Direct marketing provides a unique range of benefits because it enables you to engage directly with your audience - whether they are prospects, leads, end users or existing customers.
Other advantages of direct marketing include:
Flexible Targeting
Direct marketing enables you to talk directly identify, isolate and communicate with well-defined target markets. This means you get a higher conversion and success rate than if you tried communicating to everyone in the mass market. And direct marketing is also far cheaper than mass market communication.
Multiple Uses
Direct marketing doesn't just have to be used to sell - it can be used to test new markets and trial new products or customers, to reward existing customers to build loyalty, collect information for future campaigns, or segment a customer base.
Cost-Effectiveness
The cost per acquisition of direct mail can be significantly less than other marketing methods. Plus once you've acquired a customer, you can also benefit from highly profitable repeat sales, gained once again through direct marketing methods.
Ease of Management
Direct marketing provides greater control and accountability than other marketing methods. It is easy to measure results because you know exactly how many people you've contacted in the first place. Once you've run a direct marketing campaign and know the conversion rates involved, you can work on refining and improving your success rates. Plus it also makes it easier to plan, forecast and budget for future direct marketing campaigns.
Rapid Delivery
Direct marketing is both swift and flexible in achieving results. This is especially true for telemarketing, one of the direct marketing tools, as the results of a conversation can be logged immediately and scripts adjusted straight away to improve results.
Testing Capability
Direct marketing allows you to test, test and test again in order to hit upon the most successful combination of direct marketing tools. Any of these variables such as timing, list, message, mailer and offer can be adjusted, tested again, and measured to find the optimum direct marketing proposition.
Relationship Building
Direct marketing is far more effective at initiating and developing a meaningful dialogue with new customers. From the outset you have a direct relationship with them, which can also be used as part of a push pull strategy to stimulate demand for retailers.
Targeting of Messages
Direct marketing can enable you to target different messages to different recipients. Using technology such as digital printing, it's even possible to display different images, designs and offers in a direct mailer according to who it's being sent to, as well as personalising the mailer to the recipient to increase conversion rates.
Geographic Targeting
Direct marketing can be used for any level of geographic targeting, whether it's the local area surrounding a shop or restaurant, regional targeting by postcode or county, national targeting and even international - when direct marketing can prove a far cheaper way of testing the market than a costly personal sales visit.
Advantages Of Direct Marketing
Direct mail is a marketing technique in which the seller sends marketing messages directly to the buyer. Direct mail is a unique blend of advertising and sales. It is sometimes referred to as direct marketing or direct response marketing. Direct mail is, as the term implies, a marketing message that's delivered to prospects by mail. It is opened one piece at a time and read one piece at a time.
Direct mail is a way of advertising in which advertisers mail printed ads, letters or other solicitations to large groups of consumers. It is used in many different situations, limited primarily by the imagination of the advertiser. The term direct marketing is believed to have been first used in 1961 in a speech by Lester Wunderman, who pioneered direct marketing techniques with brands such as American Express and Columbia Records.
There are two main definitional characteristics which distinguish direct mail from other types of marketing or advertising. This involves commercial communication (direct mail, e-mail, tele-marketing) with consumers or businesses, usually unsolicited. This aspect of direct marketing involves an emphasis on traceable, measurable positive responses from consumers regardless of medium.
The most common form of direct marketing is direct mail sometimes called junk mail, used by advertisers who send paper mail to all postal customers in an area or to all customers on a list. While many marketers like this form of marketing, some direct marketing efforts using particular media have been criticized for generating unwanted solicitations. Some consumers are demanding an end to direct marketing for privacy and environmental reasons, which direct marketers, are able to provide by using "opt out" lists, variable printing and more targeted mailing lists.
Direct mail is one of the most measurable methods of marketing. It is attractive to many marketers, because in many cases its positive effect can be measured directly. Yet since the start of the Internet-age the challenge of Marketing Executives is tracking direct marketing responses and measuring results. Response rates are generally higher when the response device is separate from, rather than part of, the brochure or letter. Response rates to prospects (non-customers) average around 1%.
One of the most important parts of your direct mail piece is the response mechanism. 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. With direct mail marketing you can code your mail pieces to determine the exact number of responses you received from each campaign.
Direct mail is one of the most common forms of direct marketing in use today. Direct mail is a dynamic, versatile marketing tool and is the most heavily used direct marketing medium, and its popularity continues to grow despite postage increases.
Both Steve Sellwood & Bob Withers are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Bob Withers has sinced written about articles on various topics from Direct Marketing, Your Online Business and Writing. Bob Withers is a professional sales and marketing person with over twenty years in the field. He has also turned his sights on network marketing to apply his trade. If you want to get in touch with Bob or learn more about sales and marketing please visit:. Bob Withers's top article generates over 8100 views. Bookmark Bob Withers to your Favourites.
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