Creating Data Gold for Breeders and Beyond

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40 – July, 2020

By Wayne Cavanaugh

Every dog registry in the world has one thing in common: they enter, store, and retrieve data. In fact, they are IT and customer service companies at their core. Their biggest assets are the names of dogs, lots of names of dogs. Their inventory is words and numbers. Some of those words and numbers could be of great use to breeders while simultaneously creating revenue for AKC – if used far more creatively than it is today.

While the public, and perhaps some of those in the sport, may envision registries as organizations full of dog experts, they are not; the majority of a registry’s staff comprises IT, data entry, and customer service workers. Therefore, for a registry to present untapped data in ways useful to breeders, it is essential that the small group of dog people come up with ideas for the large group of data people.

Unfortunately, the typical approach in most registries is to let the marketing department and consulting firms mine the registry’s database to create revenue by selling things that may or may not be vaguely related to purebred dogs and is of no use to breeders.

Using customer data to sell things isn’t a bad idea. In fact, it’s a universal way to create income. It is not, however, the only use of data that can make money or make sense – especially when it comes to dog registries.

AKC uses their data to sell products such as leashes, toys, vacuum cleaners and the infamous AKC Potty Patch (I didn’t make that up. Search “Potty Patch Compatible Blue Refills” at Walmart or Amazon). I’m not sure if the Potty Patch cheapens or polishes the AKC logo over time. Either way, there is nothing wrong with using data and branding to sell things that may help keep the ship afloat. It seems to me, though, that only focusing on data for public marketing creates a glaring missed opportunity.

Click here to read the complete article
40 – July, 2020

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jul 11 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.