Direct marketing means there is no intermediary between your organization and your customer ¡X it's a one-to-one relationship. It covers everything from coupon response advertising, e-commerce, door-to-door selling (heaven forbid) through to telemarketing and direct mail. Direct marketing always aims to achieve an immediate quantifiable response. Thus its effect can be assessed in a short time period. This distinguishes it from most high profile advertising whose major purpose is to build a brand image that is assumed to result in sales at some time in the future. Direct Marketing is low cost and low risk in the sense that no significant

The trend is already moving away from direct marketing as a stand-alone tactical element of the promotions mix towards integration and a more strategic role. The move toward direct response has dual benefits: it will facilitate more accurate targeting as a result of requests from consumers, thereby reducing `junk' mailings and it will allow marketers to move from prospecting to relationship building, an approach which will require a totally integrated marketing and communications mix. Companies will need to relate their communications and actual consumer behaviour, as opposed to relying on inferential data such as geodemographics or psychographics, as they have done in the past.

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