Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature. Response channels include toll-free telephone numbers, reply cards, reply forms to be sent in an envelope, websites and email addresses.

The prevalence of direct marketing and the unwelcome nature of some communications has led to regulations and laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act, requiring that consumers in the United States be allowed to opt out.

Intended targets are selected from larger populations based on vendor-defined criteria, including average income for a particular ZIP code^{[United States-centric]}, purchasing history and presence on other lists. The goal is "to sell directly to consumers" without letting others "join (the) parade."

Compared to general marketing which is not as targeted, direct marketing is targeted to speak directly with the consumer.

Direct marketing, using catalogues, was practiced in 15th-century Europe. The publisher Aldus Manutius of Venice printed a catalogue of the books he offered for sale. In 1667, the English gardener, William Lucas, published a seed catalogue, which he mailed to his customers to inform them of his prices. Catalogues spread to colonial America, where Benjamin Franklin is believed to have been the first cataloguer in British America. In 1744, he produced a catalogue of scientific and academic books.

Meeting the demands of the consumer revolution and the growth in wealth of the middle classes helped drive the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Following the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th-century, a growing middle class created new demand for goods and services. Entrepreneurs, including Matthew Boulton and pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, pioneered many of the marketing strategies used today, including direct marketing.

The Welsh entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones set up the first modern mail order in 1861. Starting as an apprentice to a local draper in Newtown, Wales, he took over the business in 1856 and renamed it the Royal Welsh Warehouse, selling local Welsh flannel.

Improvements in transportation systems combined with the advent of the Uniform Penny Post in the mid-19th century provided the necessary conditions for rapid growth in mail order services. In 1861, Pryce-Jones hit upon a unique method of selling his wares. He distributed catalogs of his wares across the country, allowing people to choose the items they wished and order them via post. Pryce-Jones would then dispatch the goods to the customer via the railways. It was an ideal way of meeting the needs of customers in isolated rural locations who were either too busy or unable to get into Newtown to shop directly. This was the world's first mail-order business, an idea which would change the nature of retail in the coming century.