Monthly Archives: March 2011

Direct Marketing Strategies

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When the world and the economy depends on marketing and marketing strategies, it’s safe to say that everything in-between needs to be well thought of, carefully constructed and extremely efficient. Of course it isn’t easy coming up with the perfect or near perfect marketing strategies, or ways of how to market products and goods to consumers all around the world let alone in one country or state. Which is why there are numerous marketing strategies, many ways of how to approach a consumer and ensure products and goods get sold.

When it comes to direct marketing strategies, there are multiple ways and manners of how to approach the consumer. In this very case of direct marketing strategies, the producer would directly approach the end-user or consumer/buyer. In other words direct marketing strategies include face-to-face selling, catalogs, television marketing, direct mail etc. This way the producer of the goods and products also has a way of convincing the consumer according to his very own terms.

Direct marketing strategies begin, quite obviously, with a reliable and dependable customer base. With regard to direct marketing strategies and having a reliable customer, producers needs to ensure that they offer the best in customer satisfaction and best value. Through direct marketing strategies, producers would notice and have to ensure that their products and goods are offered in a more customized and personalized manner which would be enticing to their customers as well. The direct marketing strategies as well the distributions processes also need to meet the need of the customer and work in order to build their loyalty not destroy it.

Any organization of single producer will be able to achieve a greater and wider target market with the use of direct marketing strategies. Thriving direct marketing strategies plan, determine, target and test just about everything from efforts to measurements and elements to evaluate their success. Analyzing the strategies and campaigns can steadily lead to an overall improvement in the entire performance of the direct marketing strategies. Whilst some direct marketing strategies produce favorable results in months, some might take a few years. Nevertheless even if there is the sound of failure at the initial point, use it to channel more effective direct marketing strategies for the future.

However not all marketing in good and effective marketing; in midst of focusing on being successful and getting things right, it is just as important and vital to understand, or moreover to recognize that some direct marketing strategies can have negative attributes. Such examples include invasion of your private space, fraud and deception. At the end of the day what we all want is honesty and not be cheated of what we were made to believe. The real opportunity in direct marketing strategies lies in offering valuable information so if this part of the campaign is completed successfully, success the rest of the way should follow suit.

Email Direct Marketing

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Direct marketing is a sales method which is a deviation from the traditional marketing methods, and is
used to reach the potential consumer directly. Emails, leaflets, catalogues, brochures, coupons and
telephone sales are methods used to reach potential customers, for sale of products as well as services, through direct marketing.

One would wonder what makes direct marketing so popular. The main reason is the effectiveness of the
marketing strategy, where the potential consumer is directly targeted and reached for marketing
purposes. In addition it is considered to be a very budget friendly marketing strategy, which can reach
a large number of consumers.
Among all these methods email direct marketing is on the rise, and is a very popular method of marketing. email direct marketing can be used for several purposes, such as sending emails or email greetings to enhance a relationship with previous or current customer, sending emails in order to acquire new customers, sending emails with advertisements of other companies attached to it with the intention of promoting the other company.

When acquiring new consumers, email direct marketing is used to directly email advertisements to a targeted audience. In order to use this method successfully, it is important that the company
concerned possesses a collection of email addresses. It will be very useful to also have basic
information on the owner of the email address, such as name, age group, profession, occupation and other details that would assist in identifying the target market segment.

Most companies who opt for email direct marketing, solicit the help of an advertising agent, who will possess databases with consumer information.

email direct marketing is sometimes used for promotional marketing as well, where promotions are made
known to the consumer in an attractive manner.
Some of these emails consist of a raffle draw or some promotional activity where the recipent is given
a promise to be entered into a raffle draw, if he or she would email the advertisement to a specific
number of email addresses. Recipients who are attracted by these prizes offered, forward the
advertisements to addresses in their address book, copying a particular email address as specified in
the advertisement. These new addresses too are then acquired by the marketing or advertising agent for
further promotions. In addition the email keeps propagating due to its attractiveness thus reaching a
large audience.
email direct marketing is very successful because of this.

Even though the agent is able to keep a tab of the email recipients, a drawback in email direct marketing, is that a precise count of all the emails that were successful cannot be derived as some of the emails may end up in the recipients junk folders. But this is not a major concern, and is negligible, as the email reaches a large number consumers thus making email direct marketing one of the most successful methods of marketing.

