Direct marketing 101: mail, door drops, calls and response, tested

Direct marketing speaks to one named person or one household and asks for a reply: an order, a call, a visit, a donation. Its main formats are direct mail, door drops (unaddressed leaflets delivered to every home on a route), telemarketing and direct response TV and radio, which carry a number, a link or a code. What sets it apart from other paid media is that the reply is counted, so every campaign doubles as a test.

In one line: direct marketing trades reach for accountability. It reaches fewer people than mass media, but it tells you exactly who replied and what it cost.

Every direct campaign has the same bones: a list, an offer and a response mechanism. The list says who receives it. The offer is one clear proposition with a call to action. The response mechanism (a reply card, a phone number, a web address, a promotional code) carries a code that ties each reply back to the list and version that produced it.

Response, tests and controls

The response rate is the share of people mailed or called who replied. On its own it says little; the discipline's habit is to compare. A campaign is split into cells that differ in one thing (the list, the offer, the envelope, the script), which is an A/B test by another name. A control group that receives nothing shows what would have happened anyway, so the difference between the two is the campaign's incrementality; the glossary calls it a holdout test. Cost per reply or per order (CPA) and return on spend (ROI) then decide whether a test is rolled out.

Lists

The best list is your own customers: first-party data gathered through purchases and sign-ups. Prospect lists are rented or bought from list owners and brokers, and segmentation picks who in them gets which offer. Before anything is sent, lists are screened: against people who asked you to stop, against deceased and moved records, and against the national preference services described below.

Selling by post is older than modern advertising. In 1872 Aaron Montgomery Ward sent out a single-sheet price list of 163 items with no pictures, often cited as the first general mail-order catalogue¹⁸. The name of the discipline came later: Lester Wunderman, widely called the father of direct marketing, set out the idea in a 1967 speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology¹⁹²⁰.

Data protection law shaped the modern discipline. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 27 April 2016 states that processing personal data for direct marketing "may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest", and gives everyone an absolute right to object to it⁶. National rules on calls then tightened, most recently in the UAE in 2024 and in France in 2026¹¹¹⁰.

Direct marketing is used in every region, but published, method-based figures are richest for the UK, where the Joint Industry Committee for Mail (JICMAIL) tracks how mail is handled in the home and what it produces.

• Europe. JICMAIL's 2025 Response Rate Tracker, built on about 3,800 campaigns, put the average response at 7.2% for warm direct mail, 0.9% for cold direct mail and 0.5% for door drops, with a return of £9.00, £3.20 and £2.90 per pound spent respectively¹³. A later release covering nearly 5,000 campaigns reported response growth of 26% for warm and 21% for cold retail mail²². In the first quarter of 2026, door drops stayed in the home for 5.6 days on average, were interacted with 3.0 times and held 57 seconds of attention, and 9.4% of all mail items prompted a website visit, a first-quarter record¹⁴.
• Americas. The US runs one of the largest postal marketing systems and the national Do Not Call Registry, which telemarketers pay to access by area code⁸.
• Middle East and Africa. The UAE regulates telemarketing through a Cabinet resolution of 2024 and a national Do Not Call Registry¹¹.
• Asia-Pacific. Direct mail and telemarketing are used across the region under national privacy and telecoms laws; this primer has no comparable, sourced response figures to give.

Direct marketing is a response discipline. It suits lead generation, customer acquisition with a clear offer, conversion of people who already showed interest, and retention and loyalty, where mail to existing customers does best¹³. Charities use it to recruit and keep donors (nonprofit); retailers send catalogues and door drops around stores; financial services and telecoms firms (telecom and tech) send offers to customers and well-chosen prospects.

In an integrated plan, mail and calls often follow other channels: a printed pack sent to people who browsed but did not buy, or a call to a lead who asked for one. JICMAIL's figures show mail prompting website visits¹⁴, so the reply often arrives online. The discipline's hub is direct marketing; for the people who run it, see the performance marketer and marketing operations pages.

Direct marketing is bought by the piece, the household or the call, so its cost per person reached is high and its cost per reply is what matters. The usual items are data (list rental, preference-service screening), creative and print, postage or call-centre time, and response handling. Postage is set by national postal operators; in the US, the Postal Service raised its mailing prices on 12 July 2026²¹.

