Direct marketing as a tool to achieve DIRECT results

Looking Back: Traditional Marketing Traditional marketing focuses on advertising as a communication channel between customers, or potential customers, and the product or service being offered. Through marketing techniques, the product reaches millions of people, who receive the information without the possibility of interacting in any concrete way with what is being advertised, at least while they are receiving the message. Thus, the results depend on the skill of those who create the campaign to capture the viewer's attention. The main advantage of this method is that it reaches an audience of thousands and even millions of viewers in a short time. Its disadvantage is the high and even exorbitant cost of production and dissemination. Examples of such media include radio, print, and television. The Internet has imposed new modalities for disseminating information, so traditional channels are gradually becoming less profitable options for advertisers, while online advertising is rapidly rising as the favorite of companies of all sizes. However, traditional marketing is still an alternative used locally in many countries. Direct Marketing Comes into Play. Although direct marketing has been used for decades, it has only become a popular alternative to traditional marketing with the flourishing of the Internet. Initially, it involved making DIRECT contact with potential customers through methods such as postal mail, with brochures and printed advertising, to the telephone, calling potential interested parties directly (telemarketing), or even sending written information by fax. These methods required personnel responsible for distributing brochures or trained staff to make "cold calls," that is, to people with little or no information about the offered product. Current electronic marketing techniques have greatly simplified both the methods and the investment of resources, turning direct marketing into a tool used massively around the globe. Email Marketing: Solution or Threat. All individuals and companies implementing "email marketing solutions" campaigns start from a global database of email addresses. Most make the mistake of sending the same advertising message to thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people. The problem is that almost the entire audience marks those messages as SPAM, due to the fact that they are not interested at all in what they receive. This can trigger the domain from which the email is sent to be marked as a source of JUNK MAIL. The trick, so to speak, to avoid this and play fair is to appropriately segment the audience based on their tastes and preferences, either through direct consultation or by creating databases on specific products/services, where those who wish to receive information related to a specific topic can voluntarily subscribe. Such work can take time and consume resources, but it is undoubtedly worth it, given the enormous benefits that a database segmented by preferences offers. MINTEC has already done this work with its databases, both by user preferences and by country, among other important parameters. Consult with us to apply low-cost direct marketing to your projects.