Marketing Communications

448 CHAPTER 13 DIRECT MARKETING

Direct marketing communications should be well integrated into the IMC mix. First of all, different forms of direct

marketing can be combined. For instance, a telemarketing campaign can serve as input for a better targeted direct

mail shot. Direct marketing communications and CRM can support personal selling by generating leads, collecting

information and identifying prospects, thus making sales calls more effective. Sales call results can be ploughed

back into the CRM system, and can be used for follow-up. Database enrichment as a result of direct mailing or

telemarketing can also be used for handling requests and complaints, cross-selling and generating traffic to

exhibitions and trade fairs, and it can provide important information about customer characteristics, attitudes,

preferences and buying behaviour. Results of sales promotion and advertising campaigns can be integrated into the

customer database and used to find out which advertising appeals worked and which promotion campaigns were

effective. These impact analyses can be used to generate more impact with future direct marketing, promotion

and advertising efforts. Direct marketing communications can also be used for direct (potential) customers to a

website, and to register and react to in-bound calls resulting from a direct response advertising campaign, or to

contacts generated through the company website.

iMC insight

Integrating direct marketing communications in IMC

Summary

Direct marketing communications are an increasingly important instrument of the commun-

ications mix, and have the unique characteristics of being able to reach the consumer personally

and directly, and immediately measure the effects. Direct marketing can serve a number of

objectives, such as direct sales, sales and distribution support, and customer retention and

loyalty enhancement. Direct marketing uses a multitude of tools and media. Some of them

are non-addressable mass media instruments, such as direct response print and TV ads and

teletext. Others are addressable or personalised, such as direct mail, telemarketing and

catalogues. A prerequisite for successful direct marketing communications is building,

maintaining and managing a marketing database which enables the company to collect indi-

vidualised information on all its customers and prospects, and use it in one-to-one marketing

3. Send and track results
   This targeted, segmented e-mail campaign achieved the following:
   Open rate: 20.25%
   Click-through: 4.36%
   Conversion rate: 0.71% (conversion defined as ‘purchase’), which was 208% higher than all other rates obtained
   before, having a range from 0.04% to 0.23% for conversions.

Keep the list strong

Sending this kind of e-mail to the entire list would have encouraged a large number of subscribers to start ignoring

the company’s e-mails (or even mark them as spam).^71

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