Example research essay topic: Direct Mail Advertising Vs E - 1,405 words

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Direct Mail Advertising vs. E-mail Advertising Effective advertising is a key point of successful marketing policy of any company. Choosing the most effective method (or methods) of advertising the product is one of the most important issues of the whole marketing concept. Nowadays marketing specialists use some considerable variety of advertising strategies, like placing ads on billboards, in different mass media or in direct places of purchasing (like in supermarkets, shops, etc. ), organizing some special presentations or advertising campaigns, advertising the product in Internet, and so on. Direct mail advertising and, especially, advertising by e-mail are among the most popular and efficient modern marketing techniques. Direct mail advertising is a technique of direct marketing, which is used by many large and developed companies.

This type of advertising includes several important stages: selecting and forming the groups of potential customers, estimating their preferences and possible needs, creating and producing proper advertising informational materials about the product and sending them to selected potential customers by usual mail. The most popular forms of direct mail advertising are sending sale-letters, advertising brochures and leaflets, catalogues, postcards, self-mailers, and other materials, which are supposed to inform potential customers about the product, attract their attention to the advantages of such a product and persuade them to buy it. (Whitaker) Direct mail advertising has a lot of positive sides: it is one of the most effective techniques of direct advertising, which can be characterized with selectivity, personalization, confidentiality, and absence of advertisements of competitive goods. Direct mail is a perfect tool to give full comprehended information about the product. It is very flexible and is not bounded with time and format. It can be distributed according to stipulated schedule and relatively easy to be controlled. Besides, it can quickly react on some innovations and changes in consumers preferences.

But, at the same time, it is quite expensive type of advertising, which requires some efforts and work of extra specialists. Also, the more popular this advertising technique grows, the less effective it becomes (tones of different ad materials are getting collected in the offices or in the post boxes). (Whitaker) Advertising by e-mail is another form of direct marketing. Recently it is difficult to find a person, who does not use Internet and does not have own e-mail box. That is why e-mail advertising grows more and more popular: it allows reaching overwhelming amount of potential customers. The process of e-mail advertising includes selecting target audience (choosing a number of e-mail addresses by one or another criteria), creating a body of advertising e-mail message and sending it to the customers. There are some effective tactics of e-mail marketing, which include sending news-letters, information letters, or offering contests and coupons, etc. (Davis) This technique of direct marketing is also very effective, and its main advantage is relatively low costs of the promotion.

Besides, it takes not much of time to prepare such a campaign, to create a message and send it to selected potential customers, who will receive the advertisement just in few minutes. The other considerable advantage of e-mail marketing strategy is its wide coverage: theoretically, e-mail advertisement can be sent to every house, where Internet connection is available. Also, this type of marketing is very flexible and it allows receiving quick response from any member of target audience. But, on the other hand, effectiveness of e-mail marketing is rather sensitive. If sending of e-mail advertisements is not permission-based, these ads may come to many e-mail users in the form of spam and may not be taken into consideration at all. That is why it is important to know some legal issues, related to electronic marketing. (Davis) Recently a problem of receiving lots of unwanted messages (spam) is rather topical.

Internet users receive excessive amounts of commercial, informational, advertising or other sorts of messages, which do not correspond to the interests of such e-mail users. It is strictly not ethical to send such messages, and such actions may be legally punished. Besides, in 1986 American Government adopted the Act of Electronic Communications Privacy, which legally prohibits disclosing the information delivered by an oral, wire, electronic communication to a third party, except of the cases of accidental receiving of such information and suspicion of criminal intentions. Therefore, those individuals, who send abusive or offensive messages (including e-mail advertising), who try to spread PC viruses by e-mail, who use e-mail addresses or obtained private information in other unlawful purposes, or who try to hack or to steal passwords and e-mail addresses of another Internet users, can be sent to court and receive punishment. (Sprecher Group) It is possible to understand from the above mentioned, that electronic advertising has much more considerable advantages. First of all, those are high cost-effectiveness and wide coverage of target audience. Average cost of an e-mail advertising message is three or more times lower, than the cost of creating direct mail advertising message.

Electronic marketing can be especially effective for developing and expanding companies, which are looking for new consumers for the commodities or different services. In such cases e-mail advertising is the safest and simplest way to inform the customers quickly about new products or services, without spending some days for preparation, designing, printing out and posting companys advertising materials. (Ogden) That is why nowadays electronic marketing is used much more frequently than direct mail advertising. If a company follows rational and planned electronic marketing policy, engages professional marketing specialists into preparing the campaign, who take into consideration issues of personalization and receiving feedback, then e-mail advertising can be very helpful in promoting the product and attracting new customers. In addition, from the point of view of the customers, it is also preferable to receive advertisements by e-mail.

First of all, the reason of this is easy and fast utilization of an electronic advertisement. If a customer is not interested in the product, only one click allows him to delete the ad. Direct mail advertisements require more time and efforts to be opened, considered and utilized. Besides, there are other advantages of electronic advertising for customers, like opportunity to access it from any personal computer, which is connected to Internet, or opportunity to redirect this ad easily to any other interested person, etc. At the same time, there are some advantages for customers in receiving direct mail advertisements. The main of them is opportunity to try a sample of the product, which frequently comes with some promotional materials (especially for such products, like shampoos, cremes, napkins, hygienic pads, and so on).

There are marketing experts, who anyway express their opinion in favor of direct mail advertising. They think that electronic advertising is growing more and more ineffective, because communication by e-mail becomes harder due to extreme affluence of different ads in our e-mail boxes. They underline that direct mail advertising is much more personal and specific, because the companies can present their products better, more comprehensively and more visually. That is why, after receiving a piece of direct mail advertising, a customer is likely to call for purchasing the product, but after receiving an e-mail advertisement, the customer is likely to be in need of receiving some additional information. These specialists strongly advise not to be dependent only on electronic advertising. (Plessis) Nevertheless, nowadays e-mail marketing is used considerably more frequently, than direct mail advertising. It works perfectly well almost for any field of manufacturing or services.

But there are some spheres (like financial services, furniture, house decorations, and many others), which can be better promoted by direct mail advertising. Such products require more visualization, more information and more personal approach to potential customers. In such cases, as marketing specialists recommend, combining of both direct mail and e-mail advertising techniques can form the most effective marketing strategy. Bibliography: Davis, Michelle. " Introduction to E-mail Marketing. " Material Handling Industry of America.

Trade Association of Material Handling and Logistic Providers. 29 Oct. 2005 < web >. "E-mail, the Legal Issues. " Sprecher Group Halberstam LLP. 29 Oct. 2005 < web >. Ogden, Bill. "Direct Mail Versus E-mail. " Dealer Marketing Service. 29 Oct. 2005 < web >. Plessis, Andre. "Online Advertising Versus Traditional Media Advertising. " Smart Business Connections. The Largest Selection of Proven and Cost Effective Marketing Tools for Business. 2005. 29 Oct. 2005 < web >. Whitaker, Keturah. "Direct Mail Advertising Strategies. " Uncle Max Says. Small Business Solution. 21 Mar. 2005. 29 Oct. 2005 < web >.

Research essay sample on Direct Mail Advertising Vs E