Growth of direct marketing through electronic communication and analytics

Growth of Direct Marketing Once considered too expensive, difficult to scale across with sales and service, and limiting in terms of market expansion, direct marketing has gone through a rejuvenation as a result of several key factors. Most significantly, there has been the exponential growth in the use of electronic communication with markets, from the use of websites and e-mail to Instant Messenger blasts and the growing popularity of blogs. Combined all these electronic forms of communication and connecting with customers have turned the dynamics of indirect versus direct marketing around 180 degrees. In parallel with the exponential growth of electronic communication, there continues to be significant increases in the development and use of analytics software applications that can quickly provide insights into the thousands of customers companies serve through the direct marketing model. As a result of these first two dynamics, it's also been possible to analyze the performance of indirect versus direct marketing models, and companies are finding that they often did not need to have as many salespeople as they once thought (Arnold 2003). In indirect selling and marketing strategies, there are often larger sales forces to manage the many distributors and dealers. In direct selling and marketing models, often it is the coordination of multiple channels of distribution including websites, direct mail, 800 numbers, and for the largest direct accounts, sales reps. The costs of sales in a direct marketing, when organized across multiple electronic sales and marketing channels, can be significantly less than the indirect sales and marketing models companies use.