Marketing Management, Millenium Edition - epiheirimatikotita.gr

The Growth and Benefits of Direct Marketing 319makes the direct marketer’s offer and strategy less visible to competitors. Finally, directmarketers can measure responses to determine which campaigns have been the mostprofitable.The Growing Use of Integrated Direct MarketingCompanies are increasingly recognizing the importance of integrating their marketingcommunications. Some companies are appointing a chief communications officer(CCO) to supervise specialists in advertising, sales promotion, public relations, anddirect on-line marketing. The aim is to establish the right overall communication budgetand the right allocation of funds to each communication tool. This movement hasbeen variously called integrated marketing communications (IMC), integrated direct marketing(IDM), and maximarketing. 3How can direct marketing be integrated into campaign planning? Imagine amarketer using a single tool in a “one-shot” effort to reach and sell a prospect. Anexample of a single-vehicle, single-stage campaign is a one-time mailing offering acookware item. A single-vehicle, multiple-stage campaign would involve successivemailings to the same prospect. Magazine publishers, for example, send about fourrenewal notices to a household before giving up. A more powerful approach is themultiple-vehicle, multiple-stage campaign. Consider the following sequence:News campaign about a new product → Paid ad with a response mechanism →Direct mail or e-mail → Outbound telemarketing → Face-to-face sales call →Ongoing communicationFor example, Compaq might launch a new laptop computer by first arrangingnews stories to stir interest. Then the firm might place media ads as well as Internetbanner ads offering a free booklet on “How to Buy a Computer.” Next, Compaq wouldmail the booklet to those who responded, along with an offer to sell the new computerat a special discount before it arrives in retail stores. Suppose 4 percent of those whoreceive the booklet order the computer. Compaq telemarketers then phone the 96percent who did not buy to remind them of the offer. Suppose another 6 percent noworder the computer. Those who do not place an order are offered a face-to-face salescall or demonstration in a local store. Even if the prospect is not ready to buy, there isongoing communication.Customer Databases and Direct MarketingMore marketers are harnessing information technology to build sophisticated customerdatabases and shift from mass marketing to highly targeted, one-to-one marketing(see Table 6.4). 4 As discussed in Chapter 4, a customer database is an organized collectionof comprehensive data about individual customers or prospects that is current,accessible, and actionable for such marketing purposes as lead generation, lead qualification,sale of a product or service, or maintenance of customer relationships.Database marketing is the process of building, maintaining, and using customer databasesand other databases (products, suppliers, resellers) for the purpose of contactingand transacting.Database marketing is mostly frequently used by business marketers and serviceretailers, although Nabisco and other consumer packaged-goods companies havebeen experimenting with it. Armed with the information in its database, a companycan achieve more target market precision than it can with mass marketing, segmentmarketing, or niche marketing. Companies use their databases in four ways: