What is the main advantage of direct marketing?

Direct marketing is communicating with members of the public who have shown intent to buy from you, through a direct form of communication, like email, post, or telephone. This is not like advertising which targets a broader audience with high-level information. More importantly, this form of marketing targets and customizes campaigns to the recipient

Table of Contents Show

Why is Direct Marketing Effective?
What is a Direct Marketing Strategy?
Direct Marketing Channels
Want to Learn More?
What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Marketing
Advantages Of Direct Marketing
Direct Marketing with The Direct Mail Company
How Does Direct Marketing Work?
Primary Mediums of Direct Marketing
1. Email Marketing
2. Catalogue Marketing
3. Digital Marketing
4. Social Media
Benefits of Direct Marketing
Direct Marketing Examples
World Water Day
How We Work with Direct Marketing

An example of direct marketing is that you could launch a direct postal marketing campaign where you target potential customers who joined your email list and never bought from you. You could offer them a 10% discount to buy from your store in the next month, with the expiry date clearly outlined. After a month you should be able to report on the campaign’s success by tracking how many people used your discount code and bought from you for that period of time.

Why is Direct Marketing Effective?

Direct marketing is effective as you target a specific audience with personalized content. This type of marketing can be cost-effective as you are not targeting a huge audience. The initial cost of rolling out these projects will be less than traditional campaigns. This is because of the personalized nature of the campaigns. Conversion rates are higher as people are interested in your product or service.

A direct marketing example is launching a direct marketing campaign to people who have added specific products to their cart on your website but didn’t complete the purchase steps. These people are more inclined to buy additional products from you, rather than new visitors to your website. Compared this to a generalized marketing campaign where there is no indication from the recipients if they care about buying from you, and you can see how effective direct marketing can actually be.

What is a Direct Marketing Strategy?

Strategies look to increase sales for a company, or to grow a company’s brand. With this in mind, your direct marketing strategy should have a call to action. This should lead recipients of a campaign to a landing page with an enticing offer or message. Furthermore, good direct marketing strategies personalize content to each potential customer.

Direct marketing strategy examples include;

adding the person’s name in the body of the text,
incorporate products that the customer showed interest in purchasing, and
translating the campaign into the mother tongue of the recipient.

Including all these in a direct marketing strategy will set you on the course to success.

Direct Marketing Channels

There are many types of direct marketing channels to choose from when you decide to try this form of marketing out. Types of direct marketing include:

Telemarketing
Email Marketing
Direct Mail
Targeted Online Ads
Text Messaging
Door to Door Sales

Although there are many forms of direct marketing, you should research what type is the best for your industry. Look at what competitors are doing, and ask customers what they like. Customers in your industry might not use coupons or voucher codes. Instead, they might like receiving email marketing campaigns reminding them of items they left in their shopping cart. Or maybe they prefer hearing about new product lines to browse.

Customers who have interacted with your brand before may enjoy receiving information about upcoming offers and products. This acts as a reminder to the customer that your company cares about them. This reminder to the customer can be the difference between them doing business with you or your competition.

Direct marketing campaigns are not generic, they are personalized. They include some elements of personalization that allows them to resonate with a certain segment of your audience. This could mean that you only share one product range with your recipients. Or you talk to a certain demographic of followers in a campaign. Campaign customization is the main difference between a direct and general marketing campaign.

The ability to track phone and even text forms of direct marketing make this type of campaign popular. By sharing coupon or voucher codes you can measure the increase in sales easily, making for efficient measurability of campaigns.

As direct marketing campaigns are super customized and segmented there is less chance of competitors being send the campaigns. This means that you can have a competitive advantage over your competition through sending out these intimate communications to customers.

Direct advertising is the mass distribution of sales and promotional material through post, email, newspapers, or telephone. Due to its generalized nature, it is nearly impossible to target segments in any way for this type of advertising. Direct advertising is one of the oldest advertising forms or marketing and can be very costly to run.

