ST. CLOUD — Nearly four decades ago, Gordy Meyer started crunching numbers for Fingerhut, the general merchandise catalog that marketed to middle-class customers.
It was there he learned how to connect the dots with data: A customer who filled out an order form with a pen was considered more creditworthy than someone who used pencil. A single order form could glean 30 or so similar tidbits of data, which helped Fingerhut make safer bets when issuing credit to consumers.
"Behind the scenes, they were 10 years ahead of all the marketers and all the banks in terms of using data for marketing," said Meyer, 61.
He applied the same predictive scoring prowess to three companies he created and sold over the past two decades — RiskWise, eBureau and TruSignal.
Now he's taken the helm of St. Cloud-based Dayta Marketing as the agency embarks on new growth, clients and a promise to reinvent marketing for smaller enterprises.
"Marketing has gotten extremely complicated, and that complexity has created more of an issue for small- to medium-sized businesses compared to their larger counterparts because the larger companies can throw people at the problem often," said Luke Riordan, founder and president of Dayta. "We try to help them focus on what internal resources they can leverage ... and what part of their business they should outsource."
Dayta offers fractional marketing services, meaning a company hires it for one part of its strategy. The agency uses five-person pods to provide the services from branding and advertising to media management, search engine optimization and website development. This allows companies to compete in the complex marketing world at a fraction of the cost of maintaining a full-time marketing staff.
"[The pods] spend time getting to understand each business, what their strategy is and how they can help," Meyer said. "Usually they are operating through one account manager."