Direct Marketing Effectiveness

"In the midst of your “junk” mail, one particular piece catches your eye, one advertising a techno gadget you’ve had your eye on for a while. And there’s a sale on it—all you have to do is enter the following code on the website…"

DIRECT MARKETING AND SALE VOLUME - A STUDY OF CORRELATION AND EFFECTIVENESS

ABSTRACT

The desire to maximize marketing effectiveness and cut back communication costs has multiplied the importance of direct marketing and reliance on processed databases, customized persuasion, and other consumer information intensive strategies and tactics. Direct marketing is practiced by businesses of all sizes. A direct advertising campaign aims to deliver an honest return on investment by showing how many potential customers responded

In fact, along with the development of the industry, there are an increasing variety of forms and techniques used in direct marketing.

It attempts to acquire and retain customers by contacting them without the use of an intermediator. The objective is to achieve a direct response which may take one of the following forms:

• A purchase over the telephone or by post;

• A request for a catalogue or sales literature;

• An agreement to visit a location/event (e.g. an exhibition);

• Participation in some form of action (e.g. joining a political

General perception that telemarketing is rather intrusive

III. Higher initial costs than other traditional advertising methods.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Catalogues of books and nursery items have been distributed from as early as the fifteenth century due to the emergence of printing technology. Catalogues of books and of nursery items were particularly popular in those early days. Later, catalogues began to include elite things like wine, furniture, and china. During this period of time, catalogues were actually targeted at those with purchasing power who were able to read, although the knowledge or skills of 'direct marketing' had, at that time, not been acknowledged (Ross, 1992).

In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward first introduced direct marketing by distributing the first modern mail-order catalogue in the US (Roman, 1987, p.XV).

For geographical reasons, mail-order became popular, served rural people who were isolated from the urban society, and was well-established, via the nation-wide postal system. So it is originated as a mail-order discipline nearly two centuries ago. This is in contrast to the claim of many journals and magazines that direct marketing is a new discipline (Tapp