Some regulatory costs are public. In the US, telemarketers pay the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to download numbers from the Do Not Call Registry:

For fiscal year 2027, which began on 1 October 2026, access costs $85 per area code, $43 for one added in the second half of the year, and at most $23,425 for the whole country; the first five area codes are free, and exempt organisations such as some charities pay nothing⁸. The fees are updated each year under a 2007 law⁷; for fiscal 2026 they were $82 and $22,626⁸. In the UK, marketers licence the Mailing Preference Service to screen their lists². As a measure of efficiency, JICMAIL reports that door drops cost about 7p per minute of attention¹⁵. This primer gives no averages of its own.

This section describes the main frameworks; it is not legal advice.

• European Union and data protection. Under the GDPR, direct marketing can rest on consent or on legitimate interest, which needs a balancing test; Recital 47 says direct marketing may be a legitimate interest, and Article 21 lets anyone object at any time, after which their data may no longer be used for that purpose⁶. Electronic marketing (calls, emails, texts) is also governed by national ePrivacy laws. See GDPR.
• United Kingdom. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) govern most direct marketing by phone and electronic means; they do not set lawful bases themselves but affect which one you can choose⁴. They cover live marketing calls, and you may not call a number registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) unless that person has specifically agreed to your calls; the ICO notes its guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act came into law on 19 June 2025³. In March 2026 the ICO updated its legitimate interests guidance, calling it "the most flexible lawful basis" while keeping the three-part test⁵. Post is not covered by PECR: the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) is the free register for people who want less personally addressed advertising mail; it does not stop mail to "the occupier" or from firms the person already deals with, and takes up to three months to take full effect¹. Screening against it is a condition of DMA membership².
• The DMA Code. The UK's Data & Marketing Association (DMA) runs a code of six principles, starting with "put your customer first", overseen by an independent Data & Marketing Commission¹⁶; it binds DMA members¹⁷.
• United States. Telemarketers must not call numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, and pay to access it⁷⁸.
• France. Article 13 of Law No. 2025-594 of 30 June 2025 rewrote the Consumer Code: calling a consumer for marketing is banned unless they have given prior consent that is free, specific, informed, unambiguous and revocable, and it cannot come from a pre-written clause; calls about an existing contract and newspaper subscriptions are exempt⁹. The rule took effect on 11 August 2026, when the Bloctel opt-out list closed; consent lasts a year at most, calls are still limited to weekdays from 10 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 8 pm and to four per person in 30 days, and some sectors, such as energy renovation, stay banned outright¹⁰.
• United Arab Emirates. Cabinet Resolution No. 56 of 2024 requires approval from the telecoms regulator (TDRA), screening against the Do Not Call Registry, the caller's identity and purpose at the start of the call, and calls only between 9 am and 6 pm¹¹. Fines for calling registered numbers rise to AED 150,000 for repeat breaches¹¹¹².

• Low response is normal. Cold mail averaged 0.9% in the UK¹³; judge a campaign on cost per order and incremental sales, not on the raw rate.
• No control, no proof. Without a holdout group, a campaign takes credit for orders that would have come anyway.
• Stale lists. People move, die and register objections; preference registers take time to apply¹, and an old screening may miss new registrations.
• Calls are a legal minefield. Rules differ by country and changed in 2025 and 2026³¹⁰; a list that was lawful to call last year may not be now.
• Objections must stick. Once someone objects to direct marketing, their data may no longer be used for it⁶; that flag must reach every list and supplier.
• Waste and trust. Unwanted mail and calls cost money and goodwill; the DMA Code puts the customer first for that reason¹⁶.

• France's opt-in era. From 11 August 2026, French marketing calls need prior consent, and breaches can be reported through the SignalConso platform¹⁰; firms now have to keep proof of each consent⁹.
• UK guidance under review. The ICO is reviewing its marketing-call guidance after the Data (Use and Access) Act³, and updated its legitimate interests guidance in March 2026⁵.
• Higher US fees. The FTC's Do Not Call access fees rise each fiscal year under the 2007 law⁷⁸.
• Mail and digital together. JICMAIL's record 9.4% of mail prompting a website visit in early 2026¹⁴ supports plans that send people from the doormat to the screen.

Choose it when you can name the people you want, give them a reason to reply and count what they do. Pair it with email for follow-up and with CRM and loyalty for customers you already have, and use which mix for which objective to weigh it against the other disciplines.