Direct Marketing

The most common form of direct marketing is direct mail, commonly called junk mail, where the marketers usually use a reduced bulk postal rate to send paper mail to all postal customers in an area or all customers on a list. Postage, production, creative, layering and waste, are just a few of the costs associated the direct marketing function in gaming. Direct mail is focused on driving purchases that can be attributed to a specific "call-to-action" mailer. This aspect of direct marketing like all others, involves an emphasis on traceable, measurable results.

The second most common form of direct marketing is where marketers call selected (or random) telephone numbers. Email Marketing including spam may have passed telemarketing in frequency at this point, and it is a third type of direct marketing. A fourth type of direct marketing, broadcast faxing, is now less common than the other forms. This is partly due to laws in the United States and elsewhere which make it illegal. A related form of marketing is infomercials. They are typically called "direct response" marketing rather than direct marketing because they try to achieve a direct response via television presentations. Viewers respond via telephone or internet, credit card in hand.

Direct marketers also use media such as door hangers, package inserts, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, email, internet banner ads, pay-per-click ads, billboards, transit ads, etc

If the ad in the medium asks the prospect to take a specific action--call a free phone number, visit a website, return a response card, place an order, visit a PURL, complete a survey, etc.--then the effort is considered to be direct marketing. Direct response or direct-response advertising are both synonymous terms for direct marketing.

I-pods and pod-casts are currently a hot medium. On demand mini movies which can morph a target consumer’s desired entertainment with branding, information, promotions and hotlinks, will be deployed among other devices, via cell phones - on demand, and completely at the viewer’s discretion.

Cost effective targeted reach. Since cellular telephones access the internet with increased speed these days, web based applications can satisfy a user’s impulse to “go there now” which may precipitate a transaction process in a way that wasn’t feasible before. The obvious appeal is that your viewer is viewing your spot by their own choice which, in and of itself, qualifies him as a desired prospect. Not only does this technology allow impulsive transactions, it potentially captures important information such as e-mail address, or cell phone number and origin about new target customers which is much more than a billboard, print, or a broadcast spot ever could.

By reverse appending e-mail data, postal mail prospecting would likely enjoy much greater response percentages – eventually it too will become obsolete. Why not allow customers the ability to print their offer at home, or not at all – present a bar code on the video display of their cell phone at the promotions center to receive their promotion. Hence, the economics of the conventional thirty second broadcast spot, and direct response postal initiatives may soon be eclipsed by the value of a more liberal, targeted, interactive, cost effective VOD technology.

Buro Gaming, LLC maintains extensive resources and has many years of experience in hands on integrated direct marketing. Let us evaluate how you do it and possibly identify alternatives that can increase your response rates that will grow your bottom line.