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individual outlet’s performance – measure performance and
improvements. Compare between outlets. In the short term, use
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the successful outlets to understand how the poorer outlets could
be improved rather than using the reports to chastise poor
performers.
Exhibition attendance figures can be obtained from the orga-
nizers. Stand footfall can be measured with a visitor counter or
using a box for business cards (with raffle prize?) or stapling cards
to enquiry forms or writing down names and details of stand visi-
tors and subsequently counting them. Order numbers and order
values by customer resulting both at the exhibition and from
subsequent marketing activity – as long as that activity is encom-
passed within the ring fence of the exhibition – should be reason-
ably readily obtained. Long-term customers resulting from initial
contact at exhibitions can be measured as long as a field in the
database indicates that the customer was acquired at the exhibi-
tion.
What costs will be involved in field marketing?
The cost of employing a salesperson should be considerably less
than the business they bring in and the profit they generate. The
hidden costs of employing salespeople should be included, such as
supervision, processing claims, the cost of administration
(converting an order into a completed sale). The Internet by
comparison costs next to nothing.
To get a true picture of cost it is necessary to ring fence the
marketing activities carefully. Training and staff costs for the exhi-
bition should be added to the costs along with the supporting
marketing activities such as direct mailing, advertising, PR, stand
literature costs and the costs of the space, the stand and equipment
as well.
Code of practice and the law
In addition to the DMA Code of Practice – see Chapter 4 – see also
the ‘DMA Best Practice Guidelines for Field Marketing’ and ‘The
DMA User Guide to Field Marketing’. For further information on
both, see Appendix 3.
Appendix 1:
Measuring the
effectiveness of this
book
The author and the publisher, Kogan Page, would welcome feed-
back on this book. Feedback may take any number of forms –
please write or e-mail roddywpmullin@hotmail.com. Please also
answer our 10 questions given below.
The key measurement we would like to know from you is
whether we have met this book’s purpose? That is, have we
provided you with what you need to carry out direct marketing?
So please write or e-mail and let us know:
1. Are you now able to carry out or supervise direct marketing as
a result of reading this book?
2. Did you find the book stimulating and as a bonus now go for
direct marketing with enthusiasm?
We tried to provide in the first three chapters, sufficient back-
ground and understanding of marketing to deploy direct
marketing successfully:
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Appendix 1
3. Did you feel the first three chapters provided enough back-
ground and understanding of marketing?
Chapters 4 to 13 each covered an aspect of direct marketing:
4. Was the content of each direct marketing chapter sufficient for
you to carry out that activity? If not please elaborate on any
shortfalls.
5. Was the chapter format helpful?
6. Are there any other activities peripheral to direct marketing
activities that we should include? (Next time we may include
warehouse sales, packaging.) Anything else?
Finally, we included in this book many suggestions for measuring
marketing effectiveness for use by you, or for use by those respon-
sible to you for marketing activity:
7. Did you or those responsible to you find the measurement
mechanisms suggested useful?
8. What was the most useful measurement mechanism and why?
9. Did you use any other mechanisms? Please give details.
10. What have you done as a result?
We would appreciate any additional general comments you have.
Appendix 2: History,
facts and figures
about direct
marketing
History
Direct marketing as a term was invented some time in the 1950s.
Originally, it was seen as the door-to-door salesperson. Then for a
number of years direct mail earned the title of ‘junk mail’ – usually
with letters addressed to a ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. The reason was
that it was not always possible to be certain about the quality of the
name and address list and it was expensive to personalize. Direct
marketing has now grown to encompass all the areas that are the
subject of this book.
Direct marketing was never really expected to produce sales as a
result of a single activity. Rather it was seen as establishing a
dialogue to achieve a position on the prospect’s mental shopping
list. Relationship-building to encourage loyalty was seen as a
second purpose. Described for many years as ‘below the line’
advertising, direct marketing was seen as a kind of poor relation to
the above-the-line of display, TV and cinema advertising.
Advertising became over-creative for a time, producing material
for which no sales results could be seen and in the mid-1990s, the
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Appendix 2
move to the more readily accountable direct marketing started and
has grown ever since.
Technology has undoubtedly helped achieve growth. The ability
to mail merge a database with a blank letter started in the 1980s
but really only became widespread in the 1990s. The arrival of the
Internet in the 1990s brought in a new direct marketing tool – the e-
mail. This went through years of boom and bust at the end of the
1990s before the coming of a second age of the Internet, starting in
2001.
Telemarketing, the outbound call centre service, was joined by
an inbound service. Call centres sprung up everywhere – initially
provided by specialist firms but later being set up in-house to
answer calls from direct response TV and to man customer service
centres.
Direct response TV meant displaying a telephone number of a
call centre on the advertisement with a team of people ready to
handle the rush of calls after advertisement showings on TV or
routinely for magazine responses. Then the Internet arrived and
the call centre number was joined by a Web site address. Now
interactive TV is supplementing the capability, from a start really
only in 2000. This allows a person to move from their digital TV to
the Internet at the press of a button from where they can order.
Finally joining the new media has been text messaging using the
mobile phone, also known as the mobile Internet. This has really
only been developed as an advertising media in 2001. It is a
permission-based operation. It grew as a result of the phenomenal
level of text messaging being carried out.
Catalogue sales arose out of the need in the USA to buy articles,
other than commodities that were often the only items available in
local shops, due to the spread of the population. Catalogues were
very large, containing a huge range of items. In the UK, the advent
of easy credit in the 1930s meant that payments for goods could be
spread over an agreed period of time. Purchasing from catalogues
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