Direct Marketing – An Introduction
Direct marketing, which reaches out to its prospective clients on a one-to-one basis requires an extensive detailed list of its consumers. This technique of marketing may be used by retailers, finance companies, internet service providers, vendors, and technology companies, to site a few.
For its purpose of advertising and marketing, the marketer uses one-to-one channels such as e-mail, business phone lists, mails or even face-to-face contacts. With their specific call-to-action strategy such as “click this link to know why”, this form of marketing can help to immediately measure the success of the campaigns based on how many have responded through the call-to-action message.
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Maintaining a Consumer Database
For direct marketing to be effective, a database of the customers is the basic necessity without which marketing would be impossible. Therefore, a database of the customers – an integral part of direct marketing, is compiled.
- While data of the existing customers is readily available, data of prospects may have to be collected from third parties. A prospective client list is built up from sources such as the people from a neighborhood, people opting for a newsletter, contest entry forms, a customer list from any other business source or product warranty cards or even while interacting with the customer during a sale; the sources are innumerable.
- This consumer data list would include the names of individuals, businesses, and prospects, etc. The business phone list would also be accompanied by the addresses, phone numbers and any other contact details of the customers along with other information such as credit history, purchase habits and purchase records with the company.
- The customers who would make up the list should be receptive to the email marketing service. While one campaign may target mobile phone lovers, another might be aimed at politically active individuals. With careful database analysis, effective customer lists should be compiled; else the whole exercise of making the database would be futile.
Conclusion
All marketing related information and feedbacks would be directly addressed to the customers of this list via different mailing facilities. After the completion of any mailing program, the consumer data is updated with such information as address modification and notations on responses.
With all the data available from the public records, customers, and other sources, the consumer database plays a significant role in reaping rewards for the sales and marketing of the businesses. Direct advertising campaign, if well-targeted, brings in positive returns on investments in the long run.