Journal of Interactive Marketing

This article proposes the use of the beta-binomial model to describe consumer response to mail solicitation. Besides generalizing the conventional view that consumers either are or are not responders, this model provides an intuitively appealing explanation for the well-known phenomenon of list falloff. It is shown that list falloff depends only on the dispersion of response probabillities in the population and not on the average response rate. These results are applied to the question of how many times to mail a given list. A discussion of the approach and its limitations follow.

A general customer purchase model is presented for segmenting direct marketing customer files for direct mailings. The model specifies the functional relationships among the traditional recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFMV) variables. Because of the generic nature of the model, it can be used by different direct marketing businesses for a variety of different customer mailings. Strategic implications of the model are discussed for: a) defining active versus inactive customers, b) selecting customers for special mailings, c) comparing multiple customer lists for a single company, d) an overall company purchase score for a company with multiple programs/customer files, and e) product purchase scores for special product offers.

Rising personal selling costs, market demassification, and pressures for advertising accountability are often-mentioned forces accounting for the recent surge of interest in direct marketing. Dollar-wise, direct marketing is credited with billions in media expenditures and over a hundred billion in sales. Meanwhile, the state of theory concerning buyer or seller behaviors in this field is a notch above folklore. This study develops a working definition of direct marketing, which supports a benchmark measurement of its prevalence in magazine advertising.

Cialdini's taxonomy of communication strategies is used to content analyze a sample of magazine advertisements. Results indicate that while both conventional display ads and direct response ads rely mostly on friendship/liking strategies, direct response ads use a scarcity theme significantly more than do conventional ads. Moreover, direct response ads support their principal themes with implicit reciprocation in approximately 33 percent of the cases.

Entries for Echo Awards, sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association, form the largest existing database representing the best efforts of direct marketing practitioners. This article examines the characteristics of these offers, in the hope of providing insights into both current practices and attributes of excellence. The key components in the analysis of offers cover 1) markets, 2) products, and 3) operational strategies and tactics.

This paper analyzes experimental data relating to learning experienced by 24 upper-level students in two classes when undertaking a real-life, direct response project for a new car model of the Ford Motor Company. Overwhelmingly, students expressed a satisfaction for the real-life learning experience and indicated an understanding of direct marketing as a result of their experience. This research does not minimize the value of case studies nor suggest that they be replaced.