Origins of Direct Marketing

Direct marketing has its origins in mail order activities.In 1498, Aldus Manutius, the founder of the Aldine Press, published the first catalog with a printed price list in Venice, Italy. This is generally considered to be the earliest recorded mail order activity.In 1667, William Lucas published the first horticultural catalog in England. Later, mail order activity developed in the United States, Italy, and England. By 1926, Sherman and Sackheim founded The Book of the Month Club, the first modern book club in the United States. They began utilizing the free trial method, whereby books were sent to consumers until they stopped ordering or paying for them. This is very different from the traditional method of receiving payment and then sending the book. It was also the first attempt by marketers to measure lifetime customer value Lester Wyman, founder of WCJ, the world's second-largest direct response firm, said that 90% of a manufacturer's profits are lost. Lester Wyman, founder of WCJ, the world's second largest direct response firm, says that 90 percent of a manufacturer's profits come from repeat customers and only 10 percent from casual customers. Losing 5% fewer repeat customers can increase profits by 25%. Strategically, therefore, companies must be clear about whether they want to focus on competing for market share or on retaining customers or fostering loyalty. According to expert analysis, in the face of fierce market competition, the cost of maintaining an old customer is 0.5 times the cost of seeking a new customer, while the cost of making a lost old customer become a new customer is 10 times the cost of seeking a new customer. How to keep the customers we get from traditional advertising and convert them into loyal customers is an important purpose of our direct marketing.

Mr. Wunderman first introduced the concept of direct marketing in 1967. He believed that the beginning of human society transaction is direct, that classical one-to-one sales (service) is the most consistent and can maximize the way to meet people's needs, and the industrial revolution brought mass production and mass marketing is inhuman and immoral.

Particularly at this stage, the product market is a mixed bag, a large number of traditional advertisements flooded the media is called "eyeball economy", can be said to have caused social indignation, in today's social conditions, people are more in pursuit of personalized products and services, and no one is willing to accept the same as other people's products and services. This is a large number of marketing fatal weakness and a large number of marketing era decline, the root cause of the end.

When consumers are generally distrustful of some products; when they are tired of a large number of advertisements and have nothing to do with them; especially when health care companies are at a loss and marketers are struggling to think of and find a new marketing approach, direct marketing came into being and quickly swept through all Western countries with its strong vitality and adaptability, setting off a marketing revolution in the 21st century. Most of the health care pharmaceutical companies in our country have partially accepted the use of direct marketing methods, but the systematic use has not yet. We use direct marketing as the main means to enter the market, can greatly reduce the risk. In fact interactive in marketing is not necessarily online, but may be offline. Take the example of Ctrip.com. They have acquired several restaurants as well as businesses that are well known in the country and have proven to be more effective in terms of more flexible business where consumers don't have the luxury of booking and paying for their meals online, and offline business that is fully integrated with interactive marketing.

So Ctrip.com is solving the problem of consumers in the actual buying stage. They are very successful. That's why it's become not only one of the largest online travel sites, but also the largest national business travel services company.

The most important thing is not whether you're going to implement this interactive marketing online or offline, but whether you're going to target a specific stage of the buying process where this interactive marketing can maximize the impact on the consumer.

Let's look at HSBC in Hong Kong, which is one of the largest banks, and the problem they encountered was not to make consumers want to buy, not to provide information to consumers, but their problem was how to make consumers buy the product and then retain them.

HSBC is providing a very convenient online trading platform to consumers who have already done business with them. Consumers can carry out business information with HSBC more conveniently through the Internet, which in turn inspires them to buy more products, or to generate more desire to trade. A notable example is that when the original started, about 20% of foreign exchange transactions occurred by HSBC's website. This has since increased from 20% to more than 50%.

Specifically, the bank's Web site can add some new features. For example, to open a new account or some introductions, etc. HSBC is the existing consumer and the bank may have a relationship with all together, through a simple and clear can quickly download the page to provide consumers with a large amount of information.

Let's go back and summarize the four cases we presented, all four companies in these cases face different strategic challenges and exist at different stages of the consumer buying process. McDonald's, for example, they motivate consumers to buy, and L'Oreal, for example, faces the challenge of offering consumers a brand that has nothing to do with his brand so that they can make a choice. At Ctrip and eLong they face two problems in the purchase process: on the one hand, the business-run customers are more demanding, and they require one-stop-shopping for flights and hotels. This is very difficult to experiment. On the second hand, they face the lack of payment means, the lack of payment means in China. So they chose a combination of online and offline model to solve this problem. The example of HSBC clearly shows us that a website dedicated to the consumer is completely different from a website that provides information to the consumer at all stages of the buying process. Because HSBC realized that the biggest challenge he faced was how to retain consumers and keep customers. So his website is designed with that in mind. A lot of other banks are just trying to target all stages of the purchase, so they don't succeed.

On the whole, the process of implementing interactive marketing is similar to an advertising agency designing a consumer product advertisement. It's about being able to find a way to communicate a message to the consumer in an engaging way, using the media.

The interface with the consumer needs to be a story that engages the consumer and is strategically logical. So, when we implement strategic marketing planning, when we give the final story to the creative or to the agency or to the advertiser, we can tell them how to utilize the characteristics of the different media to tell the story to the consumer in a clear and logical way.

The process, which starts with determining where the target market is, looks at how big you want to determine the target market is. The next step is to take a closer look at customer behavior patterns, which can be a more complex process. At the same time, it's important to understand the status of different media channels or digital channels, to see how these channels are interconnected with consumer behavior. In this way, we can design the final interactive marketing program with only one test - whether it is able to maximize the impact of consumer behavior, and at the same time generate greater sales revenue and a better return on investment.

To conclude, I'd like to offer a couple of simple messages. First, those companies that have disconnected interactive marketing from their branding operations, they should reintegrate the two activities. Second, the right thing to do is to blend some of the initiatives of interactive marketing with the integration of traditional marketing, put them together and implement them as a whole.

Domestic direct marketing agency

YiPo DM business letter direct marketing based on the Chinese market, is committed to providing integrated one-stop database business letter marketing services, in the fierce competition in the market, to maximize to meet the user's marketing needs.

EYO was originally founded in August 2002, by the senior people of Peking University to introduce the international mature and professional Direct Marketing (Direct Marketing) concept, combined with the current situation of the domestic enterprise marketing and established. Headquartered in Beijing, it has set up branches in Shanghai and Shenzhen, initially forming a database marketing network of business letters mainly in key cities across the country, and it is the only database marketing organization focusing on the production of business letters and DM direct mail in China. Since its establishment, Yiyi Post has been summarizing, updating, introducing and integrating, and has the ability and rich experience to provide professional database marketing services for customers in different industries, fields and regions.

EYO has assisted thousands of enterprises to realize the maximum value of their marketing investment through database direct mail with the support of high-quality databases and powerful operation systems; we have been doing our best in every process from data collection, customer market analysis, effective database screening, design and production of business letters to mailing, and we continue to improve our service process from the perspective of customers' needs, Deepen customer service, and enterprises around the establishment of a long-term strategic partnership, *** with the commitment to maximize customer benefits for customers to build brands and sales promotion to provide a strong marketing platform, it is you, let us do better.

EYO (EYO) in order to better serve our customers, we continue to improve the service system, research and development, the introduction of advanced technology to the database for careful maintenance and deletion, to ensure that the data is accurate, comprehensive, EYO set of technology, resources, systems and services as a great success. Let every customer in the development of the market easy marketing, fast access to market share.