Direct marketing became an important force in the UK in the 1950s, but at this stage of its development it was generally concerned with direct mail, mail order and door-to-door personal selling. Today the scope of direct marketing has expanded dramatically largely due to the use of the telephone and in particular the use of the Internet. Direct marketing includes all marketing communications elements that allow an organisation to communicate directly with a prospect. This includes direct mail, telephone marketing, direct response advertising, door-to-door personal selling and the Internet.
Party plan companies have been selling products direct to customers in people's homes for many years. The telephone has been used for B2B sales for a long time particularly for the regeneration of routine' orders and for making sales appointments. It is now being used increasingly in domestic direct marketing programmes often to follow up' a posted personalised mail shot. Motoring organisations, such as the RAC and AA in the UK, have used direct personal selling for years to sell membership of their organisations and today use direct mail extensively to keep members informed about product and service benefits. However, as already mentioned, direct marketing has evolved with the advances in computer technology. The use of computers to store, retrieve and manipulate customer information has revolutionised the way direct marketing firms operate. Direct marketing firms can make use of the Internet and computer databases which allows them to access data warehouses' and gives them the capability to sort and aggregate or fuse' data to increase its value as a marketing resource.
1.2 Not all direct marketing is IT' driven.
There is still the opportunity for old fashioned' methods that are well proven. Some of the more traditional direct marketing methods like door-to-door selling are employed and are effective and widely used by many companies.