The golden age of direct marketing has arrived. Nearly all advertising and sales are “interactive” and “measurable”. At the same time, attendance and enthusiasm for local and national direct marketing trade shows is almost dead compared to 20 years ago. (I wrote this article almost 20 years ago, as the Internet gurus claimed everything would change.)
Since 1968 the definition of direct marketing has been examined and refined. Here is a composite definition from 28 text books: “Direct marketing is a database-driven interactive process of directly communicating with targeted customers or prospects using any medium to obtain a measurable response or transaction via one or multiple channels.” (reconciled from 28 published textbook variations, Scovotti & Spiller) Continue reading “So You Think You’re Doing Direct Marketing?”