Review: Streetwise Direct Marketing

Streetwise Direct Marketing: How to Use the Internet, Direct Mail, and Other Media to Generate Direct Sales
by George Duncan
Adams Media Corporation, 2001
384 pages, trade paperback
ISBN 1580624391

I am increasingly convinced that sales of products and services via the Internet are more closely related to the discipline of direct marketing than any other paradigm. We speak of e-tailing, implying that B2C sales via the Web are using a retailing model, but it isn't really true. The model is much closer to the catalog model that direct marketers perfected during the 20th Century.

If you can master the principles of direct marketing, then you are likely to do well with Internet marketing -- and in particular, e-mail marketing. If you can't wrap your mind around direct marketing, then you are doomed to meager results.

The trick is to translate direct marketing principles to the realities of Internet media, primarily the Web and e-mail. Duncan doesn't excel in this translation. Streetwise Direct Marketing includes two chapters on using the Internet -- an introduction to the Internet and an explanation of e-mail marketing -- neither long enough to be very helpful.

But Streetwise Direct Marketing does excel in explaining in detail the dynamics of direct response, how to craft an "offer," and how to package the entire message in such a way as to involve the recipient -- exactly the same skills the Internet marketer must master in order to succeed in writing and presenting e-mail and Web copy that sells effectively. Another important section of Streetwise Direct Marketing discusses the intricacies of database marketing, which is increasingly being applied to e-mail marketing through opt-in lists. Duncan explains how to test the quality of rented lists, estimate costs and results, and build your own house list.

We Internet purists may sneer at post office delivery as "snail mail," but the truth is that most businesses will need to use both Internet marketing and traditional marketing to promote themselves. I found Streetwise Direct Marketing a book I could learn from, and I recommend it to you, too.

You may purchase Streetwise Direct Marketing at a discount from Amazon.com through these links:
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DE: http://amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580624391/wilsonweb
FR: http://amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580624391/wilsoninternet
JP: http://amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580624391/