Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a form of marketing that attempts to send its messages directly to consumers, using "addressable" media, such as mail and (increasingly) email. Therefore, direct marketing differs from regular advertising in that it does not place its messages on a third party medium, or in the public market, such as a billboard or a radio commercial would. Instead, the marketing of the service or commodity is addressed directly to the target customer.

Direct marketing is attractive to many marketers, because in many cases its effectiveness can be measured directly. For example, if a marketer sends out one million solicitations by mail, and ten thousand customers can be tracked as having responded to the promotion, the marketer can say with some confidence that the campaign led directly to the responses. By contrast, measurement of other media must often be indirect, since there is no direct response from a consumer. Measurement of results, a fundamental element in successful direct marketing, is explored in greater detail elsewhere in this article.

While many marketers like this form of marketing, it is sometimes criticized for generating unwanted solicitations, which are sometimes referred to as junk mail and spam. However spam and bulk mail drops are not true forms of Direct Marketing as recipients are not identified as prospects by any form of selective criteria.

Any medium that can be used to deliver a communication to a customer can be employed in direct marketing. Direct marketers often refer to such media as "addressable" to distinguish them from "mass" media, such as television, radio, and print.

Direct mail

Probably the most commonly used medium for direct marketing is direct mail, in which marketing communications are sent to customers using the postal service. In many developed countries, direct mail represents such a significant amount of the total volume of mail that special rate classes have been established. In the United States and United Kingdom, for example, there are bulk mail rates that enable marketers to send mail at rates that are substantially lower than regular first-class rates. In order to qualify for these rates, marketers must format and sort the mail in particular ways - which reduces the handling (and therefore costs) required by the postal service.

Unaddressed Mail (Door Drops / Door to Door)

Delivery of unaddressed items through letterboxes ("direct mail without the stamp") takes place in large numbers throughout the USA and EU. Deliveries are either made via the postal service or independent delivery companies or local newspaper publishers.

It is a lower-cost alternative to direct mail and therefore can produce a higher cost per response, especially when used as part of a mixed campaign (with TV or Radio typically).

Telemarketing

In telemarketing, marketers contact the customer via telephone calls. One of the original attractions of telemarketing was the speed with which marketing campaigns could be executed. While direct mail is cost-effective, it is relatively slow, since marketing pieces must be shipped by mail.

Telemarketing also lends itself well to products and services that are complex to buy, such as switching to another telephone company or purchasing a financial service. Certain types of transactions may also be subject to government regulation; telemarketing permits a company representative to walk the customer through the purchase, while ensuring compliance with laws.

While not as varied as direct mail, telemarketing can take several forms.

• Outbound telemarketing: Calls made to customers. By using autodialers and predictive dialers, call centers can call a large number of customers. Voicent provides both autodialers and predictive dialers for a variety of industries.

• Inbound telemarketing: Promotions and offers made when a customer calls the center.

• Voice messages: A number of firms employ special technology to call customers' answering machines.

In the United States, this medium became increasingly popular in the 1990s, as telephone deregulation and competition among telecommunications companies led to decreased costs.

E-mail

Email is proving to be an increasingly popular medium for direct marketers, in large part because of its relatively low cost, but also because customer responses can be generated rapidly. When sent to customers who have given their permission to receive such marketing material, email marketing can be a highly cost-effective method of promotion. However, when performed without permission, or used to send inappropriate messages, the result is e-mail spam, which most Internet users and administrators consider an abuse of network resources and a nuisance. Spam is prohibited by the appropriate-use policies of almost all Internet service providers and increasingly is the subject of laws and regulations aimed at curbing the practice.

Emerging channels

Two new media have received attention from analysts and industry promoters as potential channels for delivering direct marketing. In both cases, their use has not yet become as widespread as established channels, and both still have technological hurdles to overcome. And the longer-term question of whether they will be prone to such abuses as spam may not be answered until wider adoption of the media by marketers.

• Digital cable - For many years, cable television has been promoted as an emerging addressable medium, although no large-scale implementation that would permit highly targeted direct marketing has been successful. Digital cable is being held up as the technology solution that will make the delivery of personalized marketing content via television possible.

• Wireless - Much as with cable, wireless service providers have promised delivery of direct marketing to cell phones and other wireless devices, but early efforts were sporadic. More recently, and particularly in Europe where consumer adoption has been higher than in the United States, marketers have begun seeing success at delivering marketing communications to wireless devices. To date, much of this marketing was constrained to text-based messages sent using the Short message service, or SMS, but the roll-out of 3G technology holds the promise of delivering richer content, and therefore gaining more interest from marketers.

• Internet (banner) ads - Web pages often contain direct market advertisements in the form of banner ads. Often, these ads could be considered indirect (in cases where the company serving the ad is other than the company selling the product or service). But, in many cases, companies like yahoo and others serve millions of ads for their own services.

Direct marketing typically relies heavily on computer databases and is therefore an example of database marketing. Most direct marketing is done by companies whose only function is to manage and perform direct advertising, rather than by the advertised entity itself. The services provided by these companies includes the maintenance of mailing lists and the production of the direct mail pieces themselves in a factory called a lettershop.

Direct marketers have been long-time customers of computer databases, and they often have very sophisticated criteria of inclusion and exclusion in their mailing lists. Recently, political campaigns have begun to appropriate the methods of direct marketers (or to employ direct marketing firms) to raise money and create activism.

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