Mail order, now commonly referred to as direct marketing, is a trillion-dollar way of conducting business. In a recent report by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) direct marketing generated some $1.93 trillion in incremental sales in 2006. And online sales are reported as increasing with an overall 20 percent growth rate. In 2006 direct marketing accounted for 10.3 percent of total US gross domestic product (GDP).
And direct marketing is not just for big companies, according to a study prepared for the Small Business Administration (SBA), 53 percent of small business in the U.S. are “home based” businesses. And the number of new home businesses is on the rise; according to a report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of businesses with one or more owners but no paid employees grew nationwide from 17.0 million in 2001 to more than 17.6 million in 2002, a growth rate of 3.9 percent.
“Some of the greatest mail order companies in America have been started by entrepreneurs at home.” says John Schulte, President of the National Mail Order Association (NMOA), and author of the book Direct Marketing Toolkit. “And with the advent of the Internet, mail order has been launched into the twenty-first century. What many people don’t understand is that when you’re running a home-based business, all your marketing efforts are really direct marketing and mail order based.”
The sponsored memberships will be awarded to the first 500 businesses applying that utilize one or more direct marketing methods for selling products to consumers or businesses. i.e. Catalogs, Direct Mail, Web Store, Magazine or Newspaper Response Advertisements, TV or Radio Response Advertisements. The sponsored membership is only open to retailing merchants that are already in operation. Size of business or length of time in business will not be a determining factor.
Businesses wishing to apply for the sponsored NMOA membership can go to the NMOA website http://www.nmoa.org and click on “Join Now.”
