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Types of direct marketing: choosing the right method for your business

Direct marketing is essential to a large business’s marketing strategy, but you must choose the right type to achieve your business goals. 

Paragon’s Marketing Services empower marketing managers, procurement, and Customer Experience (CX) decision-makers to define direct marketing methods, resulting in winning customer acquisition and retention strategies. You can trust us to leverage your brand impact and increase customer engagement and performance.

Our results speak for themselves. Paragon recently helped Bupa choose and execute a marketing strategy that met its need for an email programme for new customers and a seamless customer journey. 

Bupa raises engagement with improved customer journey

We redefined the customer journey through workshops, recommendations about email targeting, data analysis, insights, and intuitive dashboards to measure the programme’s effectiveness.

Explore our direct marketing for Bupa case study.
 

Types of direct marketing

If you’re wondering about the types of direct marketing to choose, these are the main methods to use in a customer acquisition or retention strategy:

Direct mail

A well-designed direct mail campaign is one of the most commercially effective ways to connect tangibly with potential customers.

Nearly 90% of people in a Marketreach survey described direct mail as believable, and campaigns that include it in the mix are 52% more likely to see ROI benefits. 

Another way to gain immediate, measurable ROI is direct response marketing, which can generate an immediate consumer response. Typical examples include calls to action (CTAs) like ‘Call now’ and ‘Place an order’. 

Direct response marketing also provides the opportunity to tailor messages to specific audiences and adapt your strategy based on data. Meaningful data based on consumers’ known habits and trends, resonates with the audience, driving high engagement rates. 

You can see how well it worked in a job we did for Direct Line involving 200 million door drops. 

Paragon delivers massive Direct Line mail-drop seamlessly

Direct Line achieved one of the UK’s biggest marketing print requirements and made significant cost savings thanks to an on-site Paragon team. We built a Single Customer View database to eradicate data inefficiency and various works to streamline print production so we could handle 10 distinct direct marketing campaigns involving 200 million door drops.
Dip into our case study. 

Digital ads (paid social, search engine marketing, display ads)

Digital ads that target audiences via channels such as Google Ads, Facebook  and Instagram are commonplace in many marketing strategies. Precedence Research expects the digital ad spending market to grow in Europe by 27.4% from 2025 to 2034 as enterprises spend more on them.  

You can target audiences accurately using insightful data and make real-time adjustments to campaigns to reach them and capture hearts and minds.  However, businesses that rely on ads as their only direct marketing tactic can find it challenging to stand out. It’s far more effective to have a multichannel approach at the heart of all direct marketing with data to shape the communications. 

Hard-hitting digital ad appeal is a record success

Two campaigns we ran for the homelessness charity St Mungo’s over Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and Google Ads had an outstanding impact. We beat average donations targets by 18%, saw a 230% increase in Facebook donations and raised £250,000 to help end homelessness. 
Study the campaign in detail.

Matching direct marketing methods to business goals

The following guidance will help you select the correct direct advertising approach based on your business goals.

  • Brand connection: Your goal is quick visibility and broad reach. A combination of direct marketing activation and brand activation is perfect, providing a balance of emotionally availability and physical availability, which engrains the brand within a person’s memory. For example, a seven-year-old may remember a POS stand for Coco Pops for years, nagging their parents to buy the cereal. That POS could even affect their purchasing decisions later in life.
  • Customer retention: Your customer engagement strategy includes maintaining engagement with existing customers, but you’re unsure which approach to choose. Well-designed and executed direct mail and brand activation services are ideal. Direct mail connects in a tangible way to resonate and leave an impression, while brand activations mean you can personalise and target customers based on data.
  • Customer acquisition: A personalised ‘luxury’ direct marketing strategy can help you gain customers by standing out from the digital clutter to create a lasting impact. The care you put into crafting a beautifully tailored, personalised communications shows potential customers how much you value them.  
    Paragon’s marketing services can help you analyse your business goals and recommend the most effective method tailored to your needs. 

Innovative POS reduces production costs for Kellogg’s

Paragon’s POS execution services, including our PEP technology solution, closely met Kellogg’s needs to maximise production efficiency and speed and shape the customer journey in EMEA. Our innovative approach was 36% more cost-effective than the previous service provider, and we used our global supplier network to get the best prices.
Explore our impact.

Conclusion: Choose the correct direct advertising for your business

Choosing the perfect direct marketing strategy can transform a business by improving conversion rates, personalising content, strengthening customer relationships, and driving sales. The approach is more effective than broader marketing methods and ultimately enhances ROI.

At Paragon our experts guide marketing, procurement, and customer experience professionals in large and enterprise businesses in choosing end-to-end direct advertising solutions. 

Learn how our direct marketing activation delivers a powerful impact.

Date

15 May 2025

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