Direct advertising is very different to direct marketing. It is the mass distribution of promotional material to a general audience through direct forms of communication.

Want to Learn More?

In this article, we explain the advantages and disadvantages of direct marketing.

You need to consider many pros and cons of direct marketing before starting a campaign.

Get a quote quickly here to send direct mail >

Do you know the definition of direct marketing?

Direct marketing is an effective and powerful way to share information about a product or service with prospects.

What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Marketing

Let’s explore the advantages and disadvantages of direct marketing below:

Get a quote quickly here to send direct mail >

Advantages Of Direct Marketing

Here are the advantages of direct marketing:

Targeted – With direct marketing, you can send specific messages to certain groups of customers and potential customers based on their buying behaviour or demographics. The more you target your marketing, the more successful your campaign will be.
Builds Loyalty – A direct marketing campaign can build brand loyalty by continually sharing your brand’s message on different direct marketing channels.
Personal – You can personalise the message for your audience. Personalised direct mail will help improve response rates.
Measurable – Direct marketing campaigns can be tracked and monitored to analyse the results of the campaign effectively.
Affordable – Some direct marketing campaigns, like postcard marketing or email marketing, can be very cost-effective.
Informative – Direct marketing campaigns deliver detailed information on your products and services.

Disadvantages of Direct Marketing

However, although there are many advantages of direct marketing, there are some disadvantages you need to consider:

Direct Marketing with The Direct Mail Company

The Direct Mail Company is a professional mailing house specialising in UK and international direct mail fulfilment.

Our main aim is to provide our clients with a fast turnaround, low cost and efficient mail fulfilment service.

Here at The Direct Mail Company, we offer great bulk postage rates, so you can save money on your next direct mail campaign by taking advantage of our cheap postage rates.

We use leading delivery companies, including Whistl, UKMail, Citipost and Royal Mail, to deliver your direct mail campaigns on time.

Get a quote quickly here to send direct mail >

If your business is planning to send a direct marketing campaign, please contact us on 0808 2533 845 or email to see how we can help.

Direct marketing is a type of advertising campaign that gets a result from a specific target audience. It could be something like ecommerce visits or simply filling out an info request form on a landing page.

Direct marketing can come in many different formats such as physical mail, telemarketing, POS or direct email marketing (one of the most well-known options).

This marketing method is highly effective and is one of the easiest methods to measure. For example, if you create a discount for your online store and send it out via physical mail, you can figure out who has used it by using a cookie or a pixel.

Index

How Does Direct Marketing Work?

As its name suggests, direct marketing is a two-way street of direct communication. Advertisers create a dialogue between clients (both current and potential) and companies and keep the relationship alive as long as possible or desired. Businesses can also adapt to the needs of their clients by offering them individualized discounts, among other things.

How does direct marketing work? The foundation of direct marketing is in the use of databases that include detailed information about each client or lead. By using this information, marketing agencies can adapt promotions and direct marketing communications (according to the needs of a segment) or even adapt to individual clients.

Primary Mediums of Direct Marketing

Here are some of the primary methods of direct marketing within the digital environment.

1. Email Marketing

Direct email marketing allows you to send offers, advertisements, reminders, and other messages to a person whose data has already been saved in a database (either your database or a third party's).

2. Catalogue Marketing

This method has been used for many years but with the rise of the internet, physical catalogues have migrated to the internet where they have become completely digitized.

3. Digital Marketing

Marketing on the internet has been growing nonstop in recent years. According to eMarketer, investments in online advertising beat those on TV in 2017. Furthermore, one very popular direct marketing method is the use of Social Ads by way of Custom Audiences. This allows you to upload your database(s) to your social networks in order to create personalized campaigns.

Social media has changed the face of direct marketing. On social platforms, the dialogue between customers and a company is carried out publicly, which helps ensure the communication between both parties is monitored and promoted content or offers are truly interesting to the consumer.

5. Banners

This type of online advertising is one of the oldest out there. It tries to spark the interest of users by promoting interaction. The majority of banners are clickable.