Direct Marketing Services

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Direct marketing services involve reaching out to customers via firsthand methods like direct mail, telemarketing , email marketing and so on than opting to traditional advertising channels like radio, television and newspapers. With direct marketing it is possible to receive immediate feedback from customers. Additionally, it saves time and money compared to advertising on visual media. Furthermore, direct marketing enables generation of more accurate statistics as sellers can interact with potential buyers one-to-one.

Direct Marketing Agency (DMA) is the authoritative body in the United States, which manages, moderates and controls all direct marketing services in practice with in the United States. DMA is responsible for creating awareness, endorsing direct marketing agencies, offering assistance, references and other required resources to those who make use of direct marketing services.

One of the most dominant direct marketing services used by almost every agency is direct mail. These agencies gather email and postal addresses categorized under different groups, in order to post communiques about products and services. Some of these groups are, home owners, new movers, and professionals (doctors, lawyers, nurses, technicians etc.) According to the direct marketing report in 2010 issued by Experian Inc. direct mail has been regarded the most effective to acquire new customers and keep track of live old customer leads. Many direct marketing agencies provide preset databases of customer postal and email addresses for a nominal fee. This has propelled direct mail in to greater heights in direct marketing services field.

Two similar forms of direct marketing services is telemarketing and email marketing. In telemarketing salesmen place calls directly to potential customers. However, in US certain telephone numbers belong to no-call-lists. Therefore it has to be made sure that the client list is free of these numbers before services can be initiated. Although not as effective as telemarketing, email marketing is an inexpensive method of reaching into a wider audience. The downside of email marketing is that there is a greater chance of messages not being able to reach the customer due to problems like spam filters, barring at ISPs etc. Voicemail marketing is another variation of email marketing, where voice messages are left at customers’ voice mail boxes and voice messaging systems.

Although, television is not generally accepted as a media for direct marketing, direct-response television marketing is an effective way of obtaining direct marketing services. The two variations of direct-response television marketing are, long term and short term. Long term direct-response marketing makes use of a television advertisement which is usually 30 or 45 minutes long. Short term advertisements are 30 or 60 seconds. During the advertisement is being telecast screen prompts of telephone numbers are given for viewers to call, so that they can purchase the item/service being advertised.

Direct Marketing Agencies

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Direct marketing is a flavor of advertising that goes beyond the traditional communication methods like television, radio or newspaper advertisements. Direct marketing channels include, direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing, door-to-door leaflet marketing, voicemail marketing, issue of coupons, direct selling, direct-response television marketing and broadcast faxing. Although some of these methods are more expensive than others, the wide variety of choices prompts small and medium size companies with low advertising budgets to considerably expand their customer base. The advantages of direct marketing are, getting an accurate measure of acknowledgments, wider outreach via the Internet, increased targeted awareness and reducing advertising budget and waste.

http://www.the-dma.org/index.php is the official web portal for direct marketing in the United States. This portal is owned by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA, which is the authorized body for all direct marketing related aspects in the United States, from statistics, research, and listings for direct marketing agencies. DMA has compiled a list of direct marketing agencies belonging to all kinds of business domains in the US. direct marketing agencies can become members of The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which will gain them national exposure and earn credibility among customers. As of 2006, the top 5 direct marketing agencies in the United States were, Rapp Collins Worldwide, Wunderman, Draftfcb Interpublic, Epsilon Wakefield, and Aspen Marketing Services.

Rapp Collins, located in New York is the number one in the list of direct marketing agencies. It’s 274 million USD revenue has not only recognized Rapp as a direct marketing giant, but also won them many awards as DMA Leader award for financial products and services and the Gold award for innovative digital marketing solutions at Internationalist Awards. Rapp is also a member of the DMA.

Coming second in the list of direct marketing agencies, Wunderman’ headquarters are located in New York. The client base of Wunderman include corporate giants like, Nokia, Diageo, Ford and Nike.

Draftfcb Interpublic is the third in the top 5 direct marketing agencies list, with a revenue of 224 million USD. Draftfcb has been honored by the popular marketing magazine “Advertising Age” as the “the agency that showed moxie, innovation and effectiveness in 2009”.

Epsilon direct marketing agency located in Massachusetts is a global leader in providing direct marketing solutions, focusing both on strategic services and analytic focused services. They also specialize in providing Abacus cooperative data solutions, ICOM survey and compiled data solutions as well as data-driven analytics.

Aspen Marketing Services, located West Chicago, was earning an advertising revenue of 169 million USD as f 2006. The agency specializes in a array of direct marketing channels as telephony, consumer promotions, PR and social media and so on. The clients of Aspen Marketing Services include HP, Motorola, Citi Bank etc.