ABSTRACT
Direct marketing is a proactive approach to marketing that takes the product or service to potential customers rather than waiting for them to come to a store or other point of access. It is a form of 'non-shop' shopping and is sometimes referred to as precision marketing or 'one-to-one' marketing. Direct marketing comes in a variety of forms. It is one of the fastest growing areas of marketing and is being propelled by technical advances, particularly in the field of computer technology and the Internet. Automated telemarketing uses interactive voice response (IVR) to effectively process high numbers of telemarketing calls in an inexpensive way. Direct mail and direct advertising are subsets of direct marketing. Database marketing is a system that continually gathers, refines and utilizes information and data that drives relevant marketing and sales communications programmes. Database marketing describes a way of organizing a company's total marketing and sales processes.
