How Direct Marketing Needs to Change for the Marketing Future

With marketing slowly transforming from a clear "push" to a "semi-pull" model, one has to wonder how direct marketing will need to evolve to survive on the long-term.

Especially traditional direct marketing mostly relies on "pushing" out information that consumers ordinarily would not opt-in to receive, such as DRTV Advertising (Direct Response Television Advertising), outbound telemarketing, traditional direct mail and in part direct marketing e-mail as well.

People would rarely decide to opt-in to receive such information, unless it were of special interest or value to them, as we can see from home-shopping TV channels and special mailing or e-mailing offers that consumers often still want to consume.

But with the world becoming more and more digitalized, it is becoming evident that most information might become on-demand in the near future, allowing consumers to simply skip or block the advertising they do not want to receive. Most certainly, only the direct marketers that can provide real perceived value to their audiences will be able to actually still get through to the consumer, with all others being either blocked or ignored, and never really requested.

Now, let's consider this from the RSS perspective.

RSS is a pure opt-in content delivery channel, which requires the consumer to actively opt-in to the company's feeds to receive information from it ... and requires the consumer to stay subscribed to continue receiving this information.

Consequently, in the world of RSS, marketers are not only faced with the problem of generating subscriptions, but holding on to them as well.

In such circumstances, especially when RSS reaches mainstream and becomes demanded for by consumers, direct marketers will need to find ways to evolve their direct marketing strategies to grab attention and then keep it.

Let us consider some possibilities ...

1. Educational RSS Feeds

Insread of "providing" only strictly sales-related content, direct marketers will need to consider providing content feeds with focused relevant information, which will try to make the sale indirectly.

For example, a DRTV company with a wide array of products, ranging from "health" to "kitchen", might consider providing focused feeds with tips, advice and reviews for each of the product categories they offer.

Just imagine an RSS feed with housekeeping advice, or an RSS feed with fitness advice, and so on, with articles providing real value, but still leading prospects to the actual products.

This advice could either come in the form of more "formal" how-to articles or in a more blog-like conversational style.

2. Video Feeds

DRTV advertisers depend mainly on DRTV video spots to get their sales message accross, and many people actually want to see these.

Consequently, direct marketers should also provide RSS feeds that will bring their subscribers new TV ads as soon as they become available, and enabling direct viewing by enclosing the videos using the enclosure tag.

3. Product Feeds

Why all of this talk about relevant and useful content?

Mostly because no one really wants to subscribe and keep being subscribed to content streams that are nothing but advertising. There's enough advertising around us anyway, and no one wants to actually receive it directly to their desktop ... unless it provides real value to him.

Hence, product feeds, which will still resemble today's blatant advertising, come in to play.

Consider these possibilities:

a] RSS feeds with the best deals and top offers, just as they become available.

b] Customizable feeds bringing only the most relevant new product releases or bestsellers for a specific prospect, giving him direct access to the products or product categories he actually wants to buy.

c] Specific product oriented feeds, bringing advice and tips on how to use a specific product.

d] Etc.

The Bottom-Line

The bottom-line is simple, direct marketers will be able to rely less and less on traditional "push" marketing methods and will need to start considering other ways of getting their messages across ... approaches that will have them produce content consumers will actually want to subscribe to and stay subscribed to.