planned series of communications from merchants to recipients, comprising the steps of:

• providing a source of recipient information including identification and demographies of recipients, shopping activity relating to recipients including history of prior communications by recipient and actions invoked by the recipients and by the merchants, and indications of merchant desired communications, the indications of desired communications including communication content, communications channel for delivering the communication content, and communication schedule for scheduling the delivery, including indications of times for initiating communications;
• and
• employing a processor assembly (1) forming subsets of recipients as a function of demographies, shopping activity, communication history and said desired communications as indicated in the source;
• and
• (2) providing a working series of communications for each formed subset, by determining (a) dates for each of the communications in said series based on the times indicated in the source and (b) contents of each of the communications in the working series from the indications of desired communications.

A computer system for managing customer communications from a merchant comprising:

• a strategy data base for storing (i) indications of merchant-defined criteria for grouping customers into subsets as desired by the merchant, and (ii) working programs, each working program comprising indications of desired series of communications as predetermined by the merchant including communication content, communication channel for delivering the communication content, and communication schedule for scheduling the delivery, each communication content differing from one communication to the next;
• a marketing database for storing customer information including indications of shopping activity which comprises prior customer communications, and identification and contact data of existing customers of the merchant, the marketing database being constantly updated to include current shopping activity of customers such that an ongoing shopping history and communication history of each customer is indicated in the marketing database;
• and
• a processor assembly coupled between the strategy database and the marketing database, the processor assembly (i) constantly monitoring and obtaining customer information from the marketing database, (ii) determining subsets of customers according to the merchant defined criteria indicated in the strategy database, including constantly regrouping customers into different subsets according to changes in shopping history and communication history of customers with each update of the marketing database, and (iii) executing multiple working programs against multiple subsets, each program execution (1) establishing a working communication formed of communication contents according to the strategy database, and contact data of the customers in the respective subset, according to the marketing database and (2) delivering the working communication using the communication channel and according to the communication schedule indicated in the strategy database.