Today, perhaps more than ever before, your advertising dollar has to work harder – to really pull its weight in terms of business won.

This is why the direct mail marketing revolution is in full swing. Why direct mail marketing – and the precisely measurable results obtained from this technique – has taken such a positive and dramatic step forward.

The impact of this selling revolution is being felt in many fields. These include amongst many others, packaged holiday, motor vehicles, fashion wear, carpets, furniture, insurance, investment, book and record clubs, industrial products, and charities.

A great attraction of direct mail marketing is that cash return or a commitment to purchase can be an immediate result of any advertisement or campaign and that sales, or other form of action, can be accurately measured against expenditure.

Intelligently planned letters, complete customer relations programs, ‘recommendation’ ideas, special invoice methods, news-sheets, contests, premiums, and many other devices – which we’ll cover in later articles – are used to increase sales, get repeat or continuous business with a speed and efficiency previously impossible to achieve.

Accurate testing is one of the keys to successful direct mail marketing and the cornerstone on which any successful campaign is developed. After accurate testing, a known rate of response and conversion can be established with a high degree of accuracy, and advertising budgets can be finely tailored to production and stock requirements.

Because it involves not only the skills of advertising, but also the science of selling, often with distribution direct to the consumer or end-user, whether he be a man-in-the-street or the Purchasing Officer or CEO of a major corporation, the technique has come to fall under a variety titles. These range from direct mail marketing (which is the term we’ll be using throughout this series of articles, direct mail, direct marketing, direct response advertising, direct response marketing, to name just a few.

At this point, in concluding this article,  it’s interesting to look at the difference between general marketing and direct marketing.

General marketing can be defined as a marketing system in which the marketer communicates with the consumer through general advertising and publicity. In this case there is the absence of direct contact between the marketer and the consumer. So,,in effect, it’s the use of one-way communication. Whereas direct marketing is a two-way marketing system in which the marketer establishes direct relations with the consumer through interactive communication.

For additional information on direct mail marketing go to http://www.mailmarketing.com.au

Copyright 2011  Direct Mail Marketing