Direct marketing is a flavor of advertising that goes beyond the traditional communication methods like television, radio or newspaper advertisements. Direct marketing channels include, direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing, door-to-door leaflet marketing, voicemail marketing, issue of coupons, direct selling, direct-response television marketing and broadcast faxing. Although some of these methods are more expensive than others, the wide variety of choices prompts small and medium size companies with low advertising budgets to considerably expand their customer base. The advantages of direct marketing are, getting an accurate measure of acknowledgments, wider outreach via the Internet, increased targeted awareness and reducing advertising budget and waste.

http://www.the-dma.org/index.php is the official web portal for direct marketing in the United States. This portal is owned by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA, which is the authorized body for all direct marketing related aspects in the United States, from statistics, research, and listings for direct marketing agencies. DMA has compiled a list of direct marketing agencies belonging to all kinds of business domains in the US. direct marketing agencies can become members of The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which will gain them national exposure and earn credibility among customers. As of 2006, the top 5 direct marketing agencies in the United States were, Rapp Collins Worldwide, Wunderman, Draftfcb Interpublic, Epsilon Wakefield, and Aspen Marketing Services.

Rapp Collins, located in New York is the number one in the list of direct marketing agencies. It’s 274 million USD revenue has not only recognized Rapp as a direct marketing giant, but also won them many awards as DMA Leader award for financial products and services and the Gold award for innovative digital marketing solutions at Internationalist Awards. Rapp is also a member of the DMA.

Coming second in the list of direct marketing agencies, Wunderman’ headquarters are located in New York. The client base of Wunderman include corporate giants like, Nokia, Diageo, Ford and Nike.

Draftfcb Interpublic is the third in the top 5 direct marketing agencies list, with a revenue of 224 million USD. Draftfcb has been honored by the popular marketing magazine “Advertising Age” as the “the agency that showed moxie, innovation and effectiveness in 2009”.

Epsilon direct marketing agency located in Massachusetts is a global leader in providing direct marketing solutions, focusing both on strategic services and analytic focused services. They also specialize in providing Abacus cooperative data solutions, ICOM survey and compiled data solutions as well as data-driven analytics.

Aspen Marketing Services, located West Chicago, was earning an advertising revenue of 169 million USD as f 2006. The agency specializes in a array of direct marketing channels as telephony, consumer promotions, PR and social media and so on. The clients of Aspen Marketing Services include HP, Motorola, Citi Bank etc.