Mail-order sales: Marketing and Sales
Compared to traditional forms of retail sales, mail-order sales is a different world with special laws, techniques and needs. It is a sector based on the most modern direct marketing tools and requires advanced database-driven organisational structures.
With the use of interactive tools, a mail-order sales campaign is structured to generate responses: this characteristic makes direct marketing a measurable marketing system, not only in the sense of post-campaign assessment but, above all, in the possibility of determining the profitability of that action beforehand.
- The most used interactive tools are:
- sales communication via traditional post (direct mail),
- sales communication via email (email marketing),
- sales communication via mobile phone (mobile marketing),
- response coupons in the press,
- telesales and television commercials on interactive TV which invite the user to carry out an action via TV,
- telemarketing, that is, phone contact to promote sales actions.
Compared to classic forms of advertising (TV, Radio, Press), direct mail-order marketing allows us to establish a direct and lasting relation with the target; to personalise the messages on the basis of specific needs and characteristics of the individual client; to design different promotions depending on the lifecycle phase of the client (purchase, development, loyalty and lastly recovery if they are going to abandon).