Direct marketing

Direct marketing is any unsolicited contact your business makes with existing or potential customers in order to generate sales or raise awareness. For many businesses, it's by far the most cost-effective form of marketing. From direct mail and leaflet drops to telemarketing and email marketing, it allows you to target customers with greater accuracy than any other method.

Direct marketing addresses some of the biggest challenges in marketing a business - lead generation, converting those leads into high quality customers, and then systematically growing customer profitability. Marketing experts estimate that your prospects and customers are bombarded with more than 3000 marketing messages (direct mail, email marketing, radio/tv advertising, billboards) – every day. Direct marketing helps you get through the ‘marketing noise’, and delivers a high return on investment for your marketing spend.

But careful preparation of direct-marketing campaigns is essential if you are to make the most of your investment, get the response rates you want and ensure you do not contact individuals who have decided they do not want to receive direct marketing mailings.

This guide sets out the different types of direct marketing and outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each. It gives details of current legislation and industry best practice, and tells you where to get more help and information on both.
In order to attract, retain and nurture a list of highly profitable customers, you need to craft your direct marketing strategy around a number of marketing activities that can start in a fairly simple way, but over time develop into a fairly sophisticated set of direct marketing processes.