Benefits of Direct Marketing

Direct marketing offers multiple ways to achieve a your goals. Marketers, such as Cyberclick, know the development of an online direct marketing strategy will bring the following advantages to our clients.

Budget optimization. With direct marketing geared towards the digital environment, you can establish realistic goals and improve sales on a tight budget. If you have identified your audience, you can optimize and properly manage the entirety of the campaign process. You will also get good results at a much lower cost compared to traditional advertising. Remember, online direct marketing is a very quick and economical way tor reaching consumers.
Potential clients. Because you contact clients taken from a data base (either your own or a third party's), you know you are directly contacting your target market when you want to advertise your company’s product or service. The efficiency of this process is much greater than that of other channels. Direct marketing also works well because each segmentation will receive a personalized and adapted message.
Increase sales among new, current, and old clients. When the time comes to carry out a direct marketing campaign, divvy up your efforts into three sections. Firstly, initiate communication with your old clients in an attempt to revive their interest through a new purchasing process. The objective is to make them into repeat buyers. Secondly, you have your new clients who you have data on but who haven't yet purchased your product or service. Send out pointed campaigns to this group. For example, “if you register for the first time, you’ll receive a discount!” Finally, there are your current clients. With these, it's best to generate some type of communication which rewards them for their loyalty. In doing so, you work toward making them repeat customers in the long term.
Improved loyalty. If you combine your digital direct marketing plan with your loyalty program, you could see improved results. If you are in direct contact with your customers, you will be able to personalize emails, promotions and offers, thus creating an immediate bond between your business and your clientele.
New business opportunities. Online direct marketing allows you to continually adapt to the needs of the market, thus reacting in a much more effective manner.
Metrics and results analysis. What is a direct marketing campaign without tangible results? You can directly measure the results, which allows companies and advertisers alike to fully take advantage of A/B testing and decision-making in real time.

Direct Marketing Examples

Let's take a look at some examples of direct marketing from major brands and organizations who have done it well.

Land Rover

When international car manufacturer Land Rover opened a new dealership, they sent out rather unique invitations to entice people to come to the opening. Guests received a box with a heart shaped helium balloon in it. When they opened the box, the balloon floated out with their invitation attached.

This made for a much more memorable interaction for the recipients. Instead of sending out a typical letter, Land Rover chose a direct marketing campaign that was a more creative method of attracting potential customers

KitKat

To promote their new Chunky candy bar, KitKat mailed out some unique 'delivery notices' to a number of lucky customers. These notices were made to look like the card you might receive if you missed a delivery. On them it said that the package couldn't be delivered because it was 'too Chunky.'

People who received these notices could take them to any store near them selling KitKats and get a free Chunky KitKat.

World Water Day

Another example of direct marketing is a campaign that was created for World Water Day and sought to show the importance of this resource. A direct mailer was sent out that could only be read when placed under water.

This unique campaign successfully raised awareness as it intrigued recipients and was shared on social media, bringing even more attention to the cause.

Nike

Nike created a simple yet effective direct marketing campaign aimed at getting kids more interested in sports. The company made limited edition shoe boxes that, when opened, looked like a stadium. Not only did Nike decorate the boxes, but they also added a chip with sound effects to imitate the roar of a crowd in a real stadium when the boxes were opened.

How We Work with Direct Marketing

At Cyberclick, we understand that internet-based direct marketing has two primary objectives:

Generating clients. We can use either our own contact lists or access lists from third party databases. We do this because we know these databases contain potential clients who fit your buyer persona but we must convert these qualified leads into actual clients. A well-executed online direct marketing campaign (which contains the right message and is posted on the right channel) will yield high conversion rates with a relatively low budget. From here, we move on to the second stage: retaining new clients and building customer loyalty.
Promoting the loyalty of our current customers. Customer loyalty can be centered around the continued purchase of one specific product or service or simply returning to purchase something different each time. Either way, it is something every brand wants to cultivate.