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Discipline

Direct marketing

Messages addressed to a person: direct mail and telemarketing.

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Direct marketing sends messages addressed to a person: direct mail, door drops and telemarketing. It is a response discipline, built to make named people reply and to count what they do, so every campaign doubles as a test. It works best with a lawful list, a clear offer and a control group, and often follows other channels or prompts a reply that arrives online.

Start with the 101Direct marketing 101: the whole pictureHistory, how it works, where it is used, what it costs, the rules, its limits and when to choose it, with every claim sourced.Read the 101

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What matters when choosing

  • A lawful list of customers or well-chosen prospects, screened against preference registers.
  • An offer clear enough to act on now.
  • A holdout group to show what the campaign really added.
  • Clean tests of lists, offers and creative, with enough volume and time to read them.
  • Objections that reach every list and every supplier.

Questions to ask vendors and agencies

  1. Where does this list come from, and when was it last screened?
  2. What would have happened without the campaign, and how will we know?
  3. Which consent and do-not-call rules apply in each market we will call?

Common mistakes

  • Judging on the raw response rate instead of cost per order and incremental sales.
  • Using stale lists that miss people who moved or objected.
  • Calling people under last year's rules without checking what has changed.

What it is good at

  • Reaching one named person or household at a time.
  • Counting every reply and tying it to a version.
  • Mail that stays in the home for days.

What to watch for

  • A high cost per person reached.
  • Results only as good as the list behind them.
  • Calls are tightly regulated, and differently in each country.

How it is bought and priced

Bought by the piece, the household or the call: data and list rental, screening, creative and print, postage or call-centre time, and response handling. Because the cost per person reached is high, the measure that matters is the cost per reply or per order.

Typical disciplines Direct marketing Email marketing CRM and loyalty

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