Direct marketing is attractive to marketers because it calls for the consumer to take action, without the intervention of any kind of media. The other aspect of this type of marketing is that it sends messages directly to consumers. How often have we been watching TV and following an advertisement we are called to take action by dialing a toll-free telephone number or to visit a website. This aspect of direct marketing places more emphasis on the response from consumers, regardless of the medium selection and how it is delivered. Direct marketing is attractive to many marketers primarily due to the positive effect can be measured directly. There are benefits and drawbacks to this type of marketing.

Due to the fact that there is a positive effect it can generate, direct marketing is attractive to many marketers. If, for example, the marketer sends out a million solicitations by mail, it is possible that ten thousand customers can be tracked as having responded to the promotion. What the marketer benefits from is that they can say that the campaign led directly to the responses. The negative results cannot be measured as easily. Those results are vague and indeterminate since the number of recipients who were offended by the junk mail or spam, cannot be as easily measured. For this reason, it has been a challenge to measure responses and results. While this form of marketing is liked by the marketer, some direct marketing efforts have not been well received due to generating unwanted solicitations. Many times direct mail is irrelevant to the recipient and regarded as junk mail as unwanted emails since they are considered spam.

Many marketing companies have found that while they may have begun as a direct marketing company, they have had to diversify to offer integrated marketing. This diversification is largely due to the declining of budgets and the increase of audiences. By expanding their package of marketing communications, these agencies can offer more than directing marketing but also cover digital, events and advertising, to name a few.

By calling a consumer to take action can on many different forms, direct mailing takes on many different forms. Those forms are direct mail, which is sometime considered and is junk mail. Paper mail is delivered to postal customers in a given area. Another form is telemarketing in which telemarketers contact consumers by telephone. This form has met with some unpopularity in cold-call advertising, and in turn, led to the “no-call lists.” The next form is email marketing, which may have surpassed telemarketing, but has also led to a greater concern is spam. The next form is leaflet distribution, which generally targets the local consumer to a given area. This form tends to be popular with fast food industries, and other local businesses. Broadcast faxing is now less popular due to the fact that it is now illegal in the United States. Other forms of direct marketing has been the emergence of voice mail marketing, couponing, direct response television marketing-the birth of the infomercial, direct selling-companies such as, Tupperware, and lastly, integrated campaigns, which is the blend of several different marketing forms.