Direct Marketing

Most of you reading this blog might be well acquainted with the concept of direct marketing. For those who are new to it, direct marketing as the name suggests is reaching the customer directly, without using any mass media. The main modes of communication used in direct marketing are, Phones, Door-to-Door salesmen, E-mail, mails, SMS. Almost all of us have experienced it some day or the other. Direct marketing is a very cost effective and targeted marketing communication, with high return on every marketing dollar spent, but there are lot problems with direct marketing. First of all it causes a lot of annoyance to the customer. All of us have received calls from credit card companies, banks etc. for new offers. These calls or messages more often than not come when we are busy. The companies have now been forced into a “Do no Disturb” facility to the customers, for those who don’t want to receive these calls or messages. So how useful do you think direct marketing is here. Then there are the long used door-to-door salesmen. The boards outside many housing complexes saying “Vendors and salesmen not allowed” say everything. How many times have we banged doors on their faces? How many times have they been able to convince us to buy their product? Mails and Email are the most non-disturbing means of DM. Emails many times end up in the spam or bulk folder and thus get deleted without even being read. And spams from a company create a big negative image for it. So we are left with mails, well these wont disturb anyone and wont even go into spam automatically. But how convenient is sending physical mails.