Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a discipline within marketing that involves the planned recording, analysis and tracking of individual customers' (business-to-business or consumer) responses and transactions for the purpose of developing and prolonging mutually profitable customer relationships. The term was coined in the 1970s by Lester Wunderman, who pioneered direct marketing techniques with brands such as American Express and Columbia Records.

Direct marketing is a form of marketing that attempts to send its messages directly to consumers, using "addressable" media such as mail and email. Therefore, direct marketing differs from regular advertising in that it does not place its messages on a third party medium, or in the public market, such as a billboard or a radio commercial would. Instead, the marketing of the service or commodity is addressed directly to the target customer.

DM uses non-addressable media as well as addressable ones. The important thing is that it seeks a response and it is this which the recipient, usually a marketer, bases their future actions, or contact strategy, on. In fact all DM is done through media, it's just that many, e.g. email, telemarketing, SMS, are "addressable". It usually is not taken to include face-to-face contact.

Direct marketing is attractive to many marketers, because in many cases its effectiveness can be measured directly. For example, if a marketer sends out one million solicitations by mail, and ten thousand customers can be tracked as having responded to the promotion, the marketer can say with some confidence that the campaign led directly to the responses.

By contrast, measurement of other media must often be indirect, since there is no direct response from a consumer. Measurement of results, a fundamental element in successful direct marketing, is explored in greater detail elsewhere in this article.

While many marketers like this form of marketing, it is sometimes criticized for generating unwanted solicitations, which are sometimes referred to as junk mail and e-mail spam.