Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature.

Response channels include toll-free telephone numbers, reply cards, reply forms to be sent in an envelope, websites and email addresses.

The prevalence of direct marketing and the unwelcome nature of some communications has led to regulations and laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act, requiring that consumers in the United States be allowed to opt-out.

Direct Marketing has a few objectives such as: selling, generating leads, and developing relationships with customers.

Selling is a major objective of direct marketing. An example of this can be newspaper with an advertisement promoting a certain product to buy.

Another objective of direct marketing is to both generate leads and qualify leads. Leads that are qualified can also be identified as prospective customers.

Developing relationships with customers is also an objective of a direct marketing campaign. If a direct marketing campaign is executed correctly, the loyalty ladder shows that a target company can go from suspects to prospects to customers to clients and finally to advocates.