It is a marketing form with set basic fundamentals that must be recognized. It is chock full of techniques or rules at all levels of usage. The practitioner must understand the database concept and learn how to develop and use customer files. When direct marketing is properly used, the responsiveness of the target market is not only exciting but highly rewarding. Fortunes have been made by good practitioners who truly embrace its fundamentals.
Direct marketing builds relationships like nothing else.
And if for a moment you might question this, I urge you to familiarize yourself with such mail order greats as L.L. Bean, Lands' End, Patagonia, The J. Peterman Company, New Pig, Viking Office Products, and the Willson's Sunnyland Farms. Get on the mailing lists of publishers like Rodale Press, Meredith, Southern Living's Oxmoor House, Boardroom, Nightingale Conant, and Phillips Publishing, to name a few. And it's not purely cataloguers and publishers. Financial services are moving in with professional work today, too. So are insurance companies, hardware and software operations, health organizations, and entertainment groups.