Affiliate Marketing is Direct Marketing

Direct Marketing, Mail Order, and E-commerce News from the National Mail Order Association

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Successful Direct Marketing Methods
By John Lamerton

As the name suggests, direct marketing is a form of marketing which is direct. To make marketing direct it has to meet two specific criteria. Firstly, as you`d imagine, the messages that the marketing is aiming to get across must be sent directly to the consumers, not through any form of media middle-man. Mostly companies and marketers do this through sending e-mails, direct mail or telemarketing. Secondly, it tracks how many sales are made through a `call-to-action` framework; basically, if the e-mail tells the consumer to go to a website it tracks how many of them click through to that site. This is the same for direct mail with freephone numbers.

Direct marketing is popular because it`s easy to keep track of how many people respond to it. To make any form of marketing a success you need to see which strategies work and which don`t and this is best done by measuring how many people respond to it. Non-direct marketing, such as television adverts or billboards, don`t measure how many people have responded to that one ad in particular.

One example of direct marketing in print is direct mail. Also known as advertising mail, or the dreaded junk mail. Direct mail includes all the letters that gets put through the post from credit cards and banks to catalogues that are unsolicited and are trying to ultimately sell or offer you something. Companies such as banks and big businesses will use bulk direct mail to reach a lot of customers. It`s not just the leaflets you get through the door though, it also includes the flyers and adverts you get inside magazines and newspapers.

The second most popular form of direct marketing is telemarketing, or `cold-calling`. Companies work through lists contacting each one by telephone to try and sell them something. Although it`s not particularly popular with consumers, it does have a greater success rate than the direct mail approach and is instantly measurable - they either sign up or they don`t.

The third type of direct marketing is email marketing and this form has overtaken telemarketing in recent years as being the most commonly used method that companies use. Again consumers from a mailing list will be sent e-mails offering them services or products. Like the other two it also has a nickname which isn`t particularly favourable and it can sometimes be known as spam. Many IPS and e-mail providers now have measures in place to try and reduce the amount of spam and e-mail marketing.

Running a successful affiliate marketing program is a way of advertising to the online market without being labelled in the negative way that spam is. You can reach a high number of online consumers in the way you can with e-mail direct marketing but it`s also measurable in the same way as direct marketing. There are a number of ways of promoting your affiliate program too which can see your success rate double. If you`re interested in setting up or linking with an already existing affiliate marketing program you can take a look at the affiliate marketing program directory and start seeing those pennies, and pounds,
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About.
John Lamerton is the owner of Lammo Affiliate Blog. Each week, Lammo provides views on the world of Affiliate Marketing and Investing, http://www.lammo.net/

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