Consumers highly sceptical about benefits of DM

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 29-Sep-05, 07:00

LONDON – The industry must do more to explain the benefits of 'targeted direct marketing' to consumers after industry research showed that only a tiny minority of consumers agree the medium has benefits.

The survey, by CACI and database marketing consultancy The Customer Partnership, comes as the DMA independently prepares to launch a consumer-facing campaign next month to counter misconceptions and show that campaigns are targeted and relevant.

Despite the fact that 44.8% of consumers surveyed said that they had made a purchase as a result of direct marketing, the majority described themselves as very irritated about direct marketing from companies they had no relationship with.

Even when it came from companies with which they already had a relationship with, the majority of consumers felt neutral about it and many more felt irritated.

For example, only 8.7% of people receiving email marketing from companies with which they had an existing relationship saw this as a benefit, compared with 55.2% who felt neutral and 36.1% who felt very irritated.

"Existing relationship" email marketing got the highest percentage of people seeing it as a benefit while telemarketing cold calls got the lowest percentage. This was 0.4%, while 95% were very irritated, and 4.6% were neutral.

The survey also revealed that consumers prefer to be contacted by email and respond to companies in the same way. However, CACI acknowledged that the survey was conducted online, which could well have skewed the results in favour of email users.

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