Direct marketing is the sub-branch of marketing, it’s different from marketing in two perspective. First, direct marketing directly convey message to the targeted individuals and second, customer response is measurable regardless to any medium. For example,Customer click on ads displayed on site, number of customer calling on the mentioned phone numbers.
The most common forms of direct marketing are direct mail,telemarketing,email marketing,door to door leaflet marketing,broadcast faxing,voicemail marketing,coupons, direct selling and integrated campaigns.
Direct mail
Direct mail is most common direct marketing channel, advertiser send mail on postal addresses of customers which contains the details about the offering. This approach was used in the past, currently its popularity goes down due to high cost of postal services,time consuming and invention of new technology like email.
Telemarketing
Telemarketing is the channel of direct marketing in which advertiser approach people by calling them using their contact numbers.The popularity of telemarketing plunge because people complain about the unwanted calls to the complain center or regulation authority.
Email Marketing
Email marketing also known as electronic email marketing concept derived from direct email, the difference is direct mail use postal address to reach the people but Email marketing use email address to send email to the intended person. Email marketing gain popularity due to low cost factor and within seconds delivery of message. A major concern of email marketing is spam, which means people are receiving email unwillingly. In order to cope the problem of spamming sites are providing special filters to automatically separate,delete and block the unwanted emails.
Broadcast Faxing
Advertiser fax their offerings information on the fax number of the recipients. This methods is not in practice due to laws several countries.