Direct Marketing definition
Marketing efforts that go direct to the end user instead of via an indirect channel such as television or radio.
Traditional forms of direct marketing include flyers through the letterbox, telephone calls and catalogues. With the growth of the internet, direct marketing has expanded heavily to include email marketing and social media marketing.
Direct marketing may be focused on existing customers whose contact details have been saved into a CRM database. Some companies, or specialist direct marketing firms, will purchase ‘cold’ databases which have been compiled by a third-party. These types of direct marketing approaches are not as successful because there is no established relationship between end user and supplier. It’s also much harder to target communications because the database will typically only include basic contact details with no supplementary information, such as likes and dislikes.
